10 August 198711
Mr. President, allow me on behalf of the African National Congress Women's Section, and all the oppressed but fighting women of South Africa, to convey to you our warmest greetings and express our heartfelt appreciation to the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid for the invitation extended to us to address this important gathering.
In particular we thank this body for its consistency in exposing the atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid regime against black women and children in South Africa and for mobilizing international solidarity.
We are gathered here to mark the thirty-first anniversary of the historic march of 9 August 1956 by South African women of all races to the citadel of apartheid in Pretoria to protest against the extension of the most hated "dompas", a document long regarded as a badge of slavery for black women. This occasion coincides with the thirty-ninth anniversary of the ascending to power of the illegitimate ruling Nationalist Party, which constitutionalized the abhorrent system of apartheid, a system which has long been condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity.
The march by more than 20,000 women from all corners of our embattled country to register their protest at the office of the then Prime Minister, the racist Strijdom, was but one of the most important milestones in the long and rich history of our struggle.
This day has since assumed international recognition; in 1981 the United Nations declared it the International Day of Solidarity with Struggling Women in South Africa and Namibia.
Since 1913, a year after the formation of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) in 1912, women have been in the forefront of the struggle against pass laws. Six hundred women in Bloemfontein and 800 in Wynburg demanded the abolition of their monthly permits - another form of a pass. When arrested, those women chose to go to gaol rather than pay fines. They emerged victorious, and the pass law was suspended until 1952, three years after the apartheid regime came into power.
A nation - and in the case of South Africa, a race - that can subject another human being to the most degrading and inhuman form of discrimination, ostensibly to maintain its own values, by that token degrades and dehumanizes itself and therefore forfeits its claim to civilization.
A black woman knows from bitter experience what it means to be ruled by racists. For her, racial discrimination means not only segregation, economic exploitation and deprivation. It also means being treated like a fourth-class citizen in the land of her birth and separation from her beloved ones because of the migratory labour system used by racists to keep the oppressed majority in perpetual servitude. Her history under white domination has been a history of night raids and police harassment, arrest, detention and dismissal from work. She has never known a properly constituted family life as dictated by standards of civilization.
Her lot has been that of being dumped in barren homelands called bantustans where there are no means of subsistence - neither enough schools for children, nor hospitals, water or electricity, let alone other social amenities regarded as basic needs in normal societies.
Women leaders and opponents of apartheid are abducted, gaoled, tortured and killed, and their organizations are banned.
Since the imposition some 14 months ago of the state of emergency, which was renewed after the re-election of the racist Botha, more than 3,000 people, young and old, women and men, have been massacred in cold blood. The gaols in South Africa are over-populated. The number of detainees now exceeds 33,000 patriots.
The Botha regime is violating the most fundamental rights of the children by defying the United Nations children's charter. Children are not only imprisoned, but are also incarcerated in concentration camps, euphemistically called reorientation centres. Forty per cent of the detained are children between the ages of 8 and 16 years.
In complete defiance of world opinion, the Botha regime released some of the children only to redetain them three hours later. I shall give only a few examples.
Sarah Kawe and Busi Thabethe, both 13 years old, and Sibongile Ngwane, 12 years old - all girls - are some of the many detained on 27 March 1987 and released on 11 June of the same year, only to be picked up before they even reached their homes. Stompi Sepei, 12 years old, was detained four times, and there were allegations of torture. On 4 June 1987, 27 children died in a bus accident while being driven to a concentration camp in the Eastern Transvaal. The racist Justice Minister has recently disclosed that last year alone, more than 2,200 babies spent unspecified periods in prison with their mothers. Those infants, like their mothers, are kept under the most barbaric and inhuman prison conditions. Richard Geelbooi, a two-year-old toddler, spent eight months in a cell with his mother and was fed the same type of poor diet given to all prisoners. A survey has revealed that on discharge these children are physically severely undermined and psychologically impaired. One can just imagine what kind of a future generation is in store if apartheid is allowed to continue with its atrocities.
Though schools have reopened, children keep away for fear of the police and the army, which are deployed at the schools. Soldiers masquerade as teachers. The harassment and arrest of students continue unabated. Some students are murdered by enemy-hired killers or vigilantes in their homes or on school premises. A case in point: On 8 May this year, a white headmaster at Memeza Secondary School in Waterval Bovern opened fire on protesting Standard 9 and 10 pupils. This resulted in serious injury to a number of pupils, especially l6-year-old Phindisile Nkosi, Sam Ndluli, no age given, and Chris Mazibuko, 18 years old, who was shot in the forehead.
Under the state of emergency, the racist South African police and army maim, rape, detain and kill with impunity since the state of emergency accords them indemnity. Whatever they do is said to have been done in good faith or out of patriotism.
The dismal failure of the Botha regime to suppress the resolve of our people to rid themselves of the yoke of apartheid through brute force has forced Pretoria to step up its campaign of deception. It speaks of setting up multiracial regional councils and national statutory councils, or even extending invitations to so-called moderate blacks to negotiate a new constitution for the country. No one in the country, save for the quislings of the enemy of our people, has been deceived by this sinister move. Our people know that when the enemy is ready to negotiate, it will release Comrade Nelson Mandela and all political prisoners and detainees, lift the ban on political organizations, unconditionally allow exiles to return, lift the state of emergency, and only then talk about serious negotiations.
