South African History Online

Ottawa, 18 June 1990

Mr. Speaker;
Honourable Prime Minister;
Distinguished leaders of the
opposition parties;
Elected representatives of the people of
Canada;
Ladies and Gentlemen:

We would like to thank you most sincerely for granting us the honour and
privilege to speak from the podium of the House of Commons of Canada, an eminent
example of the democratic perspective towards which our people aspire. The fact
that we have not had the same opportunity to do the same thing in our own
country, even as guests, emphasises the iniquity of the apartheid system which
we are all determined to abolished without delay.

Like young people everywhere, as we grew up in South Africa, we embarked on
an exciting voyage to discover the world. We were driven by a consuming desire
to know the truth about people, about society, about the world of nature. And
always central to that search was the need to find out whether there was
anything in human nature and society, whether there was anything in the
universal order of things, which predetermined the place of the Black person and
the African in society.

Instinctively we embarked on this enquiry because we felt that there was
something in our society which was wrong, unjust and unacceptable. We had, after
all, listened to and responded with warm hearts to passionate sermons which
proclaimed that God made Man in his image. We had absorbed and were moved by
school lessons which spoke of men being created equal. We had sat as in a
trance, as we learnt of White men and women who had fought tyranny in order to
establish societies based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Our own life experience, and that of all other Black people around us and
beyond the borders of our country, taught us that all these precepts and
experiences were not meant to refer to or include men and women of colour.
Whatever God's purposes might have been, it seemed clear that the White race had
decreed that only its members were fit to assume the image of the creator. Such
liberty, equality and fraternity as there were, were but bonds to unite the
White people around the common purpose of denying the Black majority these
privileges.

That youthful enquiry into the essence of social reality we s at the same
time the spark that kindled the fire of rebellion in many a heart among our
peers. And like the scorching heat of a soldering iron, it bonded the rebels
together as in a fist of steel. Where an oath was sworn, it was simply said that
none would rest and none would spare their lives, until the people had regained
their liberty, equality and fraternity.

Many have died in the effort to honour that commitment. For three and a half
centuries, each generation of our people has supplied its due share of martyrs.
An entire people has learnt not to mourn the death of heroes and heroines, but
to steel itself for new battles. An entire people has known what it is to
recognise the fact of defeat while rejecting the demand that it should
surrender.

And so it came about that even those who had not even reached their puberty,
knew that they too have a place in the ferried ranks of those who challenged the
hypocrisy of a degenerate system which claimed to be part of western
civilisation, while its very existence was predicated on the repudiation of
everything to which attaches the word civilisation.

Today the hope is abroad among our people that those in our country who saw
themselves as the master race have learnt the error of their ways. There is hope
that perhaps, at last, they have seen that injustice will not triumph. There is
hope that perhaps, at last, they have realised that tyranny is but the
progenitor of the forces of its own destruction. The is hope that perhaps, at
last, those who sought to deny the humanity of others, have understood that by
that act they also dehumanised themselves.

If indeed these are the results that have been achieved, a salute is due to
those who struggled in the name of all humanity to ensure that the noble vision
of liberty, equality and fraternity includes all and excludes nobody on any
basis whatsoever, be it race, colour, creed or sex. Therefore, as we stand here
today, Mr. Speaker, and acknowledge the priceless honour you have accorded us in
person, we know that we are merely representatives of a people than can truly be
called heroic.

We come from a people who, because they would not accept to be treated as
sub-human, redeemed the dignity of all humanity everywhere. We represent
countless martyrs who have walked into a hailstorm of bullets not because they
wanted to die but because they wanted the millions of our people to live. We
have sat in prison with great African patriots and noble examples of the human
race who faced torture and did not flinch, who met the hangman's noose with
songs of freedom, who accepted their cells as but a school out of which they
would emerge with their convictions, their determination and willingness to
sacrifice immeasurably strengthened.

We are deeply moved that today you honour all this noble offspring of our
people by allowing us, who were outcasts only yesterday, to experience if only
fleeting, what it means to stand and speak at a place whose existence is based
on the recognition of the right of all the people to determine their destiny,
and whose purpose is to ensure that that right is guaranteed in perpetuity. We
are made better human beings by the fact that you have reached out from across
the seas to say that we too, the rebels, the fugitives, the prisoners deserve to
be heard.

Our message, for whose propagation and realisation so many have suffered so
much, is indeed simple. It is that South Africa should be transformed into a
united, democratic and non-racial country. We wish to see every adult South
African enjoying the right to vote and having the possibility to elected to all
organs of government without discrimination on grounds of race, colour, race or
sex. Its Balkanisation into Bantusatans, so-called homelands and group areas has
to end.

