Geneva, 30 June-3 July 19801
Introduction
Twenty one years ago, on 26 June 1959, the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), at what was to be its last commemorative meeting of South Africa Freedom Day, before being banned, called on the international community, both singly and collectively, to take every measure to isolate the racist regime. The meeting called for the severing of all relationships political, diplomatic, cultural, economic and military - by the Governments and organizations of the world. We argued then, as we do today, that no price our people will have to pay as a consequence will be too high in the pursuit of our liberation from white supremacy rule and the creation of a non-racial and democratic South Africa. Referring to the necessity of comprehensive sanctions, the late Albert John Luthuli, President of the ANC, made the point that:
"the economic boycott of South Africa will entail undoubted hardship for the Africans. We do not doubt that. But if it is a method which shortens the day of bloodshed, the suffering to us will be a price we are willing to pay."
We argued then, as we do today, that total economic sanctions and the isolation of the racist regime will not of itself bring about the downfall of apartheid and the restructuring of South African society along the lines of justice, equality, peace and national and social emancipation envisaged in the Freedom Charter. Rather, such actions on the part of the international community will constitute a material factor for the seizure of State political power by the mass of the people led by their revolutionary vanguard, the ANC and its allies.
In November 1962, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling upon all Member States to impose separate and collective sanctions against South Africa. The need for mandatory economic sanctions had been given a dramatic impetus by the Sharpeville massacre. More importantly, the international community came to appreciate that apartheid and racism in South Africa cannot be considered a "local" affair; that the implications of race rule and terror practised by the Pretoria fascists had international ramifications precisely because the South African economy had over the decades of its development as a capitalist formation become the repository of vast amounts of foreign investment from transnational corporations (TNCs); that the political representatives of these TNCs within the Governments of the capitalist countries constituted collectively the main stumbling block to the call for mandatory economic sanctions.
Indeed, since that United Nations resolution, and countless others, foreign investment in the apartheid economy increased from 3 billion rand in 1959 to a staggering 21 billion rand by 1977. In addition, South Africa's total foreign trade - excluding the sale of gold and the purchase of military hardware and technology - increased from less than 2 billion rand in 1959 to more than 15 billion rand in 1977.
TNCs economic support to apartheid South Africa
TNCs provide economic support to the apartheid regime in two principal ways:
Of the 21 billion Rand invested in South Africa by the end of 1977 approximately 40 per cent was in the form of direct investments and the balance was in indirect investments.
Approximately 50 per cent of direct investments is in the manufacturing industry, another 25 per cent in finance, insurance and real estate, and the balance in mining. Two-thirds of the direct investment emanates from the European Economic Community (EEC) countries, with nearly 50 per cent from the United Kingdom, and one-quarter is from the United States of America.
The two main sources of foreign investment - the United States and the United Kingdom - have been increasing their economic stake in South Africa at a rapid rate, concentrating their impact on such strategic sectors of the economy as engineering, chemicals, mining, machinery and petroleum-related products.
Indirect investments, apart from re-investment of profits by branches, subsidiaries and associated companies, have in the main been provided for by term loans which have proved crucial to the economic and military development of the South African regime.
A survey further highlighted that the major banking transnationals were involved in these transactions - Chase Manhattan, Citicorp, and Manufacturers Hanover from the United States; Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Komerzbank and Westdeutsche Landesbank from the Federal Republic of Germany; Credit Commercial and Credit Lyonnais from France; Union Bank and Swiss Credit Bank from Switzerland; and Barclays, Hambros and Hill Samuel from the United Kingdom.
A recent survey conducted by the South African Financial Mail (September 1978) revealed the extent of international penetration of the South African economy by TNCs. At the time there were more than 2,000 TNCs operating in South Africa in the mining, chemical, engineering, power, energy, industrial and financial sectors of the economy. More than 50 per cent of these were British-based and about 25 per cent had their capitals in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany.
The mounting volume of research and analysis covering the activities of the TNCs shows that they have been, and continue to be, the main vehicle for the growth and development of the South African military-industrial complex and continue to exert a decisive influence on the pace and character of the development of the Pretoria regime's strategy of maintaining South Africa as an enclave of domination for the TNCs.
The economic relationship between the TNCs and South Africa is mutually beneficial: unprecedented profit rates for the TNCs and a strengthening of the apartheid regime. Both results are mutually reinforcing. The New York Times of 25 January 1975, revealed for example, that United States companies had reaped profits of 19.7 per cent, 24.6 per cent and 26 per cent in the years 1961 to 1963 inclusive. British companies, it was revealed, earned a rate of return of approximately 21 per cent in 1974.
On the other hand, without the massive injection of foreign investment from the early days of the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa the South African economy would not have been able to advance and develop into a fully fledged capitalist formation with all the characteristics of an imperialist power in its own right.
