The struggle for liberation in South Africa – especially the development of the alliance between the African and Indian people in that struggle – became the base for the building of a powerful united democratic front to destroy apartheid and establish a non-racial democratic society.

The people in South Africa do not ask us to weep for them. They do not ask us for pity. They ask for solidarity with their struggle – a struggle of enormous world significance, which should make the people of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and indeed all of humanity, proud of the indomitable human spirit of freedom.

This is a silver jubilee year for that liberation struggle.

In 1961, the racist regime proclaimed a so-called republic and suppressed, by a massive show of force, the national protest led by Nelson Mandela. The liberation movement then made the momentous decision to abandon its strict adherence to non-violence, and to combine peaceful resistance with armed struggle.

On December 16, this year, it will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the dramatic appearance on the scene of Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") – the military wing of the African National Congress – led by Nelson Mandela and including combatants of all the racial groups in the country, African, Coloured, Indian and White.

1961 was also the year, when the first major advance was made in the international isolation of the apartheid regime – with the exit of that regime from the Commonwealth and the decision of African states to break off relations with South Africa.

Since then, there have been many advances in the international movement of solidarity with the struggle of the people in South Africa.

I would like to commend the Caribbean countries for the significant role they have played in that movement – far beyond their population and size – and to express my confidence that they will play an even greater role in the coming period, both before and after the victory of the revolution.

The Caribbean contribution was, of course, not in the Caribbean alone and not only by governments. West Indian organisations in Britain helped in the establishment of the Boycott Movement in 1959, which was renamed the Anti-Apartheid Movement in 1960 and had its office at first in the basement of the surgery of Lord Pitt on Gower Street.

Trinidad dock workers boycotted South African cargoes as early as April 1960 – even before their country became independent.

One of the biggest conspiracies to violate the arms embargo against South Africa was exposed by the dock workers of Antigua in 1978. And the West Indies have made a very special contribution to the boycott of apartheid sport.

The Caribbean governments have made their contribution in the United Nations, the Commonwealth and other organisations and by direct assistance to the liberation movements. In 1978, the United Nations awarded a gold medal to the then Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley, in recognition not only on his personal commitment and contribution but also that of the Caribbean governments and peoples to the struggle against apartheid.

I became interested in the struggle for freedom in South Africa in my student days, especially in 1946. That was the year when the Indian people in South Africa launched a passive resistance movement against the "Ghetto Act" – the year when India imposed a trade embargo against South Africa and complained to the United Nations about racial discrimination in that country, thereby internationalising the South African problem.

It was also the year of the first strike of African mineworkers – which was suppressed brutally by the government of General Smuts, which did not hesitate to massacre the strikers on the streets and to force the miners down the pits, level by level, at gunpoint until they resumed work.

It was the year when the African National Congress and the Indian Congresses of Natal and Transvaal sent a joint delegation to the United Nations in the first joint action of the two communities. India was still under colonial rule at that time. Our generation saw our struggle for freedom as but a part of the struggle of all colonial peoples for emancipation.

We in India appreciated the support we received, in difficult days, from the great Pan African leaders – like Dr. DuBois and Paul Robeson, to name but two – and from the Pan African movement to which Trinidadians like Henry Sylvester-Williams and George Padmore made a great contribution.

At the fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester in October, 1945, it was George Padmore who moved the resolution on Indian independence on behalf of the standing Committee of the Conference. It reads :

"We, the representatives of African peoples and peoples of African descent assembled at the Fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester, do hereby send fraternal greetings to the toiling masses of India through the Indian National Congress and pledge our solidarity with them in their fight for national freedom and economic emancipation."

I would also like to recall that in its resolution on South Africa, the Manchester Congress recognised that Africans are not the only victims of racialism and that Indians also suffered similar discrimination. It demanded "justice and human equality for the Indian community in South Africa."

We too tried to do our share – for instance by action to prevent the dispatch of Indian and colonialist troops to reconquer Indonesia and the nations of Indo-China which had declared independence in August 1945 in the wake of the Japanese surrender.

When I came to the United States as a student in March, 1946, I was moved by the love of the Black people, who anxiously followed our struggle and I addressed several meetings organised by them and visited many black homes to speak about that struggle.

I met the delegation of the South African freedom movement when it arrived in New York and joined the protest demonstration organised by the Council on Affairs, led by Paul Robeson, in front of the South African Consulate-General.

I have ever since been increasingly inspired by the great liberation struggle in South Africa – a struggle that has united African, Indian and other peoples in that country, a struggle that has espoused a non-racial and international outlook similar to that of the Pan African movement and our own national movement in India, with courage and consistency.

It so happened that most of my later life – as a United Nations official from 1949 to 1985, and since then – has become dedicated to promoting understanding of that struggle and securing support for it from governments and peoples around the world.

I recall with great satisfaction that one of my contributions as head of the United Nations Centre against Apartheid was to organise international tributes not only to martyrs in the South African struggle but also to those who have made significant contributions in solidarity with that struggle, especially the great Pan African leaders like Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Marcus Garvey, Dantas Bellegarde, Frantz Fanon, Henry Sylvester-Williams and George Padmore.

The first Pan African Conference, convened in London by Henry Sylvester-Williams, barrister from Trinidad, said in its "Address to the Nations of the World" drafted by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the seas."

Sylvester-Williams had been concerned about the treatment of the black people in South Africa and the occupation of Rhodesia and had been involved in demonstrations in London against racist oppression in South Africa. Southern Africa had inspired him to convene the conference.

At that time, the British government was carrying on a war against the Boers and one of the causes of the war, as defined by it, was the ill-treatment by the Boer Republics of the indigenous African people as well as Her Majesty’s Indian subjects. Both the Africans and Indians were, of course, to be betrayed soon after the end of the war and handed over to the tender mercies of the white settlers in one of a series of acts of perfidy.

But the words of the Pan African Conference have proved prophetic, as our peoples struggled to destroy the colour line and build a community of humankind.

Since the end of the Second World War, a hundred nations have freed themselves from colonialism at the cost of millions of lives and now constitute a majority of the international community.

The map of the world has changed its colours. A shameful era in human history, spanning four or five centuries, is nearing its end, with the last battles being fought in South Africa and Namibia.

History has begun to be rewritten more truthfully. Africa, for instance, is no more the dark continent without a history, but the continent with a heritage of great kingdoms and civilisations.

We must acknowledge with gratitude and respect the contributions of historians of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, as well as black scholars like Dr. W.E.B. Dubois.

