S/PV.2056 Security Council

Nigeria began its term of office as a member of the Security Council at the beginning of 1978. At the same time, it assumed the presidency of this important organ of the United Nations. Thus both an honour and a responsibility have been placed on our shoulders-a responsibility which we accept with the promise to carry it out with dedication. 2. In presiding over this first meeting of the Council in 1978, I am happy to welcome the other new members: Bolivia, Czechoslovakia, Gabon and Kuwait. I am sure that I express the feeling of all the members of the Council when I pay tribute to the representatives of the five outgoing members, Benin, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Pakistan, Panama and Romania, for the contributions they made during their term of membership to the Council’s efforts to maintain international peace and achieve international justice. 3. On behalf of the members, I wish to express the Council’s deep appreciation to the Minister for External Affairs of Mauritius, Sir Harold Walter, and the Permanent Representative of Mauritius, Mr. Ramphul, for having very admirably guided the work of the Council during the month of December 1977. 4. Now I should like to seek the indulgence of the Council in permitting me to make some remarks in my inaugural statement as representative of NIGERIA. 5. We joined the Council because we believed that our modest contributions would further boost international action for a constructive and realistic solution of the problems facing mankind in southern Africa. Nigeria and Africa are very much concerned that the Security Council, which has special responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, should take effective action this year, since to postpone effective steps would be tantamount to missing the last train to peace and stability in the region. 6. I am confident that, as the Council sets about its programme of work in the new year, members will continue to bear in mind during the deliberations in this august body the supreme necessity of placing in clear perspective at all times the moral principles of natural justice, equality, freedom and human dignity which constituted the motivating spirit behind the founding of this noble Qrganization in the hope of bringing and guaranteeing international peace and security to a world that had barely survived a colossal genocidal conflict. 7. I feel compelled to draw attention to the spirit of the San Francisco Conference in the hope that, even at this eleventh hour, members of the Council-in particular the Western Powers which, undoubtedly, have political leverage in regard to the unfolding events in southern Africa-will fulfil their obligation to the international community, an obligation that comes pari passu with the privileged position they have consistently enjoyed in this body, by arresting the current dgngerous slide into a racial war in the region. 8. Please permit me to dilate briefly on some of the events in the region in the past few weeks which continue to reinforce our fears that the racist minority r6gime at. Salisbury and its fanatical mentors at Pretoria are in no mood to listen to the voice of reason in their weird pursuit of their inhuman policies of naked brutality and wanton oppression against the majority African population or their criminal armed incursions into neighbouring sovereign independent African States-justified again and again by the obnoxious doctrine of “hot pursuit”. 9. Members of the Council will recall that on 23 November, the very day that Anthony Parker, Secretary of the Rhodesian Ministry of Combined Operations, said that Rhodesian army atrocities were being investigated, that 10. We in Nigeria have always believed in the peaceful resolution of conflicts, and it is on that basis and acting in good faith that we considered the Anglo-American pro posals on Rhodesia as a basis for negotiation in spite of some of their glaring inadequacies, At all times, during most meetings here at the United Nations and in private consultations with the parties sponsoring a negotiated settlement, we have inquired about how Smith would be removed. Our inquiries were not answered or, at best, merely provoked ambiguous responses. Our fears were confirmed when the Anglo-American initiative suddenly lost steam with Smith’s announcement that he was seeking “possibly better ways” of ensuring white confidence. 11. The most logical deduction regarding the shameless drama emanating from Salisbury is that the acts of military aggression against Mozambique, which for some months now have been routine, were calculated to cripple the capacity of the liberation forces to resist an internal settlement. The stalling of the Anglo-American initiative cannot but be seen as a tactical move to permit Smith to try his hand at, a so-called internal settlement, so that the international community and the Security Council are faced with a fait accompli as it were. 12. Yesterday’s reported announcement to the effect that the rebet leader might declare that a settlement had been reach.ed with some African leaders inside Rhodesia-at a time when Ambassador Andrew Young and British Foreign Secretary David Owen were slated to meet Patriotic Front leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe in Malta on the modalities for a cease-fire in the war in Rhodesia-was hardly an accident. The Malta conference has been used throughout this month to block action here in the Security Council. The strategy is indeed easy to comprehend. Western