South African History Online

Speech of the President of the ANC, Nelson Mandela to members of the British parliament

House of Commons, London, 5 May 1993

Chairperson,
My Lords,
Distinguished Members of Parliament,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

I would like to thank the Conservative Party and Labour Party's Foreign
Affairs Committee for the honour they extended to us by inviting us to be with
you today. We are conscious of the fact that the buildings where we are today
represent a political history which reaches back through many centuries.

They symbolise past heroic struggles against tyranny and autocracy. They have
meaning because, long before today, there was a determined striving to ensure
that the people shall govern.

These Houses of Parliament remain today living structures, because, whatever
the imperfections of your political system - and there must be many - these
structures continue to provide a seat for the furtherance of the humane
perspective that the natural conflict of interests, ideas and instincts among
any people, can and should be expressed through peaceful struggle rather than
through actions which are predicated on violence and death.

I say these things because our own country and people are striving to create
a social order, as well as establish the institutions, that will ensure that we,
too, resolve the natural conflict of interests, ideas and instincts among
ourselves through a peaceful contest rather than through the pursuit of policies
whose success is measured by the success of terror.

But I also speak thus, within this historic enclave, because, hidden by the
dim mists of history, there is also the reality that, from here, there issued
decisions which imposed on my own country and people a condition of existence
which condemned us, as South Africans, to seek to resolve our conflicts not
through peaceful means but by other than peaceful means.

Your right to determine your own destiny was used to deny us to determine our
own.

Thus history brought our peoples together in its own peculiar ways. That
history demands of us that we should strive to achieve, what you, through the
rediscovery of the practice of democracy, achieved for yourselves.

It demands of you that you should assist us, and therefore yourselves as
well, to rediscover for ourselves, as a people, the practice of democracy.

And I say "demands" not because I want to entrust to you the role of a
guardian and impose on ourselves the condition of an innocent ward.

I say history demands of you that you help us achieve a speedy transition to
a non- racial and non-sexist democracy because your very national interest
requires that you do so.

This, history has decreed, and not the sentimental heart of an old man.

My Lords, Ladies and Gentleman:

The universe we inhabit as human beings is becoming a common home that shows
growing disrespect for the rigidities imposed on humanity by national
boundaries.

These much used words of one of your great poets, John Donne, speak to what
we are trying to say:

No Man is an Island, entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the
Continent, A part of the main.

South Africa and the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Angola, Liberia and
Nagorno Kharabakh, the Sudan and Northern Ireland are all part of the main.

The evil that occurs in any of these places diminishes us all and the good
elevates all humanity.

Many peoples across the globe are hurt, and their rights to independence and
sovereignty undermined, when you who are relatively wealthy, attach certain
conditionalities to any economic assistance to those who are poor, such as the
establishment of democratic systems, respect for human rights, reduction of
military expenditures and resolution of disputes by peaceful means. But, as
Africans, we too believe that we should, together, transform our continent into
one that is governed according to these precepts.

Therefore, between us, there is no difference as to the objectives that must
be achieved. There may however be differences about the means that must be used
and the root to travel to arrive at these common goals.

But, once more, these processes emphasise precisely the point about the ever-
growing interdependence among the peoples.

South Africa has been on your national agenda in various ways since the 17th
Century, when the ships of the English East India Company sailed around the
Cape.

In more recent times, and with regard to South Africa, the great
pre-occupation of members of these Houses of Parliament, the British Government
and the public at large has been with the issue of apartheid.

This country has produced men and women whose names are well known in South
Africa, because they, together with thousands of others of your citizens, stood
up to oppose this evil system and helped to bring us to where we are today, when
we can say - at last, freedom is in sight.

These Britons acted in the way they did because they realised that they and
their country had as much a moral obligation and a strategic imperative to
uproot the pernicious system of racism in South Africa, as they had to destroy a
similar system in Nazi Germany.

We firmly believe that, through their struggles, these, your compatriots,
have established the fundamental point that you and the people you represent
have an obligation to act together with us as we strive to give birth to a new
South Africa.