The time has come, indeed, to conceive of a people’s history of the world – a history in which the majority of the people, with darker skins, are not mere victims but actors.

The period since the European navigators went in search of the wealth of the Indies and discovered Africa on the way or sailed by mistake to the Caribbean, the era when the European powers despoiled three continents, should not be romanticised as a story of European adventure, conquest and supremacy but treated as a long nightmare of humanity.

We must delve into our common experiences and the struggles our peoples have waged from the very beginning of European conquest and enslavement, and our march to redemption.

We must recall not only the breaking of contacts among our peoples, when our nations became the preserves of different colonial powers, but the new links which were forged by our common suffering and struggle and which determine our present and our future.

For instance, hardly anyone in India knows that India was also a victim of slavery, though on a very small scale. Some Indians were, in fact, taken to South Africa as slaves and their descendants are in the so-called ‘Coloured" community.

Very little is written of the contacts between the national movements in colonial countries which led after independence to the Asian-African Conference in Bandung and the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity. The history of the Pan African movements is hardly mentioned in textbooks of world history.

Little is said of the extensive international contacts developed by the Indian national movement, especially under the leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, with the freedom movements in Africa and elsewhere. These have had a great impact not only on the policy of independent India but also on the progress of the colonial revolution since the Second World War. They have led India to champion the cause of freedom in South Africa, Namibia and other African nations in the United Nations and other fora, at the cost of the hostility of major Western powers and thereby lay the foundations of the Non-Aligned Movement in which Africa has played an increasing role since the independence of Ghana in 1957.

One subject that deserves fuller study is "post-slavery," the replacement of slavery by new forms of bondage and servitude, humiliation and exploitation of human beings as mere beasts of burden – the systems of indentured labour, colonialism, neo-colonialism and their variants, not to speak of genocide.

For even today, after our countries have attained independence, our peoples are victims of decisions made in distant chancelleries and stock markets. Foreign governments attempt to decide our friends and enemies. They are choosing, even organising, so-called freedom fighters in our own lands and arming them with murderous weapons.

Soon after the abolition of slavery, Africa was carved up and almost the entire continent brought under colonial rule so that oppression extended from the coastal regions to the heart of the continent.

At the same time, the indentured labour system was invented to continue the supply of cheap and rightless labour, under conditions of semi-slavery, to South Africa and the Western hemisphere.

India – ravaged in the nineteenth century by famines, both natural calamities and tragedies created or aggravated by colonial plunderers – became the main victim of this system. Indian communities developed in south and east Africa, in the Western hemisphere and in some Asian and Pacific countries.

Indians were first brought to South Africa to work on sugar plantations in the Natal in the 1860s as the Zulu people were unwilling to work for the planters. More were brought later to work in the coal mines.

The Indian workers organised the first strike in South Africa, more than a century ago.

As the need for cheap labour increased with the discovery of diamond and gold mines, thousands of Chinese workers were brought in and there was even a move to bring some workers from the Caribbean. But that was not sufficient – and Africans were forced by the hut tax, the poll tax and other measures to labour in the mines, on the white farms and later in factories.

Coming after the dispossession of the Africans from most of their ancestral land in a century of so-called "kaffir wars," this forced labour system set the pattern for the inhuman oppression of the African people.

Apartheid was not an exclusive invention of the Afrikaners, who trekked to the north in protest against the abolition of slavery. It was equally the creation of the mineowners – the British and American interests among them – in collusion with the local authorities.

Gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886. South Africa became prosperous but that brought no comfort to the indigenous people of that country but only immense sorrow and suffering.

This year, in a sense, marks the centenary of apartheid and must make us recall that prosperity has always made the racists more greedy and enabled them to invest more in reinforcing the chains that bound the black people and to shoot them.

The Africans who were forced to labour on the mines and the Indians who were duped by false promises to work on the plantations were in the same boat then. They are in the same trench today fighting for deliverance from racist oppression.

Even today, in the vast literature on South Africa, most writers continue to contend that the oppression of the black people was mainly the crime of the Afrikaners, that peaceful evolution toward equality would have taken place if the coalition of General Smuts and the English-speaking people had remained in power, that apartheid began with the coming to power of the National Party in 1948 and that our task is to beg for so-called reforms so as to return to that course of gradual evolution.

Twenty years ago, I recall, British and American delegates in the United Nations used to advise us that we should pin our faith on liberal Whites. Since the advent of the Reagan administration, the advice from Chester Crocker is that we should supplicate that great reformer, P.W. Botha himself. The Boer Republics were, of course, based on racism. They proclaimed, misquoting the Bible, that there can be no equality between the Whites and the Blacks in church or state, and that has continued to represent the conviction of the racist Afrikaner leaders even since.

But the Indians had experienced worst racism – though sometimes camouflaged – at the hands of the English-speaking Whites in the Natal. It was in the Natal, not in Bloemfontein, that as late as 1946, European clubs carried the sign "Indians and dogs not allowed."

General Smuts, extolled in the West as a liberal, was, in fact, the architect of much of the racist legislation in South Africa.

Dr. DuBois saw this clearly. The Third Pan African Congress of 1923 said in his words: "What more paradoxical figure today confronts the world than the official head of a great South African State striving blindly to build Peace and Goodwill in Europe by standing on the necks and hearts of millions of black Africans."

The struggle in South Africa today is not for a change of racist masters, not for the replacement of apartheid by camouflaged racism, but for the total elimination of racism and the building of a non-racial society in which all the people will enjoy equal rights in all fields and no one will suffer the slightest humiliation because of the colour of his or her skin.

It is in that context that I wish to deal with the development and significance of the alliance of the African and Indian peoples in their common struggle against racism, the role of this alliance in building a united democratic front of all the black people and the democratic whites, and the wider implications of this great struggle in South Africa.

1946 was a landmark in the development of unity in the struggle of Africans and Indians in South Africa.

Africans and Indians have, of course, struggled for their rights for decades before 1946 but their struggles had been parallel rather than united.

The first modern mass movement in South Africa was the Indian movement led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from 1894 to 1913. It was confined to the Indian community and had hardly any contact with the Africans.

I have heard Indians in the South African liberation movement – but never the Africans – criticise Gandhi for this. I believe we should understand the circumstances.

The Indians were indentured labourers or freed labourers or immigrants in South Africa. They were a small and vulnerable minority. Even some liberal whites who espoused African rights were not sympathetic to the settlement of the Indians in South Africa.

The Indian community included Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis. Most of the Indians knew little English and spoke Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi and other languages. To unite them in one movement was an enormous task and Gandhi deserves great credit for his leadership and organisational skill.