Racism and apartheid is more than just a system of national oppression of the black workers and peoples. It is the instrument through which South African capital, and those of the TNCs integrated within the apartheid economy reap their profits. At the heart of the policy of denying the black majority any political and economic rights and the policy of migrant labour, police brutality, repression, torture and murder witnessed so starkly at the time of Sharpeville, Soweto and, more recently in the Cape, lie the real objectives of the system of race rule and repression - the maximization of profits and the maintenance of the material and human resources of the country for the super exploitation by local and transnational corporations.
Singly and collectively the TNCs' operations in South Africa constitute the foundations of the barbarous tyranny of white domination and exploitation in South Africa. The bloodshed, want and deprivation imposed on the black people by the white minority racist regime emanate from the boardrooms of the TNCs in Johannesburg, London, Washington, Bonn, Paris, Rome, Tokyo and other capitals of imperialism.
As we have indicated above, the ANC has made its position in regard to the issue of economic relations with the apartheid regime very clear. We are wholly opposed to every and any form of collaboration. A great number of TNCs from all over the capitalist world have invested billions in the racist-capitalist South African economy. These funds have stimulated industrialization without any improvements in the economic, political, social and cultural lives of the black people. On the contrary, the more developed the economy has become, the greater has been the degree of oppression and exploitation imposed on the people and the bigger has become the gap in the living standards, incomes and power between the white minority and the black majority. Less than 21 per cent of the total earnings accrue to the black peoples constituting more than 80 per cent of the population. Since the Second World War the real income of the black workers has decreased and the spectre of nearly two million unemployed now stalks the lives of black workers, to be dumped in the barren wastelands going by the name of "homelands" and "independent States". In fact, the period of the greatest boom and expansion of the South African economy, the 1960s, also witnessed the widening gap in the earnings between white and black workers, a sharper drop in the earnings of the black workers, growing unemployment and the dramatic increase in the growth of the coercive arm of the South African State.
Who benefits from collaboration with South Africa?
Who has, and does, benefit from investments, trade, loans, export credit guarantees and other forms of economic collaboration with the apartheid regime? urely not the black peoples, who today are suffering from every form of want and deprivation imaginable.
Industrialization and investments in the apartheid economy have contributed enormously to the building up of the racist armed forces and the repressive State apparatus for the defence of white minority autocracy. The TNCs are already engaged in the production of arms and armaments in South Africa. The weapons they produce are used to shoot down black workers and to kill our children in cold blood. These weapons, produced through the technical-industrial base built up by and through the TNCs who have such enormous resources to dispose of, are being used to keep in bondage the people of Namibia and to commit acts of murder and pillage against them bordering on genocide. Sophisticated technology and the most modern weapons, supplied to the racist regime by the TNCs, are being harnessed to commit acts of aggression against the peoples and Governments of the front-line States. Hundreds of nationals of these countries together with thousands of unarmed men, women and children who have sought refuge from tyranny in these countries, have been murdered, ostensibly as means to combat so-called terrorist concentrations. That innocent people have thus been murdered is patently true. What is equally true is that a deliberate policy of economic and political destabilization is being pursued by the racist regime of Pretoria with the active collaboration of the TNCs and their political representatives, to ensure that southern Africa remains an enclave for imperialist domination and exploitation. And this means to ensure that the South African Reich is given a permanence in southern Africa.
How can all of this be said to benefit the black workers of South Africa? During the recent period South Africa has faced a series of severe economic and political crises. Recent economic indicators show that the slow-down in the rate of growth first recorded in mid-1974 continued well into 1979. Unemployment, especially among the black workers, has increased dramatically to a record level of approximately two million, constituting 20 per cent of the workforce. The growth in real GDP, which increased by 7.4 per cent in 1974, has taken a consistent downturn over the last few years - 2.1 per cent in 1975, 1.4 per cent in 1976 and slightly less than 1 per cent in 1977. In 1977, manufacturing production reached its lowest level in three and a half years and there was a marked decline in real domestic fixed investment by the private sector. All these factors have contributed to the stark levels of unemployment and the worsening economic position of the black people in the country as inflation bites deeper.
How can all of this be said to benefit and safeguard the living standards of workers in the metropolis of the TNCs? The African National Congress and the oppressed people of South Africa expect their brothers and sisters in these countries to demonstrate their total rejection of the activities of the TNCs and their political representatives, and to harness their collective strength to ensure that all economic links with fascist South Africa are severed. If in the process some workers lose their jobs, as they undoubtedly will, they will by that very act have saved the lives of countless black people in South Africa and southern Africa.
