The Spirit of June 26 

Yesterday, as Comrade Armando Guebuza has said, was FRELIMO`s sixth anniversary of independence, Mozambique`s independence. We should like from this platform, to convey to Comrade Guebuza, and through him to the people of Mozambique, our congratulations, even our gratitude for the struggle of the Mozambican people.

Not only are we neighbours by geography, but these two crucial dates affecting our countries are also neighbours. ANC and FRELIMO have marched together for many years now, have been up and down together and have supported each other. As President Samora Machel said in February after the Matola raid, the people of Mozambique will always support the struggle of South Africa. Indeed he declared that we are bound together in the same struggle - in the struggle for political, economic, social and cultural liberation.

We greet the people of Mozambique on this day in the name of the people of South Africa, and we welcome particularly the great honour done us today in having in our midst one of the topmost leaders of that country, to participate with us on our National Day. Long live the People`s Republic of Mozambique!

I should like also to make special note of the fact that not for the first time and I know, not for the last, we are celebrating this occasion in the company of our brother peoples of Namibia, led by SWAPO and represented here today by Comrade Bechavi Munyaro.

What binds the people of South Africa to the people of Namibia is, apart from anything else, that we are fighting the same regime. We are fighting almost on the same basis, for the illegal occupation of Namibia differs only in degree from the illegality of the occupation of South Africa by a white minority regime. Like the Namibians we have no control over our country - we, the majority. South Africa is another military camp, differing only in degree from the military camp into which Namibia has been turned.

We are fighting in Namibia a coloniser across the border. In South Africa, we have a local coloniser, who has been dispensing "independence" to tribal groups in the past few years and intends to do so again in December. We are fighting together a particularly racist regime. Together we are fighting the last national liberation struggle on the African continent and we have become very close in this struggle.

It is therefore by no accident that this month, travelling from Swaziland and Maputo, across the continent of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean to the United States where I joined hands with the SWAPO delegation and together as one delegation we visited Washington, Atlanta (Georgia), New York, in discussions primarily with the black people of the United States. I returned from the United States to the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Mazimbu, there to take part in the June 16th commemorations. At that meeting, SWAPO was also represented, at this time by Comrade Kauluku Ngeru who spoke on behalf of SWAPO and the Palestine Liberation Organisation which was also represented. From Mazimbu I joined the delegations to the OAU meetings in Nairobi, where the Summit of African Heads of State and Government opened on the 24th. The liberation movements of southern Africa were represented by President Sam Nujoma who spoke on behalf of the people of South Africa and Namibia to the African Summit Conference. It is no accident that today we are here with SWAPO.

Today also, of course, we are participating side by side with the British Anti-Apartheid Movement and MAGIC. We are pleased to note the heavy representation of the diplomatic corps, the presence of church leaders, the trade union movement, and the representation of some of the political parties of this country. I should like, at the very outset, to express the very deep appreciation of the African National Congress and of the people of South Africa for this demonstration of solidarity and support which is expressed in your presence here today.

More than a National Day

June 26th is more than a National Day. It is an occasion for rededication by the people of southern Africa. It is an occasion when we look more to the future than to the past. It is an occasion when we ask the question: For how much longer? And with each passing year, this question becomes more pressing.

The first time June 26th was marked was in 1950. Today, 31 years later, we must ask, how much longer? We need to try and understand why it has taken 31 years in our case and what is required to be done to avoid an additional 31 years. The persistence of the apartheid system in that period of three decades can be evaluated in terms of hundreds of thousands of people who have either died prematurely at birth, in childhood, killed by the system, by its viciousness, by its violence, by its destructive nature, thousands killed deliberately - murdered.

These years can be expressed in terms of the dispersal of a whole people into exile, into different parts of the world, into different parts of South Africa - removed by force. If that were not enough, the system by its very nature has crossed our borders and is reeking terror, destabilisation and mass murder in southern Africa. How much longer? Angola has been subjected to these murders from the day that the South African army invaded that country. The permanence of the apartheid system has been the permanence of the misery, death and destruction in Namibia. Thanks to this system there is insecurity and instability, uncertainty about the future in southern Africa. How much more of this?

Have we Sacrificed Enough?

Experience in southern Africa alone clearly teaches us that there will be no voluntary abdication of power by this regime, any more than Portugal could have withdrawn quietly and peacefully. Smith had every reason to do so but that system could not, before thousands had had to sacrifice their lives. There is no basis upon which we can expect anything but another 31 years unless on occasions like these we make a new and resolute pledge.

I should like to avoid our having to meet in 1982 and look at what at best is changing slowly, painfully, in terms of apartheid labels, in terms of permission to enter a restaurant, and little cosmetics of that kind. Of course, while that goes on, destruction which apartheid visits upon our people continues.