Given our bitter experience of oppression and repression, we are determined
that our country should be a truly thoroughgoing democracy in which the rights
of all its citizens will be inviolable and in which all will be equal before the
law. Accordingly, in addition to a democratic constitution, there should be an
entrenched and justiciable bill of rights, enforced by an independent judiciary.

As reflected in our historic policy document, the freedom charter, we are
committed to ensure all our citizens enjoy equal rights to their languages,
culture and religious freedoms. These provisions, among others, will address the
issue of so-called White fears, while meeting the aspirations of the people of
South Africa as a whole.

We also visualise an agreed constitutional arrangement whereby there is
revolution of power to regional and local levels of government to ensure the
broadest possible participation of the people in governing themselves. At the
same time, we are opposed to the idea, which some in our country advance, that
we should opt for a federal state.

We believe that there is nothing to federate. Certainly, we do not accept
that we should accept the fragmentation of our country as a given fact, on which
we should try to build the new reality any attempt to do this would merely
perpetuate the racial and ethnic divisions whose abolition stands at the core of
our struggle. We cannot seek to end apartheid by continuing to maintain the
structures of the apartheid system under any guise whatsoever.

We know that you have just completed a gruelling round of negotiations
dealing with constitutional reform in this country. We are inspired by the fact
that you were able to find compromises which make agreement possible. We believe
that we too must be inspired by this manner of proceeding so that we also reach
agreement about our own constitution as speedily as possible. We believe that we
too must be inspired by this manner of proceeding so that we also reach
agreement about our own constitution as speedily as possible, in the interest of
all the people of our country.

We are convinced that as part of this process in South Africa, there will
have to be elected a constituent assembly to draw up the new constitution, as
happened in Namibia. This will ensure that we use democratic means in our search
for a democratic result. It will also create the situation whereby the result of
the negotiations enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of the people, to the extent that
they would have chosen the representatives to whom the task of drawing up the
basic law of the country would be entrusted.

We are also determined that the political freedom of which we have spoken
should go side by side with freedom from hunger, want and suffering. It is
therefore of vital importance that we restructure the South African economy so
that its wealth is shared by all our people, Black and White, to ensure that
everybody enjoys a decent and rising standard of living.

We do not seek to impoverish anybody, or to redistribute such poverty. But
the new democratic society will obviously have to address the issue ox the
impoverishment of millions of our people as a matter of urgency. It is also
clear that issues can only be properly tackled in a situation in which the
economy is growing and producing more wealth at a rate higher than the growth of
the population.

In this respect, we should make the important point that, once the democratic
transformation has taken place, we will need your assistance to achieve these
economic results. We believe that we can and should build on the bonds of
friendship and solidarity that we have built up in the course of the continuing
struggle against apartheid, to build a partnership for reconstruction of both
our country and our region, which have been devastated by the apartheid system.
Southern Africa has the human and material resources which will combine to give
the millions of our people a bright future and which will make it profitable and
worthwhile for the rest of the world to the enter into a mutually beneficial
system of cooperation.

For many decades the ANC sought a peaceful resolution of the problems facing
our country. In the period since 1986, we redoubled our efforts to persuade the
South African Government to enter into negotiations with us. We consider it a
victory for all South Africans that the meeting between ourselves and the
Government took place in Cape Town at the beginning of last month. As you know,
we agreed to remove the obstacles to negotiations which the had identified. We
are determined to ensure that this agreement is implemented and believe that the
Government is of the same view as well.

It is only fair that we indicate to this August Assembly that we see
President De Klerk and his colleagues in the leadership of The National Party as
men and women of integrity. We believe that they are honestly committed to
participate in a peaceful process which should result in the fundamental
political transformation of our country. The fact of our agreement to remove the
obstacles to negotiations has thus also served as a demonstration of the bony
fixes of De Klerk leadership.

And yet the progress achieved, including the unbanning of the ANC and other
organisations, the release of some political prisoners and the lifting of the
state of emergency over the greater part of our country, should not lead us to
believe that fundamental and irreversible change has taken place, leading to the
emancipation of our people.

The fact of the matter os that the apartheid system is still in place. The
state's instruments of repression, in particular the police, continue to kill
and maim the opponents of this system, in defence of an apartheid law and order.
Many among our White compatriots are armed are forming themselves into commando
groups, with the stated aim of physically liquidating the leaders and members of
the ANC. They are joined by similarly armed Black vigilante groups, which are
ready and willing to serve their White paymasters.

Therefore we still have a struggle ahead of us. The situation in which we are
requires that both you and ourselves should not relax our vigilance. As a result
of continuing struggle, we must ensure that the movement forward towards the
final abolition of the apartheid system is not interrupted.