That surely is not too high a price to pay. And today, with the reality of the mushroom cloud hanging over our people and continent, is it not high time to assert: Thus far and no further! What peace is the so-called "Atoms for Peace" programme of the South African regime guaranteeing? The peace for the elite supremacist regime and the TNCs to plunder, exploit and oppress our people.
Forty years ago the world learned the cruel lesson that peace and democracy are inseparable. If the millions of lives lost during the Second World War are to have any meaning, then we need to act in all urgency to stop the lunacy of arming a lunatic regime with nuclear teeth. French, American and British workers, as well as workers from the Federal Republic of Germany have to be mobilized to stop the TNCs in these murderous plans.
The "Codes of Conduct"
A word about the "industrial codes of conduct" now being peddled as the panacea for the plight of black workers in South Africa. It is interesting to note that these codes first emanated from the capitals of the imperialist countries in the wake of the Soweto mass upsurge of confrontation and when the black workers came out in militant and magnificently organized political strikes, thereby threatening the very arteries and heart of the exploitative system in South Africa. The very TNCs involved in the super-exploitation of black workers now began posing as their champions. All these codes have the same features.
They are silent about the system of apartheid and about those issues which fundamentally determine the position of black workers in South African society. They say nothing about political rights for the black majority; nothing about pass laws and the migrant labour system; about employment, education, housing, etc. More importantly they cannot and will not be given the force of law; and in the final analysis, they are simply ignored by the vast majority of companies to which they are intended to apply. Two conclusions emerge. Firstly, these codes are attempts to counteract the demands by the ANC for the complete severing of all economic links with the racist regime, and in particular, the demands for comprehensive, mandatory economic sanctions. Secondly, these codes are attempts by the political representatives of the TNCs to disarm the mass-based solidarity movement in the capitalist countries in their support for the demands by black workers for political, social and economic liberation.
In the final analysis, one fact must be made clear in regard to the argument that sanctions will hurt the black people most. And this is that our people are not interested in demonstrating to the world how well we can endure apartheid. What we are interested in is the total destruction of the system. This is what the people and their organization, the ANC, are committed to. Anything short of this will be a lease on life for the system.
And our victory, to have any meaning to the workers and people of our country, shall, as our Programme, the Freedom Charter, dictates, result in nothing short of the complete nationalization of the monopoly industries in our country.
Because of the historic devolution of political power in the hands of a white minority racist regime, South Africa has become the guarantor of huge super-profits derived from the exploitation of black workers inside the country, as well as the interests of the TNCs in other regions of our continent. Hence the deliberate policy of economic and military integration of South Africa into the world-wide exploitative system of capitalism. However, it would be both erroneous and harmful if we do not underscore the consequences of the role of the TNCs for other workers and countries.
The very process of developing the South African economy through the media of investment, trade, loans, export credit guarantees, etc., has meant the growth and development in South African TNCs of enormous potential and resources and their inter-linking with foreign TNCs for the express purposes of exploiting the vast human and natural resources of the entire southern African sub-continent, and indeed Africa. TNCs like Anglo American, General Mining, Escom, Rembrandt and De Beers for example, have been able to penetrate the economies of these countries. These TNCs are deeply involved in the economies of Namibia and Zimbabwe - a fact which well explains the frantic efforts now being made by the imperialist Powers, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany, to impose neo-colonial solutions in Namibia and control the process of change in Zimbabwe. At the same time, the introduction of sophisticated technology into the South African economy has meant the greater integration of this economy with that of the advanced capitalist economies, with the consequence that increasingly plants and sections of industries in the advanced capitalist countries are being closed or allowed to run down, and those operations transferred to South Africa because black labour can be controlled more easily and paid very little. The result is an aggravation of the problem of unemployment, now endemic in these countries as well as in South Africa.
The TNCs, far from acting in the so-called national interests of the countries where they are based, are interested only in profit maximization, irrespective of the cost in social terms. The last consideration they have is for the workers of their own or any other country. If they are supranational in terms of their operations they are equally so in terms of any laws that may hinder the process of profit accumulation.
This Conference is taking place against the background of the growing successes, strength and stature of the ANC inside South Africa in the struggle to eradicate the last vestiges of racism, colonialism and imperialism in southern Africa. Ranged against the peoples' struggle are the regimes of race and terror, together with the TNCs and their political representatives in the capitalist countries. We expect them to do everything to attempt to reverse the revolutionary tide. We on our part must ensure that this does not happen.
Conclusion
The ANC calls upon this Conference and the progressive forces assembled here to make every effort to isolate the Pretoria regime completely. This means that:
Finally, the successes that the international solidarity movements have and will score can only bring nearer the final destruction of the apartheid system. The act will be consummated by the revolutionary struggle of our own people. We, therefore, call for the greatest measures of support for and solidarity with the African National Congress, the spearhead of the liberation drive in our country.
Footnotes