The system has legitimised a whole variety of methods by which we could bring it down. We have not used all those legitimate methods. In 31 years now, since the first June 26th, we have been hesitant, irresolute, we have been as a black people, almost content to live as slaves. Namibians are a small people in terms of their numbers. They are literally a province of South Africa, whatever the rest of the world says at this point, but they have taken on this mighty racist regime, locked 100,000 of its troops in Namibia in a fight daily.

I want to say thank you for the compliments paid to the African National Congress in its leadership of our struggle, thanks very much for recognising the sacrifices that have been made by members of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Thank you too for noting the militancy of our people, their determination. But let us face it. Have we sacrificed enough? Are we militant enough?

On this day, which each year is a milestone marking not only our advance towards victory, but also the passing of time, we should not stop at congratulating ourselves. We should say quite frankly and boldly: Need it have taken 31 years since the first June 26th?

I believe however, that these questions are being put by our people to themselves. I believe that the National Executive Committee of the ANC is putting precisely this kind of question to itself. I believe that the cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe are saying - is what we have done enough?

I believe also that the South Africans who are thirsting after a new country are saying, are we really going to be last - the independence of Namibia cannot be very far? When it comes, how far shall we of South Africa be from our cherished goal?

What is wanting? Aggressiveness, making apartheid unworkable; facing up to the torture which is there anyway; accepting the possibility of being killed and shot which is happening to many anyway.

New Dimensions of Unity

There is some indication that the level of unity in the opposition to this regime has reached a new dimension. At the beginning of this year, most people in South Africa and certainly the blacks, were horrified and angered at the brutality of the Matola murders. They were united in that anger.

Later, elections were taking place, election campaigns among those with a privileged skin colour and a government was put into power with their mandate. In May that government was leading its people in celebrations of the 20th anniversary of this Republic. The most significant thing about those celebrations is the extent to which they united the opposition to the Republic and even more significant were the armed actions which in that context were directed at the Republic itself.

A strike against the Republic is the rejection of it. That step was given added significance by the burning of the flag of the racist Republic of South Africa and as Comrade Guebuza has been saying the raising in its place the national flag of the people of South Africa.

Where do we go from that point? These forces which united against the Republic should now hold together and reject the Republic in actions. The workers are doing this. People in different walks of life are involved in this but not yet the combined mass of our people, not yet all the workers. Great credit is due to those who have sustained the struggle. But what we need to do is to bring the regime down, to bring its economy down, to bring its structures down, to bring its forces down.

I would like to say that for all the congratulations that we have received on June 26th, we are not doing enough and now we have been given more reason to do more because the world that has been organised during the struggle of Africa for liberation, during the struggle against Portuguese colonialism, during the struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe, that world is solidly organised behind the struggle to destroy the apartheid system, to destroy it and replace it with a new South Africa. But that will not happen if we ourselves do not lift the level of the struggle in our own country and be seen to be taking the offensive.

Why am I saying this in London? What has this to do with their Excellencies who have come here? Why would the trade union movement represented here be interested to know? Because I believe that those who come here are the concerned and because they are the concerned, they are part of the worldwide movement of people who would like to see justice, freedom and peace everywhere in the world and certainly in southern Africa and particularly in Namibia and South Africa itself. I believe you should support us not because we are making sacrifices we ought to. You should support us the more perhaps because we are weak and it may be that we are not doing more because you are not supporting us more. It is your struggle as it is ours and we dare not pretend to you, lest it should take another 31 years.

Policy of Reagan Administration

There has been ready reference here today to the role of South Africa in southern Africa. Particularly in relation to Namibia. The importance of this question lies in the fact that it has been complicated not only for the Namibians but also to some extent for the South Africans, by the declarations of the United States Administration, by its demands that defy all logic, by the indications of South Africa being an ally of the United States, especially in matters of national liberation struggle. The conditions which South Africa demands are the reason why the United States is going back on the agreement that it had settled last year. These demands are rejected by the people of Namibia, led by SWAPO, they are rejected by Africa. In South Africa we reject them too.

We think the international community has been all too accommodating to the racists. But the implications of an alliance with South Africa which has set itself the task of dominating the countries of southern Africa, all of them, the implications are that the United States is now going to be actively involved directly and indirectly in subverting these countries.

We can expect more troubles for the People`s Republic of Angola, for Zambia, we can expect more trouble everywhere else, especially for those countries which have chosen their own socio-economic routes to the future, which refuse to be mere repetitions of the United States system, or the British system or any other system... The United States Government declares or claims that those who do not adapt to its own world outlook, its own systems, must be got rid of in the interests of the United States. We feel that the United States Administration should be made aware of the hostility of mankind to its move to destabilise the world, to its move to perpetuate the apartheid system and even the continued illegal occupation of Namibia.