Our President, Oliver Tambo, in a message to the nation on 8 January 1986, called on the democratic whites of our country to come forward and swell the ranks of the mainstream of the forces of liberation in our country. The conference in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, between the leaders of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa and some leaders of the African National Congress should be seen in the light of that call.
Racist minority whites in my country have once more demonstrated their unwavering allegiance to this decadent ideology of racial discrimination. They have once more voted the Nationalist Party into power, led by the same old racist die-hard, Pieter Wapen Botha, thus giving him the mandate to order his butcher-boys to wipe out apartheid opponents. Every passing day our country is being pushed deeper and deeper into an abyss from which one of these days it may be too late to extricate it, and mankind shall but wonder for having allowed irrationality to govern humanity.
Terrorism, which has become State policy, is not confined to South Africa but goes beyond its borders. While the regime daily inflicts heavy casualties on the Namibian people, their territory continues to be illegally occupied by the racist troops.
Namibia's independence is being delayed by unreasonable demands made by South Africa and its allies. We refer to the long overdue implementation of Security Council resolution 435 (1978).
Aggression against neighbouring States has reached unprecedented heights.
Terrorism has become State policy, with racist death squads being found as far afield as London. Last month a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, Comrade Cassius Make, and two others were brutally murdered by racist assassins in Swaziland, while in Britain four racist agents were charged with attempting to kidnap senior ANC officials. Recently in Mozambique, South African backed MNR bandits massacred more than 380 innocent villagers, among them patients abducted from a local hospital, including women and children.
Earlier in the year, a Botswana woman and two children died when a bomb
planted in a car by Boer agents exploded, and in Zambia four Zambian nationals died and one was seriously injured when South African commandos raided the tourist town of Livingstone. Angola has never known peace since independence as a result of South Africa's policy of aggression.
From the foregoing, which is by no means exhaustive, it is clear that racist South Africa poses a serious threat to international peace.
When marking days of historical importance like this, it is customary to pause and take stock of achievements and failures so as better to focus on the future.
In spite of all the hardships women inside the country continue to endure, they have not been intimidated into submission. They continue to organize themselves into stronger women's organizations with the increasing involvement of women at the grass-roots level in both urban and rural areas. They address themselves to questions such as unemployment, forced removals, rent boycotts, obligatory contraception, education issues, and the rising cost of living, and they master their own self-help projects. Priority is, of course, given to the deep political and economic crisis obtaining in the country, a situation which has made life even more unbearable.
Recently, in April we witnessed the birth of the United Democratic Front Women's Congress, which rallied all women in the United Democratic Front into one strong force so as to fight for their rights in a co-ordinated manner. This happened during the peak of the state of emergency.
Women have vowed never to end the already three-year-old rent boycott until their demands are met. Those demands are the lifting of the state of emergency, the withdrawal of troops from the townships and the resignation of the puppet community councils. They are part and parcel of street, block and area committees and the peoples' courts. As active members of trade unions, women continue to participate in strikes and stay-aways. Their indomitable spirit was once more demonstrated when early this year hundreds of them stormed a court in Cape Town demanding the release of all detained children and a halt to arrests of children.
Our people are prepared to pay any price for their freedom, and this is clearly demonstrated by their readiness to starve and even lay down their lives in their daily confrontations with the racist police and troops. Yet we still find some Powers that are opposed to the resolve not only of our people but also of the international community and that stand in the way of the adoption of comprehensive and mandatory sanctions against Pretoria. They use their veto power whenever this question arises. Their old excuse is invariably "concern for the sufferings of the oppressed masses" of our country, whereas the reverse is true. It is clear that this "concern" is related to the profits they reap from the system.
May I, on behalf of the African National Congress and the Women's Section, take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to all those Governments that have always rendered and continue to render us the much-needed support, both materially and politically, in this titanic task of dislodging the apartheid system, which can only he compared to nazism. We also appeal for support in the "Save Our Children Campaign", launched by the women in South Africa, and we demand the release of all detained children. We call for the closing down of the "reorientation centres", and for all possible pressure to be put on the racist regime to stop the intended execution of Teresa Ramashamole and 32 other patriots, and for the strengthening of the campaign for the release of all political prisoners and detainees. We demand the lifting of the state of emergency and for efforts to be made to continue to isolate the racist regime economically, politically, socially and otherwise, and to intensify the campaign for the imposition of comprehensive and mandatory sanctions against Pretoria.
We salute the heroic fighting people of Namibia under the leadership of the South West Africa People's Organization. Their onward march to independence and self-determination is irreversible. We also wish to reaffirm our unflinching solidarity with the people of the Sahraoui Arab Democratic Republic under the leadership of Polisario; the people of Palestine led by the PLO; the people of Nicaragua led by the FSLN; the people of El Salvador led by the FMLN and all other peoples struggling against man's inhumanity to man for a free, humane, prosperous and peaceful future for all mankind.
In conclusion, we, the women of South Africa, pledge never to rest until apartheid is removed from the face of the earth so that we can join the free nations of the world to determine our destiny by bringing about a united non-racial and democratic South Africa where brutal oppression and naked exploitation shall be practices of the past.