objectives in Rhodesia, as in the whole of southern Africa, have never changed. What has emerged is a switch in the strategy designed to achieve the same objectives and preserve the same interests, 13. I should, however, like to sound a note of warning here: no settlement which is inconsistent with the genuine aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe has the siightest chance of taking root, The Security Council must rise above sectional interests and act fast and firmly if Rhodesia is to be prevented from sliding further down the precipice into a bloody racial war which will only further inten@ the hardships and sufferings of the people. I sincerely hope that those who aided and abetted Smith in his flagrant defiance of the international community will now pause and reflect on their past deeds and stop just short of the final catastrophe, which can only spread disaster and ruin throughout the Territory. 14. The pattern in Namibia is in no way different. All sorts of red herrings have been raised by the racist regime al: 15. The racists pretended to terminate the notorious proceedings in the Turnhalle conference which would have saddled Namibians with an unworkable constitution, effectively polarizing political control along ethnic lines. Such a constitution, which meant that Parliament could act only by ethnic consensus, is reminiscent of the liberum veto-the so-called rule of unanimity that crippled the Polish Government in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It would have been extremely hard, if not impossible, for Namibia to act as one nation. The country would really have been a tribal confederation, without the slightest chance of changing the property and other laws that assure white-minority domination. 16. Now the Pretoria rCgime plans to achieve the same objectives ostensibly abandoned at the Tumhalle by resuscitating them and bringing them in through the back door in a so-called internal K-‘.=” .ion. To sell this glamorous deception to the international community, the racists have promised free elections for a new Namibian Government and agreed to permit United Nations observers. But the cardinal provisions of resolution 385 (1976), including the withdrawal of the racist military and paramilitary forces to create the right political climate for free and fair elections, are yet to be implemented, Undoubtedly, the Pretoria regime is hoping, through its policy of recalcitrance and brazen refusal to fulfi proper conditions for a peaceful poll, to exclude both SWAP0 and the United Nations from the election. 17. In such an event, the international community will be confronted by an election premised on an ethnic constitution that SWAP0 rejects, one involving no political figures with a real national base. Even now, SWAP0 has genuine apprehensions as to the reliability of South Africa’s promise to grant political freedom. Only last December, all the party leaders were suddenly arrested and SWAP0 meetings were broken up by racist hirelings and thugs. A year ago, Mr. Vorster sold a dummy to the international community by pretending that he had decided to get rid of Namibia in order to ease international pressure against South Africa. NOW it has become clear that he is determined to defy the whole world on this issue, as on his policies of racism and repression. If we wish to look for examples of such arrant defiance, we do not have to look far, for just before the opening of last year’s session-the thirty-second session-of the General Assembly Vorster served notice of his evil intent and shook his fist at the 19. In South Africa itself, the racist regime, intoxicated, as it were, by its recent hollow electoral victory based on an all-white franchise sce~ns determined to utilise every and all means at its disposal to maintain the obnoxious aparrlrcid system. 1 need not recall the ugly rhetoric used and the inflammatory statements made by Vorster and members of his ruling Nationalist Party during last year’s election campaign. Some sections of the international press had tried, prior to the elections, to hoodwink us by suggesting that Vorster’s strategy for the clcctions, including his call on the whites to reject the policy of interfcrencc in South AFrica’s internal affairs by giving him a resounding victory, was designed to strengthen his hand to enable him to institute much-needed reforms in the apartheid system, 20. If there were any lingering doubts as to the real intentions of the racists, they were instantly dispelled in a blare of renewed acts of repression, bannings, indiscriminate dctcntions, kangaroo trials, numberless cases of torture hangings and the quiet elimination of the white opponents of upmth’d, like Mr. Richard Turner, a 36-ycarold political science professor at Natal University. 21. The sl~am inclucst into Stcvc Biko’s death is one case in point which has finally convinced the racists’ most ardent supporters that the country is now truly run on evil lines. The suppression and distortion of evidence which chaructcrized the entire proceedings were executed with undisguised abandon and gross insensitivity to a possible moral pronouncement by the international community. JJI spite of the plea of the counsel for the Fiko family, Mr. Sidney Kentridge, to the cffcct that a verdict which absolved Vorstcr’s terrorist security force of any complicity or even negligence in Biko’s death would be tantamount to a licence to abuse or maim hapless and defenceless persons with impunity, and even against the weight of the overwhelming cvidcnce painst~akingly catalogued against Biko’s heartless gaolers, the verdict of the magistrate was that no one was to bla~ne for Bike’s death. And, as if to make tllc verdict even more painful to the Biko family and the generality of the African population, Biko’s brother Khaya and his cousin Solomon were arrested without any visible charges and unceremoniously hauled away to the Same dctcntion camp where Biko had met his untimely death. 