The other aspect of the United States policy relates to what is a national liberation movement. South Africa defines national liberation movements as "terrorist, communist organisations". And having sent this signal to the Western countries, it proceeds to murder, to kill, to massacre, in the name of Western interests. In doing so it has the support and approval and no doubt, the assistance and the encouragement of the United States.

We are projected as the vanguard of an expansionist move by the Soviet Union. The reason, it is said, and I have been hearing this wherever I have gone, is that SWAPO and ANC are supported by the Soviet Union.

That is the only reason. Reject support from the Soviet Union - you cease to be a terrorist communist. Who takes the place of the Soviet Union. Will Washington? Can they give us the guns? Did they not give them to Portugal and to Ian Smith? Would southern Africa be what it is if the liberation movement had no weapons to fight with? Could they have had those weapons if they did not have countries like the Soviet Union which were ready to donate them?

And tomorrow we shall be needing more and more weapons to fight and destroy this criminal regime. We shall go all over the world including the Soviet Union and if they give us weapons, we shall be grateful. But we do not like this distortion of facts.

Many people in Britain give us their political, diplomatic and even material assistance. Many governments in Europe, in Western Europe, are indispensable in their support for our struggle. The World Council of Churches supports our struggle. It does not give us guns, it gives us funds which we need to exist, to live so that we can continue to fight racism. Unfortunately, this distortion gets accepted, perhaps in many places except southern Africa itself.

We should like to assure those who are concerned about where we get our assistance from, that we shall continue to accept assistance from the enemies of apartheid and racist domination. But that acceptance does not dictate in any terms what we want our countries to be. Indeed, it is based on what we say we want to be.

The assumption that a black person is motivated in whatever he or she does by considerations of pleasing someone else - that contempt of black people, of Africa; this refusal to accept us as equals; this continued excuse for subjecting us to continued domination, is bound to fail. It is bound to fail because even black people, and this is true of black people in the United States I have found, and certainly in southern Africa where we have gone through all these wars, we cannot be deceived by this kind of propaganda. We just hope that our friends will not be deceived either.

The spokesmen of the African continent are very clear about what we all want. Therefore we need to try and convey to the Reagan Administration and its allies in Europe and elsewhere, that no matter what the United States Administration does, the struggle will continue until we reach the objective that we have set ourselves.

There can be no other way in South Africa as in Namibia and as we have said, time and time again, we shall establish a State substantially different from what we know today, relieved of the evils which have united mankind in protest. A country of free blacks and whites, we shall do so, we must now do so, by using every conceivable weapon at our disposal. The recalcitrance of this criminal regime legalises, legitimises many methods we have so far not resorted to. We are going to.

Increase Solidarity

I should like to conclude by acknowledging the support which we have received from the Anti-Apartheid Movement in this country and from the body known as SATIS - South Africa, The Imprisoned Society - especially for the campaign to secure the release of political prisoners. We plead that this should not be slackened, let alone abandoned. Our people are trooping into jail. The voice of the rest of mankind will need to be heard more loudly and not merely as a voice, but as a device, it must be employed to make sure that at least those who have been there for years upon years, like Nelson Mandela and others, are released. That fight should be fought with determination. We appreciate what has been given by way of support in this regard.

We appreciate the support of the countries represented at this meeting. We appreciate the support of the international community. But we always have a special appeal to make to the people of Britain because Britain is the source of our misery in South Africa. This is not a matter we can reasonably or realistically place before the Prime Minister of this country but I think we can realistically place it before the British people.

What is their true role in southern Africa, the British? In whose name other than that of the British people does the British Government decide on policy in relation to apartheid South Africa and Namibia? It is this kind of action by the British people, as well by us in South Africa, which is going to bring the problems of southern Africa to an end. Those who hate racism should fight with increased vigour.

We must welcome today the encouragement we received from fellow freedom fighters, the PLO, the Chilean people, POLISARIO, opponents of fascism everywhere in the world; fighters for peace everywhere in the world; those who are opposing the determined efforts to bring about a world conflagration; those who are resisting attempts to arm the whole world and saturate it with destructive weapons. Those who are mobilising armies, distributing weapons, those who are working desperately for World War III - they should be denounced as the enemies of mankind.

For what we are fighting for ultimately, as liberation movements, is peace. Peace, where today violence prevails, the violence of the system. We wage wars of liberation in pursuit of peace. We hope that the next 12 months will bring in Namibia, as well as in South Africa, changes of a kind which indicate an early emergence of peace in southern Africa.