There were only beginnings of political organisation among the African people at the time, after the defeat of their kingdoms. The modern national movement of the Africans began only in 1912 with the formation of the South African Native Congress (later re-named African National Congress) which sought to unify the African people of all ethnic groups and classes in a common struggle for their inalienable rights.

Gandhi, for his part, was experimenting and learning in South Africa. He saw his mission as defence of the honour and redress of the grievances of the Indians in a part of the British empire to which he owed allegiance. He felt that identification with the cause of the African majority would only scare the Whites into greater hysteria and endanger the Indians.

He had not at that time envisaged the independence of India or of South Africa. He became a "Mahatma" only after he returned to India, when he led the movement for national independence and looked beyond independence.

In 1946, he was to declare that "there is a real bond between Asiatics and Africans" which "will grow as time passes." (Harijan, February 24, 1946). Asking Indians in South Africa to associate with the Africans, he said, the slogan today "is no longer 'Asia for the Asiatics' 'or Africa for the Africans' but the unity of all the exploited races of the earth."

As I said, the Indian and African movements in South Africa early in this century were parallel movements.

The Africans sent a delegation to London to appeal to the British Government and Parliament against the handing over of power to the white minority. The Indian community sent its own delegation led by Gandhi.

Both communities were anxious to obtain sympathy and support of liberal-minded whites. Many of their white friends were the same and that may have established some bonds. I have in mind, for instance, several members of the Schreiner and Molteno families.

Until the Second World War, the activity of the African National Congress, with some notable exceptions, was largely confined to petitions, deputations and conferences, while the white regime continued to whittle down the elementary rights of the Africans. Militant mass action was mainly by the trade union movement which became a significant force in the 1920s.

The Indian Congresses, mainly under the leadership of traders, were also engaged in petitioning to the authorities against new discriminatory measures, seeking support from India from time to time, in order to ensure the survival and welfare of the Indian community.

There were already some efforts to bring the African, Indian and Coloured people together to deal with the common problem of racist oppression by the white minority.

The African People’s Organisation, founded by Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman and others, called for united efforts by Africans, Coloured people and Indians. Together with D.D.T. Jabavu, the African educator, Dr. Abdurahman organised Non-European Conferences in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Africans, Coloured people and Indians also worked together in the trade union movement.

Some of the radicals established a Non-European Unity Movement in 1943. The Communist Party provided a forum for Africans, Coloured people and Indians to work and struggle together, along with some Whites.

But these were only early beginnings and did not carry the mainstreams of the black communities.

During the Second World War, there was a great advance in politicisation of the black people in South Africa. Africans and Indians worked together in the Non-European Unity Movement, in the Non-European Trade Union Council and in many campaigns.

The African Youth League was established in 1944 and was within a few years to turn the ANC into a militant mass movement. Some of the founding members of that League – Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu – have been in the leadership of the ANC for almost forty years.

The Indian community had changed, with most of its members born in South Africa, and they were no longer satisfied with mere petitions to the authorities for mitigation of oppression and harassment.

In the Indian community, a very important role was played by Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, a Marxist, who was in the leadership of many joint struggles, facing repeated imprisonment and persecution. He advocated that the Indian people should link their destiny with that of the African majority and join with the Africans in the struggle against racism.

His approach coincided with that of Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders of the Indian National Congress who advised Indians abroad to identify themselves with the indigenous people.

Dr. Dadoo, and Dr. G.M.("Monty") Naicker, a Gandhian from Durban, were able to displace the leadership of the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congresses and transform them into militant mass organisations.

In June 1946 the two Indian Congresses launched a passive resistance movement against the "Ghetto Act" which prohibited Indians from acquiring any more land. More than two thousand Indians, including 300 women, went to jail and many of them were brutally beaten up by white hooligans while the police stood by. Some members from other racial groups joined the campaign as an act of solidarity.

Before initiating the passive resistance, representatives of the South African Indian Congress visited India to explain the situation to the government and the public and obtain support.

The Government of India then broke all trade relations with South Africa and lodged a complaint against South Africa before the United Nations, thereby internationalising the issue of racism in South Africa. The Indian leaders also persuaded Dr. A.B. Xuma, President-General of the African National Congress, to lead a multi-racial delegation to the United Nations and collected funds for the purpose.

Out of this co-operation came the "Three Doctors’ Pact" of 1947 – an agreement signed by Dr. Xuma, Dr. Dadoo and Dr. Naicker – for co-operation between the ANC and the Indian Congresses in the struggle for equal rights in conformity with the United Nations Charter.

The members of the African Youth League, espousing African nationalism, were initially rather hesitant about any alliance with other racial groups. But experience in the struggle removed their apprehensions and reservations.

The Youth League was impressed by the participation of Indians in the May Day work stoppage in 1950 in protest against the ruthless measures by the apartheid regime, which came to power in 1948. Eighteen Africans were killed and scores were injured when police fired at African crowds.

The African National Congress, the Indian Congresses and the Communist Party then organised a huge demonstration of mourning and protest on June 26, 1950. That date has since become the South Africa Freedom Day and the occasion for the launching of major campaigns.

Then came the historic Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws, jointly organised by the ANC and the South African Indian Congress and launched on June 26, 1952. Nelson Mandela was the Volunteer-in-Chief of the campaign and his deputy was Moulvi Cachalia.

More than eight thousand people went to jail in that Campaign defying discriminatory laws.

Until that time, some people in South Africa and abroad feared or insinuated that the African people were incapable of non-violent resistance. But if passive resistance was a gift of Indians, the African people in South Africa and then the black people of the United States have developed and enriched it into a potent weapon, at a certain stage of the struggle for freedom, even against the most inhuman oppressor.

Internationally, the Defiance Campaign led to the initiative of Asian-African States in calling for United Nations consideration of apartheid, and to the establishment of the Defence and Aid Fund, the American Committee on Africa and other groups to support the struggle in South Africa.

Inside South Africa, it resulted in the enormous growth in the membership of the ANC and in the establishment of the South African Coloured People’s Congress and the (White) Congress of Democrats, and later the multi-racial South African Congress of Trade Unions. The five Congresses joined together in 1955 inthe "Congress Alliance."

In June 1955, on the initiative of the African National Congress, a Congress of the People was convened in Kliptown, near Johannesburg, to draw up a Freedom Charter for a democratic South Africa of the future. It brought together 3,000 delegates from all racial groups and from all over the country and was the largest multi-racial conference in South African history.