The agenda for that process of transforming South Africa has a number of
items that stand out in bold relief. These are:

• The determination of an Election date;
• the creation of a climate conducive to free and fair elections, including
  the establishment of a multi-party Transitional Executive Council, an
  Independent Electoral Commission and an Independent media Commission;
• the holding of the first ever general elections in our country, based on
  the principle of one person one vote, and thus ending the system of white
  minority rule;
• as a consequence of these elections, the formation of an elected
  constituent assembly to draft a democratic constitution;
• as a second consequence of these elections, the formation of an Interim
  Government of National Unity that will include all the political organisations
  that will have demonstrated that they have significant support;
• the implementation of programmes aimed at dismantling the system of
  apartheid and reconstructing South Africa into a truly united, democratic,
  non-racial and non-sexist country;
• the rebuilding and the restructuring of its economy to ensure rapid
  growth, more equitable distribution of income, wealth and opportunities and an
  end to poverty as well as racial and gender inequalities; and,
• the normalisation of South Africa's relations with the rest of the world.

We would like you to play a role with regard to all these processes.

First among them is your contribution to ensuring that all political actors
in South Africa understand that the situation in the country demands a speedy
transition to a non-racial democracy. There should be no further delay in
agreeing an election date.

We request that you use such contact as you have with political actors to
persuade them to abandon their selfish and sectarian positions and stop blocking
movement forward.

We would further urge you to use your influence to ensure the earliest
possible establishment of the Transitional Executive Council and the related
Commissions so that all the political parties and organisations in our country
can, inter alia, begin to attend jointly to such matters as ending political
violence and implementing poverty alleviation programmes.

As you aware, political violence in South Africa continues to be a matter of
grave concern. If anybody had any doubt about how serious the issue is, the
recent brutal assassination of one of our outstanding leaders, Chris Hani,
should have put paid to these doubts.

We take very seriously the repeated reports we get that good number of our
leaders and activists have been put on death lists by white right wing groups,
whether they are within or outside the sate security force, that are opposed to
change and are prepared to take lives to ensure the perpetuation of the
apartheid system.

We ourselves are doing everything in our power to address this matter. It is
nevertheless incontestable that the government of the day has to do a lot more
to deal with this matter and so must other parties. As we have said, we are also
convinced that the establishment of the Transitional Executive Council with its
structures for multi-party control of all armed formations and the police would
make a decisive contribution in helping us to contain and reduce the level of
violence.

Accordingly, we urge that you put pressure on those concerned within South
Africa to carry out their obligations with regard to this matter of
violence.

We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for the
role that this country has already played with regard to this matter, by sending
police officers and other experts into South Africa and by the contributions it
has made through the United Nations, The Commonwealth and the European
Community.

When the elections are held, it will be important that the international
community place observers in South Africa to help us ensure that the elections
are free and fair and therefore that their outcome is recognised by everybody as
being legitimate and acceptable.

We are certain that you will play your part in helping us benefit from such
international assistance.

Three years ago we emerged from 30 years of illegality, during which much of
our leadership was imprisoned or exiled and the members inside country forced to
operate as clandestine units.

In addition to this, precisely because the majority had been denied the right
to vote, we suffer from the added disadvantage that we have no experience of
elections, of parliamentary practice and of state administration.

And yet I dare say that stability cannot be achieved in South Africa unless
the ANC, which represents the overwhelming majority of our people, place a
central role in bringing these masses into the peace process, organising they go
to the polls in their millions and ensuring that any constitution and government
that result from these processes are accepted as being expressive of the will of
the people.

The fact that we, like other political formations, will participate in the
elections, does not therefore remove the obligation on the international
community to assist us and the rest of the democratic movement of our country,
both materially and politically.

Indeed, I would venture to say that the process of change enhances the need
to strengthen this democratic movement and not the other way round.

I am certain that many of you in this room will recognise the relevance and
correctness of what I am saying from your experiences here in Europe.

The processes of democratic transformation in such countries as Spain,
Portugal and Greece could not have been as relatively smooth as they were
without relatively strong democratic political organisations.

