South African History Online

London, 3 July 1990

Honourable Members of Parliament;
Ladies and Gentlemen.

We would like to express our thanks to you for according us the honour and
privilege to address you in this grand committee room. Over the last few weeks
we have had the honour and privilege of visiting several countries in Europe and
North America. It was a fighting tribute to the people of South Africa that we
were warmly received in all countries and addressed the European parliament, the
parliament of Canada, the joint session of the houses of congresses of the
United States of America and the joint session of the dial in the republic of
Ireland.

Today on the final leg of our tour before we return to the shores of Africa,
we have entered the citadel of the mother of parliaments . This has added
significance for us because we are all conscious of the very deep historic and
multi-faceted tiers between our country and Britain-ties which have left their
mark on our political and legal institutions, and indeed on the way we think and
work, and the language in which we largely communicate with each other.

This relationship has had two contradictory process -benefit and suffering.
Edmund Burke in 1790 stated that "people will not look forward to posterity who
never look backward to their ancestors". It is in this spirit that we painfully
recall that it was the intervention of superior armed English Soldiers that
finally led to the defeat of African Armies and tour dispossession; after the
Anglo Boer war, the founding fathers of the ANC came to England to petition the
Government and seek we gained was the ignominious act of Union of 1910, which
consecrated the apartheid state over and above the heads of our people.

Today we are in a process of transcending a relationship that was a product
of British imperial tradition. The situation demands a restricting of our
relations, which must be built on the positive aspects of our historical ties,
and on the basis of the principles of equality and mutual benefit.

We are deeply moved that today you honour our people by allowing us, who were
outcasts only yesterday, to experience if only briefly, 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 own destiny. Our humanity is enhanced 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 to you is indeed simple. Our people demand democracy. Our country
must be transformed into a United, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South
Africa. We demand the right of every adult South African to vote and have the
possibility to be elected to all organs of Government without discrimination on
the grounds of race, colour or sex.

We are determined that our country should be a multi-party democracy in which
the rights of all its people 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 rights, enforced by independent
judiciary.

We are committed to ensure that all our people enjoy equal rights to their
languages, culture and religious freedoms.

We also visualise a constitutional arrangements whereby there is devolution
of power to regional and local levels of Government to ensure the broadest
possible participation of the people in Governing themselves. However, given the
present South African realities, we are opposed to the idea that we should opt
for a Federal State. We refuse to accept that present fragmentation of our
country into Bantustans is a given fact, on which we should try to build a 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 are seriously committed to a new, non- racial democratic South Africa. It
is an ideal for which many of us went to prison, for which many have died in
prison cells, on the Gallows, and on the killing fields of our towns, Townships
and in the countries of Southern Africa. Are we correct to assume that we can
expect your total support in achieving the Universally accepted objectives that
we have outlined?

We are also determined that the political freedom of which we have spoken,
should go side with freedom from hunger, want and suffering. To institutionally
impose is to dehumanise them. In South Africa millions of our people have been
dehumanised by unbelievable poverty and deprivation. This injury is made that
more intolerable by the opulence of our White compatriots and the deliberate
distortion of the economy to maintain that opulence. It is therefore of vital
importance that we re-structure 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 redistribute such poverty. But we are
sure that you will all agree that a new democratic society will have to urgently
address the issue of the impoverishment of millions of our people. To achieve
our objectives to provide adequate housing, food, education, health services and
social security, we need a strong and growing economy. Given the apartheid
structure of the economy and the enormous needs of the people, it is inevitable
that a democratic Government will have to intervene in the economy. Clearly the
need for a public sector is one of the elements in the complex and multi-faceted
strategy of economic development and restructuring that we all seriously
consider. The point should also be understood that there is no self-regulating
mechanism within the South African economy which will, on its own, ensure growth
equity.

At the same time are conscious that the private sector is an engine of growth
and development, which is critical to the vitality of a future mixed economy in
South Africa. We are, therefore, committed to ensure that both South African and
foreign business people have confidence in the security of their investments,
are assured of a rate of return on their capital and business in conditions of
stability and peace.