At that Conference, the ANC presented its highest honour – Isitwalandwe – to Chief Albert J. Lutuli, President-General of the ANC, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, President of the South African Indian Congress, and Father Trevor Huddleston, now President of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain.

The Freedom Charter proclaimed that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it" and laid down the guidelines for the South Africa of the future. It was subsequently endorsed by each of the Congresses and is still the banner of their common struggle. The alliance of all racial groups in the struggle for the abolition of racism and the establishment of a non-racial democratic society was cemented by this Charter.

Before the end of the year, the apartheid regime arrested 156 leaders of the movement in pre-dawn raids all over the country and charged them with treason. The treason trial which dragged on until March 1961, when it collapsed and all the accused were acquitted, further reinforced the alliance.

Though the separate Congresses for the different groups remained in existence because of historical and practical reasons and because that helped to develop African leadership, the struggles became more and more joint struggles – not only of Africans and Indians, but also of the Coloured people and some Whites.

They were together, for instance, in the South African Federation of Women, which was established in 1954 and which led the great march of women on Pretoria on August 9, 1956. They were together in many trade union struggles.

Another milestone in unity was after the Sharpeville massacre, the banning of the ANC and the beginning of armed struggle.

With the escalation of repression, and the suppression of protests against the establishment of a White Republic in 1961 by a massive show of force, Nelson Mandela and others became convinced that they had to abandon strict adherence to non-violence and prepare for an armed struggle.

The Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") the military wing of the ANC – which made its dramatic appearance on December 16, 1961, was a multi-racial organisation. Among its leaders were many Indians, Coloured people and Whites.

Since the Sharpeville massacre, a number of leaders of the struggle had to go into exile – on the instructions of the liberation movement – to promote international action against the apartheid regime and to arrange training of freedom fighters for the armed struggle. They worked together under the leadership of the ANC, instead of setting up separate offices of their organisations.

In 1968, the ANC Congress in Morogoro decided to open membership to other racial groups and to utilise the services of non-Africans in ANC offices abroad. Dr.Yusuf Dadoo was elected Vice-President of the ANC Revolutionary Command.

A further step was taken at the ANC Congress in Zambia last year when Indian, White and Coloured leaders were elected to the national executive committee of the ANC.

The emergence of the black consciousness movement in South Africa in the late 1970s has generated some misunderstanding and confusion. Some of the literature on the movement engaged in mysticism and it was often portrayed as anti-white and almost a black version of apartheid.

The movement had several strands but its essence and historic significance was in forging a firmer unity among the oppressed people in fighting the collaborators – the chiefs and others in the black community who tried to take advantage of the repression against the liberation movement by accepting the apartheid caste system and the crumbs from the oppressors – and in facilitating the revival of the liberation struggle with greater force.

Successive racist regimes had tried to maintain their domination by dividing the black people by a sort of caste system. The Indians were, however, in a peculiar position – on the one hand as a class between the Coloured people and the African majority and on the other as a totally insecure community since the regime did not even accept the permanence of the community until the 1960s.

After the National Party came to power in 1948 with its apartheid policy, it enforced stricter segregation among the racial groups but by humiliating the Coloured people and the Indians, as well as the African majority, facilitated a greater unity of the oppressed people.

There has been some confusion about the use of the term "Black" to denote all the oppressed people of South Africa – and the regime has tried to compound the confusion by changing the official designation of the African majority from "Native" to "Bantu" and then "Black".

But to me, "Black" is not meant to define the colour of the skin any more than "red" defines the skin colour of Communists or "yellow" the colour of stoolpigeons. "Black" today denotes those fighting against colonialism and racism.

The concept of "Black" to denote all the oppressed people in South Africa has had an international impact.

In Britain, for instance, as the Asian, African and Caribbean minorities began to unite to resist racist assaults and assert their rights, they tended to define themselves collectively as "black". I must, in this connection, acknowledge the contribution of a number of leaders of Caribbean origin – and make special mention of the Hansib Publications and its founder, Arif Ali from Guyana.

I am confident that the Black unity forged in the struggle in South Africa will survive and grow.

As I mentioned earlier, the caste system imposed by the racist regime to divide the oppressed people was eroded by the greed of the apartheid regime, which robbed and humiliated the Coloured and Indian minorities and thereby facilitated Black unity under the leadership of the African liberation movement. During the past decade, partly on the advice of its friends abroad, the apartheid regime has been trying again to divide the oppressed people by offering some privileges to the Coloured people and Indians, but the latter have rejected them with contempt and reaffirmed their solidarity with the African majority.

The relaxations of some discriminatory measures against the Coloured people and Indians in an effort to entice them have been welcomed by the Reagan administration and hailed in apartheid propaganda as reforms. But these are really contemptible manoeuvres by the racists.

By mid-1970s, the liberation movement recovered from the severe blows it had suffered in 1963-64, and there was an upsurge of workers, students and others.

The response of the regime was, as always, an escalation of repression – the massacre of African schoolchildren in Soweto on June 16, 1976, and the indiscriminate killing and maiming of students and youth all over the country for several years.

But repression and violence now only fuelled resistance, and the people resorted to mass defiance of the police, making many repressive laws inoperable.

It is, for instance, against the law to carry an ANC flag but when tens of thousands of people began marching with the ANC flag, the police could not stop them and the law was neutralised.

Thousands of young people went abroad to join the freedom fighters. Armed struggle escalated – deliberately restricted by the liberation movement to attacks on symbols of apartheid and carefully chosen targets like police stations, military bases, the nuclear reactor and the oil-from-coal plant – while taking great precautions to avoid killing of civilians. The initiative was thus seized by the people.

Faced with a political and economic crisis, the Botha regime tried, on the one hand, to counter the armed struggle by blackmailing and destabilising the frontline states and, on the other, by attempting to divide the oppressed people.

But when it staged elections for the South African Indian Council in 1981, offering some crumbs to the Indian community, the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress revived their activities and called for a boycott. There was a 90 percent boycott.

Then the apartheid regime proposed a new constitution offering separate chambers of parliament to the Coloured people and Indians, and excluding the African majority.

That only provoked widest opposition among the Black people.

It was at the conference of the Transvaal Indian Congress in January 1983 that the Reverend Alan Boesak proposed the establishment of the United Democratic Front, which was to become the largest mass organisation in South African history.

The Botha regime tried every means – intimidation as well as inducements – to persuade the Coloured and Indian people to vote in the elections in August 1984, but there was more than an 80 percent boycott.