The same lesson is now being confirmed in other parts of Europe, again
demonstrating that democratic change requires democratic organisations.

We trust that you will respond to these observations as they affect South
Africa positively, and open yourselves to persuasion that, in the common
interest, you should extend all-round assistance to us.

As you know in 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Consensus
Declaration on Southern Africa, with the active participation of the British
government. That Declaration has provided the broad framework for the process of
negotiations in South Africa.

It includes within it set of principles which the international community
thought had to be implemented to provide the basis for an international
acceptable solution of the South African question.

Accordingly we would urge that you should maintain such pressure as is
necessary until we do indeed arrive at this international acceptable
solution.

There can be no gainsaying the point that the very survival of the democratic
settlement towards which we strive cannot be guaranteed unless we address
speedily and successfully the socio-economic upliftment of the majority of our
people.

Central to this is the achievement of a relatively high rate of growth of the
South African economy. We hope that British Companies will participate in this
process, to the mutual benefit by investing directly to raise the level of
capital formation, help modernise our economy through the transfer of
technology, open the way to new markets and create new jobs to absorb the
millions of the unemployed.

We also hope that both your public and private sectors will help us to
address the urgent issues of education and training, in particular to raise the
levels of productivity without which it would be impossible to have a modern and
an internationally competitive economy.

Together, we have to confront another particular matter which has to do with
a false perception of what South Africa is.

This has to do with our classification as a middle income country. This
impact on the issue whether we can receive overseas development assistance or
not.

The actual reality of South Africa is, that, beyond the aggregate statistics,
the majority of our population, which happens to be black, lives in conditions
of dire poverty.

The situation which these millions face is not catastrophic in quantitative
terms, but also of a crisis nature in a qualitative and structural sense.

In reality, we face a situation of the coexistence within one country of a
first world and a third world economy.

The aggregate statistics disguise the reality of structural poverty and
endemic underdevelopment to which the majority of the population is
condemned.

This is possible because so rich are the few that are rich that it becomes
impossible to see that the poor exist at all.

We raise this matter because it will be necessary that we get your support to
persuade the OECD, GATT, the UNDP and similar organisations, that in dealing
with South Africa, we are dealing with a developing country.

As you know, this is critically relevant to the issue of how you and other
developed countries will handle such issues as development assistance, soft
loans and market access as they relate to a democratic South Africa.

Related to this is the challenge to define the relationship between
democratic South Africa and the European Community, our largest international
economic partner.

To arrive at the correct framework with regard to this matter, will require
that you, as parliamentarians who understand what needs to be done really to end
the system of apartheid, should use your influence and the influence of your
parties to get the European Community to enter into a mutually beneficial
agreement with the new South Africa, as soon as is practicable and feasible.

With regard to these socio-economic matters, we are also convinced that it is
important that the mass anti-apartheid movement of this country should, in
addition to opposing the apartheid system and maintaining the pressure for
speedy movement forward to democratic change, also look for ways and means by
which it could assist with regard to the developmental issues that face us.

We are therefore very keen that there should be established person-to-person
relations between our peoples, so that those who spent their lives fighting the
apartheid system should, at the non-governmental level, use their considerable
energies to generate the resources, which will enable the ordinary people of
this country to remain engaged in the struggle to make South Africa into the
country which all of us would like it to be.

We are convinced that a genuinely democratic South Africa will be your
reliable partner as the international community continue to grapple with such
critical matters as a democratic world order, human rights, development, peace
and the protection of the environment.

We therefore believe that it is as much in your interest as ours to ensure
that we move forward as speedily as possible to arrive at the point where we do
indeed become a democratic country.

A few days ago we bade farewell a to a man very dear to me, our former
President, Oliver Tambo, who many of you knew.

I was very pleased and moved by the presence of very high level international
delegations at Oliver's funeral.

Their participation in this dignified and solemn occasion was both befitting
the status of Oliver Tambo and also said to us that the peoples of the world
remain true to their pledge that they will stand with us until the apartheid
crime against humanity is a thing of the past.

We count you among these millions who are true friends and dependable
allies.

Thank you.