It is in this context that we have raised and emphasised the importance of
maintaining sanctions. Sanctions were imposed to help us end the apartheid
system. In the light of what we have, it is only logical that we must continue
to apply this form of pressure against the apartheid system. Any move at this
stage towards lifting of relaxing international pressure would create the
situation in which White South Africa would feel comfortable with the minimal
changes that have taken place and once more regress into their earlier position
where they felt that pressure had not reached sufficient strength to oblige them
to move forward.

I would like to take this opportunity to salute the great Canadian people
whom you represent, and with whom we believe you are in full accord on the
question of South Africa. They have proved themselves not only to be steadfast
friends of our struggling people but great defenders of human rights and the
idea of democracy itself. They are to us like brothers and sisters from whose
warm embrace we shall never be parted.

We salute and thank them all, political parties, the anti-apartheid movement,
the trade unions, the churches, the native people of this country,
non-governmental organisations, students and intellectuals, elected
representatives who serve in this parliament and elsewhere, the press, the
children and many others who raised the flag of solidarity because they knew
that the absence of freedom for ourselves reduced their own liberty as well.

In this context, I would also like to pay special tribute to the Prime
Minister of this country, Brian Mulroney, who has continued along the path
charted by Prime Minister Diefenbaker who acted against apartheid because he
knew that no person of conscience could stand aside as a crime against humanity
was being committed.

Mr. Prime Minister, our people and organisation respect and admire you as a
true friend. We have been greatly strengthened by your personal involvement in
the struggle against apartheid and the leadership you have provided within the
United Nations, the Commonwealth, the Group of Seven and the Francophone
summits. We are certain that you will, together with the rest of the Canadian
people, stay the course with us, not only as we battle on to end the apartheid
system but also as we work to build a happy, peaceful and prosperous future for
all the people of South and Southern Africa.

Mr. Speaker:

That future is still ahead of us. As for now, and to make certain that our
common hopes are realised, we must , together, continue the struggle. We seek
your support to sustain the international pressures which you in this country
and others in the rest of the world have imposed. We seek your agreement that
Canada and the rest of the international community should abide by the
perspectives contained in the Hurrier and United Nations declarations on South
Africa, including the vision of a truly democratic, non-racial and united South
Africa.

In the aftermath of the agreement we reached with the government at the
beginning ox last month, we also require your support to help us repatriate and
resettle those of our compatriots who were forced into exile by the apartheid
system. We require your material assistance to help us conduct the extensive
political work among the 38 million people of our country, which is such a vital
and central part of the process of drawing these millions into the common effort
to arrive at a just, permanent and negotiated solution of the South African
question.

We trust that, among other things, you will do everything in your power to
encourage the people of Canada to contribute to the solidarity fund which has
been set up under the leadership of His Grace, Archbishop Ted Scott, a great
friend of our people and a man I am proud to know.

Mr. Speaker;

Distinguished representatives of the people of Canada:

It has been given to us to be present and to participate in the final
struggle to end the evil system of apartheid. A historic moment is in sight. It
will not be long now before we, as South Africans, stand up to proclaim that the
apartheid fountainhead of racism throughout the world is no more and that
political power has passed into the hands of the whole people.

These masses must and will exercise this power with all the sensitivity that
is due in our situation. In this context, certain matters are as clear as the
light of day. Never should racism in our country and from whatever quarter,
raise its ugly head again. All of us South Africans, both Black and White, must
build a common sense of nationhood in which all ideas of vengeance and
retribution are impermissible. Our country must, by its deeds, take its place
among the nations of the Earth as a champion of peace, a defender of freedom and
democracy, an enemy of poverty and human degradation.

You have been and are with us as we struggle to end the system of white
minority domination. As an expression of our common humanity, and not an act of
charity, we ask that you continue to walk the last mile with us. As your future
partner, you will have a society whose hallmarks will be tolerance of all views
and respect for the life and dignity of every person, both young and old.

We thank you that you bent every effort to secure our release from prison.
You gave us the possibility whose importance to us is without measure, to join
hands with our own people, with you and the rest of humanity to bring about the
change in our country and our region, which even the mute but bloodstained
stones in the killing fields of Southern Africa demand must come and must come
now.

We shall forever be obliged to you for this and for this unforgettable moment
you have given us to speak to you about our dreams and to contribute a little to
the everlasting friendship between the Canadian and the South African people.

Our common victory, the victory of democracy and non-racialism, is within our
grasp. Liberty, equality and fraternity shall reign supreme in our country as
well.

Thank You.