But the regime went ahead to bring the racist constitution into force on September 3, 1984, and that became the signal for the beginning of the revolutionary upsurge in South Africa – to make South Africa ungovernable by the racist regime and its puppets, to destroy apartheid and to establish a non-racial democratic state.

The unity forged in the long struggle is the guarantee that from now it is, as they used to say in Ghana, "Forward ever, Backward never."

I must pay the highest tribute to the great leaders of the African people for their vision and leadership, which has built this unity. They have seen their struggle not as a conflict between black and white, but as a struggle against a racist system. The liberation of the African people will be the liberation of all the people of South Africa.

That is why even some White people have been risking their lives in that struggle.

There are few instances in history where minority communities have rejected the enticements of ruling powers and joined the oppressed majorities in a common struggle. The solidarity demonstrated by the Coloured and Indian people with the African majority in South Africa is, therefore, remarkable.

Thousands of Indians have risked their lives and comforts in that struggle, ever since Dr. Dadoo and Dr. Naicker led them into an alliance with the African majority.

Suliman Salojee, Ahmed Timol, Hoosen Haffejee are among those tortured to death in racist prisons.

Ahmed Kathrada is serving life imprisonment with Nelson Mandela and others for founding and leading the Umkhonto We Sizwe.

Many Indians are in the leadership of the UDF, risking constant harassment, imprisonment and torture.

Mewa Ramgobin, a member of the Gandhi family in Durban, was among those charged with treason for leadership in the UDF.

In the family of the adopted son of Mahatma Gandhi – the Naidoo family in Johannesburg – every single member of the family for three generations has been in prison.

The story of the contribution of people of Indian origin in South Africa to the struggle for liberation needs to be written – because it should be a matter of pride to us in India and does great credit to the African leaders of the struggle. I am proud that the Government of India has always encouraged this alliance of Africans and Indians. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi publicly appealed to the Indians and others in South Africa to boycott the racist elections in 1984.

I am also gratified to see the active role of people of Indian origin in the anti-apartheid movement around the world – of people like Abdul Minty and Vella Pillay in the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, Kader Asmal in the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, and Sam Ramsamy, chairman of SAN-ROC leading the sports boycott – and many many others in local anti-apartheid groups and in scores of campuses, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The struggle in South Africa has had a great effect in promoting the solidarity of the nations of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean and the achievements in the international campaign against apartheid are largely based on that solidarity, whether in countering collaboration by the major Western powers with the apartheid regime or in providing moral, political and material assistance to the liberation struggle.

We face a new challenge at this time when the revolution in South Africa is at a critical stage.

The apartheid regime is unable to suppress the resistance and overcome its crisis even temporarily. The end of apartheid is in sight.

Delegations from South Africa are now frequently visiting ANC leaders in Lusaka for consultations. Some Whites are leaving South Africa. It was reported that plans are being made in Israel to receive thousands of emigrants from South Africa.

But we should have no illusions that it will now be an easy walk to freedom. The apartheid regime has no intention to abandon racism, and it cannot exist without racism. Its so-called reforms are only manoeuvres to divide the people in South Africa and the world and prolong racist domination. It has built an enormous military establishment and will not hesitate to escalate force and violence to preserve itself.

The liberation movement too has great reserves it has not yet used and can escalate the armed struggle.

There is a great danger of prolonged conflict and bloodshed. There are also dangerous moves by external forces to make Southern Africa a theatre of cold war and complicate and situation. I have in mind particularly the moves by the United States to send military aid to UNITA in Angola – in utter disregard of international law and the unanimous appeals of the Organisation of African Unity. I cannot see how the United States can intervene in Angola except in collusion with the South African regime in violation of the mandatory arms embargo against South Africa.

The policy-makers in Washington and London probably believe that our countries – which are still largely in the Western economic orbit and facing serious economic and other problems – can be ignored, but they may be making a grave mistake.

Only two years ago, the Botha regime was able to blackmail the frontline states and oblige Mozambique to sign the "Nkomati Accord." Botha went on a tour of European capitals hoping triumphantly to undo international isolation. The Reagan administration in the United States hailed the "reforms" and the "peace process" of the Botha regime.

But the mobilisation of the people in South Africa, the great anti-apartheid demonstrations in Europe and the Free South Africa Movement in the United States turned the scales.

The offensive of the Botha regime collapsed, and the United States policy of "constructive engagement" was discredited.

I have no doubt that the present manoeuvres can also be frustrated – by the united action of African, Asian, Caribbean and other States, in co-operation with anti-apartheid forces all over the world, rallying behind the struggling people of South Africa.

I would like to make special mention of assistance to the liberation struggle, because we may need to consider new forms and levels of assistance as the struggle develops.

For instance, a million students have been on a prolonged strike in South Africa since 1984. They suspended the strike for a few weeks, at the request of their elders, on condition that the apartheid regime meets their demands. The regime has not acted and the strike is likely to be resumed. The liberation forces will need to set up alternative structures for education. In fact, they may need to set up alternative structures for health and other services as they build fortresses of resistance in the course of the revolution.

We will need to go beyond the concept of solidarity and recognise that the struggle of the people in South Africa and Namibia is our struggle.

The leaders of our freedom movement in India taught us that our struggle is not complete until colonialism is abolished all over the world. The leaders of Pan Africanism taught us that freedom and dignity of no Black person is secure until all of Africa is free.

The struggle in South Africa and Namibia is, therefore, not for the freedom of two territories alone but for the dignity and honour of all of us.

Forty years ago, soon after the Second World War and before the independence of India, I left the shores of India on a long voyage to the United States for advanced study and then joined the service of the United Nations.

The final and triumphant stage of the colonial revolution in Asia had begun in 1945. I recall the huge demonstrations in Indian cities against the despatch of Indian troops to Vietnam and Indonesia to reconquer those countries for the French and Dutch colonialists. The Indian national movement demonstrated its solidarity with the nations of Asia and Africa because of its conviction that India’s own long struggle for independence was part of the wider struggle against imperialism and was not complete until colonialism and racism were abolished all over the world.

There has been no World War since 1945 but colonial wars have caused millions of deaths and enormous suffering.

There have also been glorious examples of solidarity with the oppressed and newly-independent peoples – with Nasser’s Egypt, which suffered a triple invasion by Britain, France and Israel, with Angola which has been repeatedly invaded, occupied and despoiled, and many, many others.

