GA/AP/846, 28 April 1978
(The following statement was made today by Leslie O. Harriman (Nigeria) Chairman of the special committee against Apartheid)
I note with satisfaction that the Banking Committee of the United States House of Representatives voted yesterday (27 April) to prohibit credit guarantees and insurance by the Export-Import Bank to South Africa, until the president determines that significant progress towards majority rule had taken place. I hope that the legislation will be enacted.
As the New York Times rightly pointed out in an editorial on 27 April, these guarantees and insurance are, in effect, the subsidizing by the United States of South Africa's system of racial repression. Last year they totalled no less than $116 million and facilitated huge loans by American commercial banks to South Africa.
Foreign loans and investment are seen by the Pretoria regime and its supporters as votes of confidence in apartheid. They have enabled that regime to reinforce the system of oppression and build up a massive apparatus of repression. That regime has now embarked on a diabolical bantustan scheme to deprive the African majority of all its rights and is madly rushing to build nuclear weapons to threaten the forces of freedom.
In resolution 32/105 of 16 December 1977, the General Assembly recognized, without a dissenting vote, that foreign investments in South Africa abet and encourage the apartheid policies of that country and called for the cessation of further foreign investments in South Africa.
The Special Committee against Apartheid considers that the ending of loans to South Africa, and of all encouragement of loans to or trade with that country are the minimum measures required of any Government which claims to oppose apartheid. It notes with satisfaction that some Western Governments have taken such measures since the Soweto massacre. Action by the United States and other major trading partners of South Africa is long overdue.
I see the vote in the House Banking Committee as a reflection of the growing public opinion in the United States for meaningful and concrete measures to dissociate this country from apartheid. I congratulate all those who have campaigned for such measures and wish them success.