South African History Online

Washington, D.C., June 26, 1990

Mr. Speaker,
Mr. President;
Esteemed Members of the United States
Congress;
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and Members of the Diplomatic
Corps;
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a fact of the human condition that each shall, like a meteor, a mere
brief passing moment in time and space, flit across the human stage and pass out
of existence. Even the golden lads and lasses, as much as the chimney sweepers,
come, and tomorrow are no more. After them all, they leave the people, enduring,
multiplying, permanent, except to the extent that the same humanity might abuse
its own genius to immolate life itself.

And so we have come to Washington in the District of Columbia, and into these
hallowed chambers of the United States Congress, not as pretenders to greatness,
but as a particle of a people whom we know to be noble and heroic-enduring,
multiplying, permanent, rejoicing in the expectation and knowledge that their
humanity will be reaffirmed and enlarged by open and unfettered communion with
the nations of the world.

Our aspirations

We have come here to tell you, and through you, your own people, who arc
equally noble and heroic, of the troubles and trials, the fond hopes and
aspirations, of the people from whom we originate. We believe that we know it as
a fact that your kind and moving invitation to us to speak here derived from
your own desire to convey a message to our people, and according to your humane
purposes, to give them an opportunity to say what they want of you, and what
they want to make of their relationship with you.

Our people demand democracy. Our country, which continues to bleed and suffer
pain, needs democracy. It cries out for the situation where the law will decree
that the freedom to speak of freedom constitutes the very essence of legality
and the very thing that makes for the legitimacy of the constitutional
order.

It thirsts for the situation where those who are entitled by law to carry
arms, as the forces of national security and law and order, will not turn their
weapons against the citizens simply because the citizens assert that equality,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental human rights which are not
only inalienable but must, if necessary, be defended with the weapons of
war.

We fight for and visualize a future in which all shall, without regard to
race, colour, creed or sex, have the right to vote and to be voted into all
effective organs of state. We are engaged in a struggle to ensure that the
rights of every individual are guaranteed and protected, through a democratic
constitution, the rule of law, an entrenched bill of rights which should be
enforced by an independent judiciary, as well as a multi-party political
system.

Mr Speaker

We are actually conscious of the fact that we are addressing an historic
institution for whose creation and integrity many men and women lost their lives
in the war of independence, the civil war and the war against Nazism and
Fascism. That very history demands that we address you with respect and candour
and without any attempt to dissemble.

What we have said concerning the political arrangements we seek for our
country is seriously meant. It is an outcome for which many of us went to
prison, for which many have died in police cells, on the gallows, in our towns
and villages and in the countries of southern Africa. Indeed, we have even had
our political representatives killed in countries as far away from South Africa
as France.

Unhappily, our people continue to die to this day, victims of armed agents of
the state who are still determined to turn their guns against the very idea of a
non-racial democracy. But this is the perspective which Congress will feel happy
to support and encourage, using the enormous weight of its prestige and
authority as an eminent representative of democratic practice.

Economic objectives

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To
impose on them a wretched life of hunger and deprivation is to dehumanise them.
But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under
the system of apartheid. The extent of the deprivation of millions of people has
to be seen to be believed. The injury is made that more intolerable by the
opulence of our white compatriots and the deliberate distortion of the economy
to feed that opulence.

The process of the reconstruction of South African society must and will also
entail the transformation of its economy. We need a strong and growing economy.
We require an economy that is able to address the needs of all the people of our
country, that can provide food, houses, education, health services, social
security and everything that makes human life human, that makes life joyful and
not a protracted encounter with hopelessness and despair.

We believe that the fact of the apartheid structure of the South African
economy and the enormous and pressing needs of the people, make it inevitable
that the democratic government will intervene in this economy, acting through
the elected parliament. We have put the matter to the business community of our
country that the need for a public sector is one of the elements in a many-sided
strategy of economic development and restructuring that has to be considered by
us all, including the private sector.

The ANC holds no ideological positions which dictate that it must adopt a
policy of nationalisation. But the ANC also holds the view that there is no
self-regulating mechanism within the South African economy which will, on its
own, ensure growth with equity.

At the same time, we take it as given that the private sector is an engine of
growth and development which is critical to the success of the mixed economy we
hope to see in the future South Africa We are accordingly committed to the
creation of the situation in which business people, both South African and
foreign have confidence in the security of their investments, are assured of a
fair rate of return on their capital and do business in conditions of stability
and peace.

We must also make the point very firmly that the political settlement, and
democracy itself, cannot survive unless the material needs of the people, the
bread and butter issues, are addressed as part of the process of change and as a
matter of urgency. It should never be that the anger of the poor should be the
finger of accusation pointed at all of us because we failed to respond to the
cries of the people for food, for shelter, for the dignity of the
individual.

We shall need your support to achieve the post-apartheid economic objectives
which are an intrinsic part of the process of the restoration of the human
rights of the people of South Africa. We would like to approach the issue of our
economic cooperation not as a relationship between donor and recipient, between
a dependent and a benefactor.

Mutual benefit

We would like to believe that there is a way in which we could structure this
relationship so that we do indeed benefit from your enormous resources in terms
of your capital, technology all-round expertise, your enterprising spirit and
your markets. This relationship should, however, be one from which your people
should also derive benefit, so that we who are fighting to liberate the very
spirit of an entire people from the bondage of the arrogance of the ideology and
practice of white supremacy, do not build a relationship of subservient
dependency and fawning gratitude.