Many nations have risked their hard-won independence – as the frontline states in Southern Africa are doing now because of their solidarity with neighbouring nations struggling to shake off the shackles of colonialism. They earned the wrath of the colonial powers and have seen their hopes of economic and social development frustrated.

The history of solidarity will need to be written in the near future along with the history of freedom struggles which will end the shameful era of slavery, colonialism, racism and humiliation of the majority of humanity.

The struggles for freedom and acts of solidarity contribute to peace because colonialism and racism are the root causes of war and because they are, in fact, systems of permanent aggression against the oppressed peoples. In no colonial country have the people taken up arms until the rulers began to suppress peaceful protests and resort to massacres. The cause of peace cannot be served by surrender to or appeasement of colonialism, any more than it was served by the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s, but by the elimination of those evil and inhuman systems.

That is why the Non-Aligned Movement, the child of the colonial revolution and solidarity of oppressed peoples, has become a major force for peace in our time.

Most of my adult life has been spent in promoting the widest international support – by governments and organisations, irrespective of ideological differences – to the struggles of African nations for freedom and human dignity. I feel most gratified – on this first visit to India since my retirement from the United Nations – that the spirit of solidarity is very much alive in India and is reflected not only in actions of the Government, supported by all political parties, but also by public organisations.

The visits of the Presidents of the African National Congress of South Africa and the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), Oliver Tambo and Sam Nujoma, to India and the visit of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the frontline States of Africa in May were important events. I feel proud that India took the lead in hosting an embassy of SWAPO and in banning the entry into India of members of the racist "Parliaments" of South Africa.

The upsurge in South Africa – which began in 1984 when the apartheid regime imposed a new constitution to dispossess the African people and divide the oppressed people – is nothing less than a revolution of enormous significance. The regime is unable to suppress it despite all its military might and its brutal violence against the black people.

Many African townships have become ungovernable. The police are unable to enter them without large military escorts, the puppet councils in the townships have been destroyed. Several repressive laws have become unenforceable because of mass defiance.

The trade union movement has become a powerful force and has led strikes of unprecedented scope. A million students have been on strike intermittently for two years. The people are no more afraid of death, imprisonment and torture, and those released from prison go back into the struggle without any hesitation.

Some time ago, armchair revolutionaries used to pontificate that guerrilla warfare and revolution are impossible in South Africa because the regime has enormous military power and is backed by millions of Whites; because it had segregated black and brown people into ghettos which could easily be threatened by a few armoured vehicles or tanks ; because it was able to recruit numerous spies in those ghettos, and because guerrilla fighters cannot easily find sanctuary in mountains and jungles or even in neighbouring countries, which can easily be blackmailed by military and economic pressure from the Pretoria regime.

Chester Crocker, an American academic, wrote an article in 1980 arguing that change in South Africa can only come through "White-led reform" and he was appointed by the Reagan Administration as its Assistant Secretary of State for Africa. He formulated the policy of "constructive engagement" which implied recognition of P.W. Botha and his military industrial establishment as reformers and persuading them to make reforms. The implementation of this policy involved hostility toward the liberation movement, supposedly engaged in "cross-border violence", and pressure on frontline States which provided assistance to the African National Congress and SWAPO.

The revolution in South Africa erupted precisely at a time when the apartheid regime felt it had intimidated the neighbouring states, obliging Mozambique to sign the Nkomati Agreement, and when Western commentators were predicting the demise of the African National Congress as a viable force. It was precipitated by the "constructive engagement" policy of the United States and its variant in Britain.

The United States and British Governments have been unable to understand the situation in Southern Africa. They cannot believe that the Black majority can defeat the White racist regime despite its monopoly of military and economic power. They have not learnt from their mistake of assuming that the 500-year old Portuguese colonialism would survive indefinitely.

The South African regime had been going through a growing political and economic crisis for several years before 1984 because of the growing resistance of the oppressed people and the international campaign against apartheid. But the policies of the major Western powers continued to be based on the assumption that the Botha regime could stabilise the situation, consolidate its power by coopting some moderate Blacks and even play a more dominant role in the entire region.

In August 1984, when that regime imposed a new constitution in the face of opposition by the African majority, as well as the great majority of the Coloured and Indian people, the United States State Department welcomed it as a "step in the right direction." In September 1984, when six African and Indian leaders of the United Democratic Front and the Natal Indian Congress sought refuge in the British Consulate in Durban and appealed to the British Government to prevail upon the Botha regime to stop arbitrary mass detentions of popular leaders, the British Government refused even to meet representatives of the two organisations.

That was a clear indication to the Black people in South Africa that they could not count on any intervention by the major Western powers and that their salvation lay in struggle. African townships erupted in revolt and a million workers went on an unprecedented strike in the Transvaal in November 1984.

As violence by the regime increased, international action in support of the liberation movement reached new levels. The Free South Africa movement was launched in the United States in November 1984: hundreds of thousands of people joined in demonstrations against the policy of "constructive engagement" and thousands courted arrest in the largest passive resistance movement since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Meanwhile, behind a curtain of silence imposed on Namibia, the armed struggle led by SWAPO has continued, and SWAPO was able to gain overwhelming support from the Namibian people.

The Botha regime is unable to overcome the crisis or suppress the resistance. The prospect in South Africa is a war with escalating violence unless there is firm international action to force the Botha regime to negotiate with the trusted leaders of the majority of the people on the dismantling of apartheid and the establishment of a democratic system.

Moreover, there is the danger that the Botha regime, in its desperation, will try to incite riots and killings among Blacks, escalate attacks against the frontline States, and even try to provoke an East-West confrontation in Southern Africa.

The South African people had to carry on a long and difficult struggle not only because they had to struggle against a large White settler minority poisoned by racism, but also because their oppressors could count on the friendship and even support of foreign military and economic interests which were deeply involved in that country. They have tried hard and patiently to unite all the oppressed and decent people of that country – Africans, Coloured people, Indians and democratic Whites – in an alliance against racism. This alliance includes people of all religious faiths and diverse ideologies.

The international movement of solidarity with the South African freedom struggle, which has now developed into a powerful force, also includes governments, organisations and individuals of varied ideologies and persuasions.

In 1962, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted its first resolution on sanctions against South Africa, none of the Western States voted in favour. Now the great majority of Western States support sanctions.

Socialists and Communists, Liberals and even some Conservatives have joined the campaign for sanctions which is supported by all trade unions, most Christian Churches and numerous organisations.

If only the Governments of the United States, Britain and West Germany stop their obstinate opposition to sanctions against South Africa, and cooperate with the overwhelming majority of States, there will be the prospect of a speedy end to apartheid in South Africa and of the liberation of Namibia. The shameful era of the rape and humiliation of Africa will end, colonialism will buried and a decisive blow struck at racism.