We will need the support the international community to achieve the post
apartheid economic objectives, which are an intrinsic part of the process of the
relation of the human rights of the people of South Africa. Let me once again
repeat our firmly held conviction, that our future economic cooperation should
not be a relationship between donor and recipient, between a dependent and a
benefactor. We must ensure that the while we benefit from your resources in
terms of capital, Technology. Expertise and markets, you too must benefit from
this relationship. This will help us to ensure 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 gratitude. We are convinced that Southern Africa has
the human and material resources which will combine to give millions of our
people a bright future and which will make it profitable and worthwhile for the
international community to enter into a mutually beneficial system of
cooperation.

Distinguished Members Of Parliament

Successive generations in our country have known nothing but conflict,
tension and death. Peace is something we fight for but have yet experience. For
many decades we sought a peaceful resolution of the problems facing our country.
This was vigorously opposed by successive White Governments. Today a new dawn is
breaking. There is growing optimism that in our country who saw themselves as
the master race, have learnt the error of their ways. There is hope that they
have learnt the realised that tyranny is but the progenitor of the forces of its
own destruction. There is hope that perhaps, at last, these who sought to deny
the humanity of others, have understood that by that act they also dehumanised
themselves.

On the initiative of the ANC, the process to finding a political solution has
started. We consider it a victory for all South Africans that the meeting
between us and the South African Government took place in Cape Town in May. This
meeting made some progress in removing the obstacles to negotiations that we had
identified. We are determined to do everything possible to ensure that this
process is successfully completed.

At this stage we must repeat our conviction that t President De Klerk and his
colleagues are Men and Women of integrity who are committed to working with us
to find a political solution. However the road ahead is still fraught with major
challenges. Too many of our White compatriots are steeped in the ideology of
racism and fear democracy. Some of them are taking up arms in a desperate effort
to resist the inevitable change that must come.

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

The reality is that the apartheid system is still alive and very destructive.
The State's instruments of oppression, in particular the police, continue to
kill and maim the opponents of this system.

White neo-fascist groups openly carry out military exercise and have
threatened physically to liquidate all those it considers to be anti-apartheid.
They are reinforced by similarly armed Black vigilante groups, a phenomenon that
has reached intolerable proportions in Natal.

The consequences of this, continue to be felt not only within our borders but
through Southern Africa, especially in Mozambique and Angola. Peace will not
come to our country and region until the apartheid system is ended. Therefore we
still have a struggle ahead of us. This is not a time to 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
international pressure. sanctions were imposed to help us to get rid of a system
which has been declared a crime against humanity. Any premature and ill
considered move towards removing or 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 larger
and attempt to sabotage the processes of change. We appeal to you to cede the
prerogative to the people of South Africa to determine the moment when it will
be said that profound changes have occurred and irreversible progress achieved,
enabling you and the rest of the international community to lift sanctions.

I would like to take this opportunity to salute the British people. 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.

We salute and thank them all, political parties, the ante-apartheid movement,
the trade unions, the churches, non-governmental organisations, students and
intellectuals, elected representatives who serve in this parliament and
elsewhere, the children and many others who raised the flag of solidarity
because the knew that the absence of freedom for ourselves reduced their own
liberty as well. They knew that no person of conscience could stand aside as a
crime against humanity was being committed.

We are certain that the British people will stay the course with us, not only
as we battle on to end the apartheid system but also as we work to build happy,
peaceful and prosperous future for all the people of Southern Africa.

Friends:

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
the perspectives contained in the Harare 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 of May, 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 material assistance to help us conduct the extensive political work
among the 36 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.

Distinguished representatives of the people of the United Kingdom, history
has bestowed on us the honour to participate in the final struggle to end the
evil system of apartheid. A momentous time is in sight. It will not be long now
before we, as head of racism throughout the world is no more and that political
power has passed into the hands of the whole people.

Our people will exercise this power with all the sensitivity that is due in
our situation. Never should racism in our country and from whatever quarter,
raise its ugly head again. All South Africans, both Black and White, must build
a shared sense of nationhood in which all nations of vengeance and retribution
are impermissible. Our country must, by its actions, take its place among the
nations of the world as a champion of peace, a defender of freedom and
democracy, an enemy of poverty and human degradation.

As an expression of our common humanity, and not as an act of charity, we
call on you to walk the last mile with us.

We thank you for the campaign to secure our release from prison. You gave us
for the possibility to join hands with our people, with you and the rest of
humanity to bring about change in our country and our region, which even the
mute, but blood-stained stones in the killing fields of Southern Africa demand,
must come and must come now.

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.