One of the benefits that should accrue to both our peoples and to the rest of
the world, should surely be that this complex South African society, which has
known nothing but racism for three centuries, should be transformed into an
oasis of good race relations, where the black shall to the white be sister and
brother, a fellow South African, an equal human being, both citizens of the
world. To destroy racism in the world, we, together, must expunge apartheid
racism in South Africa. Justice and liberty must be our tool, prosperity and
happiness our weapon.

Peace, process and present reality

Mr Speaker,
Mr President,
Distinguished representatives of the American
people:

You know this more than we do that peace is its own reward. Our own fate,
born by a succession of generations that reach backwards into centuries, has
been nothing but tension, conflict and death. In a sense we do not know the
meaning of peace except in the imagination. But because we have not known true
peace in its real meaning; because, for centuries, generations have had to bury
the victims of state violence, we have fought for the right to experience
peace.

On the initiative of the ANC, the process towards the conclusion of a
peaceful settlement has started. According to a logic dictated by our situation,
we are engaged in an effort which includes the removal of obstacles to
negotiations. This will be followed by a negotiated determination of the
mechanism which will draw up the new constitution.

This should lead to the formation of this constitution-making institution and
therefore the elaboration and adoption of a democratic constitution. Elections
would then be held on the basis of this constitution and, for the first time,
South Africa would have a body of law-makers which would, like yourselves, be
mandated by the whole people.

Despite the admitted commitment of President de Klerk to walk this road with
us, and despite our acceptance of his integrity and the honesty of his purposes,
we would be fools to believe that the road ahead of us is without major hurdles.
Too many among our white compatriots are steeped in the ideology of racism to
admit easily that change must come.

Tragedy may yet sully the future we pray and work for if these slaves of the
past take up alms in a desperate effort to resist the process which must lead to
the democratic transformation of our country. For those who care to worry about
violence in our country, as we do, it is at these forces that they should focus
their attention, a process in which we are engaged.

We must contend still with the reality that South Africa is a country in the
grip of the apartheid crime against humanity. The consequences of this continue
to be felt not only within our borders but throughout southern Africa which
continues to harvest the bitter fruits of conflict and war, especially in
Mozambique and Angola. Peace will not come to our country and region until the
apartheid system is ended.

Sanctions must continue

Therefore we say we still have a struggle on our hands. Our common and noble
efforts to abolish the system of white minority domination must continue. We are
encouraged and strengthened by the fact of the agreement between ourselves, this
Congress as well as President Bush and his administration, that sanctions should
remain in place. The purpose for which they were imposed has not yet been
achieved.

We have yet to arrive at the point when we can say that South Africa is set
on an irreversible course leading to its transformation into a united,
democratic and non-racial country. We plead that you cede the prerogative to the
people of South Africa to determine the moment when it will be said that
profound changes have occurred and an irreversible process achieved, enabling
you and the rest of the international community to lift sanctions.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the principled
struggle you waged which resulted in the adoption of the historic Comprehensive
Anti-Apartheid Act which made such a decisive contribution to the process of
moving our country forward towards negotiations. We request that you go further
and assist us with the material resources which will enable us to promote the
peace process and meet other needs which arise from the changing situation you
have helped to bring about.

Tribute to the United States

The stand you took established the understanding among the millions of our
people that here we have friends, here we have fighters against racism who feel
hurt because we are hurt, who seek our success because they too seek the victory
of democracy over tyranny. And here I speak not only about you. members of the
United States Congress, but also of the millions of people throughout this great
land who stood up and engaged the apartheid system in struggle. The masses who
have given us such strength and joy by the manner in which they have received us
since we arrived in this country.

Mr Speaker,
Mr President,
Senators and Representatives:

We went to jail because it was impossible to sit still while the obscenity of
the apartheid system was being imposed on our people. It would have been immoral
to keep quiet while a racist tyranny sought to reduce an entire people into a
status worse than that of the beasts of the forest. It would have been an act of
treason against the people and against our conscience to allow fear and the
drive towards self-preservation to dominate our behaviour, obliging us to absent
ourselves from the struggle for democracy and human rights, not only in our
country but throughout the world.

We could not have made an acquaintance through literature with human giants
such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and not been
moved to act as they were moved to act. We could not have heard of and admired
John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey,
Martin Luther King Jr., and others, and not be moved to act as they were moved
to act. We could not have known of your Declaration of Independence and not
elected to join in the struggle to guarantee the people life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.

We are grateful to you all that you persisted in your resolve to have us and
other political prisoners released from jail. You have given us the gift and
privilege to rejoin our people, yourselves and the rest of the international
community in the common effort to transform South Africa into a united,
democratic and non-racial country. You have given us the power to join hands
with all people of conscience to fight for the victory of democracy and human
rights throughout the world.

We are glad that you merged with our own people to make it possible for us to
emerge from the darkness of the prison cell and join the contemporary process of
the renewal of the world. We thank you most sincerely for all you have done and
count on you to persist in your noble endeavours to free the rest of our
political prisoners and to emancipate our people from the larger prison that is
apartheid South Africa.

Let justice triumph

The day may not be for when we will borrow the words of Thomas Jefferson and
speak of the will of the South African nation. In the exercise of that will by
this united nation of black and white people it must surely be that there will
be born a country on the southern tip of Africa which you will be proud to call
a friend and an ally, because of its contribution to the universal striving
towards liberty, human rights, prosperity and peace among the peoples.

Let that day come now. Let us keep our arms locked together so that we form a
solid phalanx against racism to ensure that that day comes now. By our common
actions let us ensure that justice triumphs without delay. When that has come to
pass. then shall we all be entitled to acknowledge the salute when others say of
us, blessed are the peacemakers.

Thank you for your kind invitation to speak here today and thank you for your
welcome and the attention you have accorded our simple message.