I do not wish to condemn any countries, because governments and policies can change. Our task is to find ways to secure a change in the policies of the three major Western Powers.

One need not be anti-Western to point to the great responsibility of these Powers. Their true friends were those who warned them against their blunders such as the intervention in China after the Second World War, the Suez War of 1956 and the war in Vietnam. India and the Non-Aligned Movement would be doing a service to them, as well as to the African people and to the cause of peace in Southern Africa, by opposing their disastrous policies and persuading them to change.

India has a proud record of solidarity with all the oppressed people of South Africa and Namibia. But I would like to make a special reference to the role of South African Indians in the liberation struggle because that must necessarily be a dimension in our concern and our responsibility.

The origins of the modern mass movement for freedom in South Africa may be traced to the Second World War – particularly to 1942-43 when the "Quit India" Movement was launched in India and Prime Minister Winston Churchill proclaimed that the lofty principles of the Atlantic Charter do not apply to the people of India or the other oppressed peoples in the Britain Empire.

The moving force among the Africans was the African Youth League. Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, the leaders of the African National Congress, were among the founders of the Youth League.

At the same time, within the Indian community, which was subjected to new humiliating restrictions, there was a revolt against the "moderate" leaders who were ever willing to compromise with the racist regime at the expense of the vital interests, and even the honour and dignity, of the Indian people. Dr. Yusuf Dadoo in the Transvaal, a Marxist, and Dr. G.M. Naicker in Natal, a Gandhian, became the leaders of the Transvaal Indian Congress and the Natal Indian Congress, advocating mass resistance and an alliance with the African majority. Their policies were in harmony with the appeals of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru to Indians abroad that they should identify themselves with the indigenous peoples in their struggles for freedom and refrain from seeking any special privileges or deals with the colonial powers.

In June, 1946, the Indian Congresses launched a Passive Resistance Movement against the "Ghetto Act" in which over 2,000 people went to jail. Some Whites courted arrest with the Indians and several African organisations declared their solidarity.

In the same month, because of the strong public sentiment in India, the Viceroy’s regime complained to the United Nations against South Africa, thus internationalising the issue and thereby encouraging the movement of solidarity with the struggle against racism in South Africa. A few days later, on July 17, 1946, India cut off trade relations with South Africa. That was many years before the African National Congress appealed for sanctions against South Africa and obtained support by independent African States and the United Nations.

Indian leaders in South Africa made every effort to promote a united movement against racist oppression in their country. In August 1946, during the historic African mine workers' strike, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo was arrested and charged for supporting the miners. In November, a joint delegation of the African National Congress and the Indian Congresses went to New York to acquaint the delegations to the United Nations with the situation in South Africa. The Indian delegation, led by Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Pandit, warmly welcomed and helped them in their work. V.K. Krishna Menon shared the platform with them at a large public meeting organised by the Council on African Affairs in Harlem.

A few months later, the African National Congress and the Indian Congresses signed a pact for cooperation in the common struggle. The alliance of Africans and Indians was cemented and expanded in subsequent years in the course of joint struggle and sacrifice, to include the Coloured people and democratic Whites.

More recently, the proposal for a United Democratic Front (UDF) was launched in January 1983, at a conference of the Transvaal Indian Congress by the Reverend Alan Boesak, the Coloured Churchman. UDF, which was established later in the year, became the most powerful coalition of people’s forces in South African history and has been leading the peaceful resistance since then…

India can be proud of the important role played by the Indian people in South Africa in promoting unity in the liberation struggle in South Africa. They have always recognised the primacy of the interests of the African majority and the leadership of the African National Congress. They have asked for no special status. In fact, they have rejected the "privileges" offered by the apartheid regime in 1984 and called for a non-racial democratic society.

The leaders of the African Congress deserve great credit for their vision of a free South Africa and for their leadership of the alliance which has destroyed the caste system which the rulers have sought to impose on the oppressed people in order to divide them. India has rightly honoured Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, the twin leaders of the ANC.

But I hope that India will also appropriately honour Dr. Yusuf Dadoo and Dr. G.M. Naicker for their historic contribution, and that Indian public opinion will be better informed of the sacrifices of thousands of other people of Indian origin who have given their lives in the struggle or suffered imprisonment, torture and persecution – people like Babla Saloojee, Dr. Hoosen Haffejee and Ahmed Timol who were tortured to death; Ahmed Kathrada who has been in the struggle since he was eleven years old and is serving life imprisonment with Nelson Mandela; Billy Nair, who is still continuing the struggle after spending nearly twenty years in prison and being tortured in prison a few months ago; of Nana Sita, the Gandhian, who repeatedly went to jail for refusing to obey racist laws; the Naidoo family in which every member for three generations has been in jail; and many others like them. They have not only struggled for justice in their country but, by their sacrifice, helped promote indestructible friendship between India and Africa.

The Indians in South Africa are nationals of South Africa and their destiny is with the African people of South Africa. But India can never stand by if the Indian people anywhere are humiliated or oppressed because of their ancestral origin.

Let those who provide military, economic, political and other support to the apartheid regime know that we have a right and a duty to oppose them – even to retaliate if need be – both because we are against racism and because of our ties of blood with the oppressed people of South Africa.

If Margaret Thatcher of Britain or the governments of Portugal and West Germany refer to their kith and kin in South Africa and Namibia as an excuse to block sanctions against apartheid, let them know that we too have a million kith and kin engaged in a war of liberation against the Botha regime, that we will disown those who serve the racists and that we will not fail to defend those who fight for freedom and human dignity.

India may be separated from South Africa by an ocean but for all practical purposes India should always be in the frontline of those supporting the liberation struggle in that country.

While India has always supported the liberation struggle in South Africa and Namibia and took the lead in international action from 1946 to 1960, some passivity in action began by 1963 when India rightly decided to follow the lead of the Organisation of African Unity. There were hardly any Indian initiatives for over twenty years, even when OAU was divided or paralysed.

The Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, Major-General J.N. Garba of Nigeria and I visited New Delhi in August, 1984 and met Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to appeal for a more active role by India, especially because of the difficulties encountered by the frontline and other African States. At that time, Indira Gandhi took the historic initiative of appealing to the Indian and Coloured people of South Africa to boycott the new constitution imposed by the apartheid regime and stand shoulder to shoulder with the African majority. The recent moves of the Indian Government represent further steps in that direction.