22. Those of us watching the South African drama like one endless nightmare were hardly taken aback by the verdict. The magistrate is a civil servant who is ultimately responsible to James Kruger, the racist Minister of Justice, who earlier had told a shocked world that Biko’s death in prison had left him cold. Taking a cue from that callous 23. The racist regime, in flagrant violation of resolutions of the General Assembly, has persisted in the balkanization of South Africa, as is evident in the granting of so-called independence on 6 December 1977 to the bantustan of Bophuthatswana. Members of the Council arc undoubtedly aware that the establishment of the bantustans is part of a11 articulately devised scheme-indeed, another diabolical t&ct of the apart/m2 system designed to perpetuate white domination in the 87 per cent of the country which is responsible for 97 per cent of the gross domestic product. This nefarious plan relegates the Africans to 13 per cent of the land, divided into uneconomic and disjointed reserves. It is meant to segregate Africans into “buffer states” and use them as “cannon fodder” as the wave of freedom rumbles along from the Limpopo to the Cape. 24. The world’s response, rcflccted in Security Council resolutions 417 (1977) and 418 (1977)-the former condemning South Africa’s acts of repression and the latter imposing an arms embargo 011 the racists--seems to have been counterproductive since the over-all effect has been to make the racists intensify their policies of repression and rcorganize the domestic industries towards the attainment of self-sufficiency in the production of armaments. 2.5. Now the question is: what steps can the Security Council take? That is a question which has been raised in the Council time and again in respect of the excesses of the South African Government in past years. We have now gone beyond the stage of merely expressing our grave concern over such wanton destruction of human lives, which has since become routine in South Africa against the majority African population in that unhappy country. The situation now obtaining in the territory is even worse than the situation last November, when the Council took the first bclatcd step under Chapter VI1 of the Charter against the uparthek~ r6gime. Everyone agrees that the racists will need credits, bank loans and fresh invcstmcnts in order to gear domestic military industries into the realm of sclf-sufficiency. South Africa’s Wcstcrn backers can act in token of their good faith by taking immediate measures calculated to block such a fresh infusion of capital, which cannot but frustrate and render ineffcctivc the noble objectives of the Council in adopting resolution 418 (1977). That is not all. My delegation believes that unconscionable regimes like the ones at both Salisbury and Pretoria have become sacred cows which cannot bc touched. 26. Western interests can still be preserved if the West terminates its links with the illegal regime at Salisbury and canner firmly to the side of natural justice, equality and freedom in its dealings with South Africa in conformity with Western ideals which have been espoused with manifest consistency for generations. It is also within the 27. The year 1978 is a crucial one which poses the Council its greatest challenge to date. Nigeria and the rest of Africa look to it for support in staving off a fratricidal and racial war in both Rhodesia and Namibia that would only bring disaster and tragedy to all people in the region. Internal solutions designed to protect certain group interests but forged in flagrant disregard of the genuine aspirations of all peoples of the area to genuine independence are doomed to fail. Far from being faced by a fait accompli, as the protagonists expect and hope, the Council may well be toying with a latent bomb which, on explosion, is likely to cause untold havoc in the entire area. The Council has an abiding responsibility to preserve international peace and security. ! hope it will live Up to international expectations and Africa’s legitimate aspirations concerning issues of common interest to us all, My delegation hopes that members will be forthcoming with progressive ideas that can effectively halt the dangerous slide into a racial confrontation in the entire southern African region, with a view to strengthening mankind’s confidence in the Council’s ability to fulfil the purposes and objectives enshrined in the Charter. 28. In conclusion, I should like to place on record Nigeria’s profound appreciation of the efforts of the Secretary-General, who, during his recent travels, has been able to inject fresh momentum into the cause of the relaxation of tension in the world. I hope members of the Council will co-operate in strengthening his efforts, since we cannot really claim to establish and guarantee international peace and security so long as regional conflicts continue to deteriorate and raise the spectre of big-Power confrontation. Adoption of the agenda i%e agenda was adopted. The question of South Africa: (al Letter dated 25 January 1978 from the Permanent Representatives of Gabon, Mauritius and Nigeria to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/12.538); (bj Note by the Secretary-General (S/12536)

