The campaign for the release of political prisoners in South Africa is viewed by us on several levels.
It is, of course, a humanitarian issue.
Hundreds of people have been gaoled for lengthy periods in South Africa for so-called offences which are not offences anywhere else, under laws which violate all rules of law and on the decision of courts which are racist institutions established by a racist regime with an all-white judiciary.
Nelson Mandela has been restricted and gaoled so often that he has hardly had a normal married life and his children have rarely seen him. Other leaders like Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki are languishing in gaol although they are over 70 years old. So is Zeph Mothopeng, a respected leader of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, who has been in poor health. So are many others who were gaoled even before they had reached adulthood.
Many of them should have been free by now - even under South African practice - but the Pretoria regime is holding on to them by denying remissions to the political prisoners.
We have a right to call on Western countries - countries which are unwilling to break their links with the apartheid regime - to see to it that their spoiled child respects elementary norms of law. The question of political prisoners is, however, not merely a humanitarian matter.
We cannot emphasize too much that the political prisoners in South Africa are not "political dissenters" or "dissidents", representing a minority which finds the actions of the majority intolerable, but leaders of the overwhelming majority of the people of their country. What is more, they have struggled for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while the regime that put them in gaol is guilty of apartheid, which has been defined by the United Nations as an international crime. When we demand the release of the prisoners, therefore, we are not asking for any mercy or clemency but demanding justice. If anybody should be in gaol, it is not the leaders of the liberation movement but their persecutors, who are the true criminals.
We have emphasized, moreover, that the international community has a particular interest in the release of the South African political prisoners. We recognize that the only path to peace in South Africa is negotiation between the leaders of the white minority and the leaders of the national liberation movement, to call a national convention of the genuine leaders of all the people of the country. The release of political prisoners is the first prerequisite to such a new course. That is why the General Assembly and the Security Council have on numerous occasions voted unanimously for resolutions demanding the release of political prisoners in South Africa. That is why the Special Committee has always given special importance to the campaign for the release of these prisoners.
The apartheid régime has been following the policy of imprisoning all the genuine leaders of the people and then making deals with so-called leaders appointed by it - such as the chiefs of bantustans - and claiming that it is making "reforms". However, the oppressed people of South Africa will never accept the traitors foisted on them and give up their demand for freedom and equality. They insist that their true and tested leaders be freed to lead their nation to a democratic future.
Having said this, I cannot but express my surprise that some Western countries show great concern over dissidents gaoled recently in some countries and very little concern over the leaders in South Africa who have been languishing in gaol for 20 years. We see no television spectaculars and no leadership campaigns from the White House. We hear of no sanctions. Instead, as the President of the United Nations Council for Namibia pointed out, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has continued to give credits to South Africa. The apartheid regime has felt emboldened to apply for a billion dollars in new credits in the hope that its Western friends, who dominate IMF because of the system of weighted voting, will support it.
Banks and financial institutions have given about $3 billion of loans to South Africa in the past three years. Is it because action for the release of the South African leaders does not suit their "cold war" interests? Or is it because there is some kind of common interest in suppressing genuine resistance against apartheid in South Africa? It is with great reluctance - but in the interest of frankness and honesty, which have characterized the work of the Special Committee - that I have felt obliged to pose these questions. The military budget of South Africa, which was one million rand a day in 1972, is 8 million rand a day now. That is why South Africa needs these loans and that is why we are very much concerned.
Last year a professor from Harvard University, by the name of Samuel P. Huntington, found it appropriate to go to South Africa and propound a very original theory that in a multi-ethnic society like South Africa:
"it is not inconceivable that narrowing the scope of political participation may be indispensable to eventually broadening that participation. The route from a limited uniracial democracy to a broader multiracial democracy runs through some form of autocracy."
In South Africa, he suggested, it might be necessary to impose tight controls - presumably to forestall a white backlash.
That theory, of course, fell on very receptive ears in the apartheid establishment in South Africa; but it seems to have been welcomed also by some interests in the United states that wish to continue to collaborate with apartheid, and to make profits from apartheid slavery and at the same time find "moral rationalizations". We cannot but denounce that theory, which justifies even more oppression of the black people of South Africa on the excuse that the oppressors will make "reforms". The oppressed people of South Africa seek no reform of apartheid by the oppressors but the total destruction of apartheid by all the people of that country.
1.Statement at the meeting of the Special Committee against Apartheid in observance of the Day of Solidarity with South African Political Prisoners.
Source: United Nations document A/AC.115/PV.510