The first priority for India must be to take the lead in all efforts to persuade the governments and public opinion in the major Western countries to abandon their short-sighted, immoral and disastrous policies; to oppose all manoeuvres to divide the oppressed people; and to avert East-West confrontation in Southern Africa.

India can also provide much greater political and material assistance to the national liberation movements of South Africa and Namibia, and to the anti-apartheid movements in the West. It should consider new levels of assistance, for instance to enable the forces of resistance to set up alternative structures of administration in liberated areas.

Above all, it is essential to promote greater public awareness and public action in India, supplementing and reinforcing the efforts of the government. Public organisations can do much more to exercise vigilance against any illicit trade between India and South Africa, to collect material assistance from the public for the liberation movements and to strengthen the international solidarity movement.

The time has come to go beyond the concept of solidarity and to affirm that the struggle in South Africa and Namibia is our struggle as much as it is that of the African Continent.

Forty years ago, on July 17, 1946, the Government of India banned all trade with the Union of South Africa in retaliation against the humiliating "Pegging Act" against the Indian people in South Africa. That was a proud day for India.

The action was taken by the then Viceroy’s Government because of the strong public sentiment in the country. At that time, South Africa accounted for five percent of India’s exports and one and half percent of India’s imports. None of the Western countries which now so loudly complain of the cost of sanctions has more than one percent of its foreign trade with South Africa.

Already in June, the Indians in South Africa, under the leadership of Dr. Yusuf Dadoo and Dr. G.M. Naicker, two of the giants of the modern national movement in that country, had launched a Passive Resistance Movement in which 2000 people, including 300 women, were to court arrest. At their request, the Government of India complained to the United Nations against the Smuts Government in South Africa. The interim Government, under the leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru took office in September 1946, before India’s complaint was discussed in the United Nations. It placed the issue in the broader context of India’s firm opposition to colonialism and racism which was to become an essential element of the policy of Non-Alignment. Within a few years India took up the problem of apartheid, which affected the African majority as well as the Indian and Coloured people, in the United Nations and helped build world sentiment against it. On its initiative, the South African regime was excluded from the Asian-African Conference in Bandung in 1955. A delegation of the African National Congress (Moses Kotane and Moulvi Ismail Cachalia) was received as an observer.

The past forty years in South Africa have been tragic. While the oppressed people have tried, under most difficult circumstances, to build broadest unity to secure a non-racial democratic society, the racist regime has resorted to ever increasing repression and built up a monstrous military and repressive machine. The military budget has increased more than hundred-fold since 1960. The riches of South Africa were used to tighten the screws of oppression rather than to alleviate the sufferings of the great majority of the people. The powers in the West which enabled and encouraged the Pretoria regime in its efforts to entrench apartheid and disposes the black people bear an awesome moral responsibility.

The Indian people in South Africa have played a crucial role in promoting the unity of the oppressed people under the leadership of the African National Congress. They initiated the talks which led to the alliance of the African National Congress and the two Indian Congresses (in Transvaal and Natal) in 1947 – the "three Doctors’ Pact" signed by Dr. A.B. Xuma, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo and Dr. G.M. Naicker. They participated actively in the Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws in 1952. Nelson Mandela was volunteer-in-chief and Moulvi Cachalia, now in India, was his deputy. The proposal for a United Democratic Front which is now playing a crucial role in the struggle in South Africa, was first mooted at a conference of the Transvaal Indian Congress.

The people’s movement has become so powerful and the "do or die" spirit of the people is so irrepressible that the doom of apartheid is now as certain as the independence of India was in 1946. The only question is whether freedom will come through enormous bloodshed or whether such a tragedy can be averted by international action.

Until the end of 1950s, it was hoped that condemnation by world opinion could persuade the rulers in Pretoria to change their course and move towards the gradual elimination of racial discrimination and repression. Since then, after all peaceful protests were met with savage repression, the ANC decided to embark on an underground and armed struggle, and to call for international sanctions against the oppressors. Nelson Mandela organised the Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") and Oliver Tambo was sent abroad to secure international support.

There has been significant progress since then. In 1962, when the United Nations General Assembly voted for sanctions, no Western country supported the resolution. Now, the great majority of Western countries favour sanctions. But the major Western Powers – especially the United Kingdom, the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany – remain adamant in their opposition to sanctions.

After the South African regime declared a State of Emergency last year, there was an expectation that they too had become persuaded of the need for effective pressure on the apartheid regime and that they could be persuaded to move forward. But those hopes have been frustrated.

The recent statements of Mrs. Margaret Thatcher represent an alarming retrogression.

India must assume a special responsibility at this critical time, and provide leadership in the international arena, especially since the African States are beset with serious problems and even the independence of frontline states is under constant threat. It must act in close consultation with the liberation movements and the African States.

We must broaden the coalition of governments and public opinion around the world against apartheid and find means to oblige the few recalcitrant governments to cooperate in universal sanctions. Those governments must be made to realise that the cost of collaboration with apartheid is greater than the cost of sanctions. At the same time, we must promote all necessary assistance to the liberation movements, to all those engaged in peaceful resistance inside South Africa and Namibia, and to the frontline States.

I am encouraged by the initiatives taken by India since the revolutionary upsurge in South Africa in 1984, particularly since they were in response to the requests of the liberation movement.

The appeal by Mrs. Indira Gandhi to the Indian and Coloured people in South Africa to boycott the racist elections in August 1984 was valuable in frustrating the manoeuvres of the apartheid regime to divide the oppressed people.

Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has taken an important step in banning the entry into India of those who spurned that appeal and collaborated with the apartheid regime as members of its so-called Parliament.

The establishment of the first SWAPO Embassy in India set an example to be followed by other nations. The visits of Oliver Tambo and Sam Nujoma to India, and the visit of the Prime Minister of India to the frontline states, have provided a timely opportunity for consultations on further action.

These initiatives have been dignified and well-considered as behooves a nation like India, and are greatly appreciated by millions of people in South Africa and Namibia.

I am confident that the Prime Minister will follow up with all necessary measures and initiatives – backed by the total support of the Indian people – to ensure the speedy liberation of South Africa and Namibia, avert a ghastly conflict and save peace in Southern Africa.

It is eighty years since Mahatma Gandhi launched the Satyagraha in South Africa and forty years since the Indians in South Africa began, at the behest of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru, to build an alliance with the African majority in struggle and sacrifice. The time for deliverance has come, but this last stage requires not only a determined struggle by the South African people but unflinching support by their friends.