Members of the Council have before them document S/12539, which contains the text of a letter dated 25 January from the representatives of Gabon, Mauritius and Nigeria which reads as follows: “We, the undersigned members of the Security Council, have the honour to request that, during its meetings devoted to consideration of ‘The question of South Africa’, the Council extend an invitation under rule 39 of its provisional rules of procedure to Mr. Donald Woods, former Editor of the South African East London Daily Dispatch. ”

I wish to inform members of the Council that I have also received a letter dated 26 January from, the representatives of Gabon, Mauritius and Nigeria which reads as follows: “We, the undersigned members of the Security Council, have the honour to request that, during its meetings devoted to consideration of ‘The question of South Africa’, the Council extend invitations under rule 39 of its provisional rules of procedure to Mr. M. J. Makatini of the African National Congress and Mr, David M. Sibeko, observer-representative of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.” This letter will be issued as document S/12543. If I hear no objection, I shall take it that the Council agrees to the request and; at the appropriate time, I shall invite Mr. Makatini and Mr. Sibeko to make their statements. It was so decided. 3 1. The PRESIDENT: The Security Council is meeting today in response to the request made on behalf of the African Group in a letter dated 25 January from the representatives of Gabon, Mauritius and Nigeria (S/12538]. Members of the Council also have before them document S/12536, which contains the text of a letter dated 19 January from the Chairman of the Special Committee Against Apartheid to the Secretary-General. 32. The first speaker is Mr. Donald Woods, to whom the Council has extended an invitation under rule 39. I welcome him and invite him to take a place at the Council table to make his statement. 33. Mr. WOODS: I think it may be of interest to you, Mr. President, and to the other members of the Security Council to know that, although since 19 October all newspapers and radio and television in my country have been forbidden to quote any words 1 may utter or write, I understand that today special permission has been given them by the Pretoria Government to quote what I am about to say here. No doubt the intention behind the decision is to convey to the white people of South Africa what a traitor I am to the white race in South Africa. But, regardless of this motive, I personally welcome the chance for the people of South Africa, including the whites, to know what I am going to say in this forum. 34. I speak in several capacities. First, I speak to the Council as an African, as a descendant of several generations of Africans, and as one who by commitment as well as by birth is proud to bc a son of Africa. 35. When I, as a white African, had to flee with my family from our country in order to continue my own fight against apartheid, the helpers who guided me across the border to freedom were black; the hands that reached out in welcome to Legotho, to Botswana and to Zambia were black; black 36. But I speak also in another capacity-as one of the many millions all over our globe who are separated from our territorial birthright. We answer to many names. We are called refugees; we are called exiles; we are called displaced persons. Driven from our homes by hatred and made travellers by tyranny, we wander beyond our boundaries in search of brotherhood and justice. It is a measure of the progress mankind has made that most of us find that brotherhood. And it is a measure of the progress mankind still has to make, that we cannot abandon that search for justice. 37. The truth that flows from these conclusions points to the third capacity in which I speak to the Council-as a member of the family of mankind. Much is made of the baser characteristics of human nature-the selfishness, the cynicism, the treachery and the cruelty of which we human beings are all capable. But I have seen throughout my life such an abundance of the higher qualities of which human beings are capable that I must pay a tribute here, before the cabinet council of mankind, to the heights which I have seen the human spirit reach. In my own country, I have witnessed acts of self-sacrifice, of valour and nobility whose recounting would move the hearts of men of all nations. They were heights of response to situational challenge, and that response is within all men everywhere. 38. Nobility of human spirit is not the preserve of any one nation, and because it is the ultimate expression of human love, and because human love is most ordinarily manifested in the disposition of most people everywhere to ordinary friendliness-a disposition which I have noted in every one of the 33 countries of the world that I have been privileged to visit at various times during the past two decades-I am persuaded that the brotherhood of man is no unattainable myth but a practical reality that is achievable if we, the citizens of the world, will but pursue it with all the zeal of which we are capable. 39. Our technology today has broken the barriers of human credulity which stood firm only a generation ago. To give only one example, how many of our grandfathers would have declined to dismiss space travel as an unattainable myth? Yet to our children the concept no longer remains even in the realm of the bizarre. 40. Can we seriously doubt that the achievements of our technology are massively exceedable by the limitless capacity of the human spirit to soar far beyond these merely physical goals? We cannot yield to such doubts. We cannot surrender to such cynicism. If we do, then let the United Nations Organization be disbanded and let all men 42. This challenge implies both an attitude and an implementation of that attitude in practical terms. This means that not only must the goal of human brotherhood be held up at all times to all men, but that their chosen leaders should constantly keep before them practical programmes to be examined, debated and acted upon for the increasing implementation of that goal. 43. It is my belief that the vast majority of the people of the world are ready to follow such a lead if only the issues and the facts can constantly be made available to them and the decision-sharing processes opened up to them and that the strongest power which mankind can harness to achieve this goal of human brotherhood is the power of moral force. 44. But before any call for the effective use of moral force can succeed, there must first be a refutation of the argument of those who dismiss the power of moral force as ineffective in the realm of international affairs. Such a refutation is not difficult. Indeed, this contention is refuted by history itself. And for the prime example which history affords of the effective use of moral force, we have to thank a great man of Africa, and indeed of South Africa. This man, one of the greatest men in history, was a product of his South African background and experience. I refer to the incomparable Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. 45. When this Natal lawyer left South Africa in his middle age to become the father of modern India and a hero of the whole human race, he took with him and was able to unleash the awesome political power he had evolved through his clashes with that other South African genius, Jan Smuts, who played a leading role in the formation of the United Nations Organization. That political power was passive resistance. Without ordering the firing of a single bullet, without commandirlg a single soldier, Mahatma Gandhi freed hundreds of millions of people from colonial rule. That is moral force. That is the prime example of the massive use of a united ideal to generate moral force. 46. I want now to suggest the generation of such amoral force in pursuit of a goal long set for itself by the Organization-the liberation of the people of my country from the policy of statutorily-entrenched racism known as apartheid. In doing so, I want to plead for a new approach towards apartheid in the United Nations, and for a new understanding of the complex difficulties which all my countrymen face in regard to this issue. I want to plead here the case for South Africa, and by that statement I mcan that I want to present here the real case for the real South Africa. 48. It has to be acknowledged that race prejudice exists in many parts of the world, but the unique affront which ap&leid represents to all mankind is the fact that it is only h South Africa that racism is institutionalized through actual statute law. 49. I do not have to detail here the evils of apartheid. Those evils are well enough known and UniVerSdlY COI+ demned. But I do have something new to say about apartheid, and that is that the whole issue has now assumed a deadly urgency not only for the people of South Africa but also for wider international relationships. 50. The Organization has already agreed on the principle that apartheid is a threat to international relationships, and therefore to world peace, but I am more concerned now with its disastrous effects within my country. My concern is for the preservhtion of peace to the fullest extent possible within South Africa itself and for the saving of as many lives as possible within South Africa itself, of young blacks and young whites alike, because they all can be and one day must be brothers of the same nationhood. 51. I therefore ask that United Nations action against upurfheid should be positive, constructive and non-violent. I also ask that it should be practical and effective. And when I plead for a new approach to this end, what I am pleading for is a new synthesis of response from the factions this issue has created in the past. 52. What is needed now is a realistic unity of purpose among alI nations on this issue, with a view to the adoption of a moderate but effective cotirse of action which alone can save the youth of South Africa from the horrors of a racial civil war. And the adoption of that course of action depends now on the nations of the West. 53. For many years, and for a variety of reasons, the Western Powers have resisted the implementation of effec. tive Punitive measures against the Government of South b&a. But the time has now come for the West to reassess its past attitudes. 54. Effective punitive measures need not and should not be extreme, but they have to be sufficiently severe to bring the Pretoria r&me to its senses, or certain tragedy wgl overtake the people of South Africa. 55. This implies the urgent reconsideration of the institution of economic sanctions, and those who oppose tllis on the grounds of attendant economic hardship to blacks should take note of the fact that the most authentic black Vokesmen in South Africa have consistently stated that they would Prefer such hardship to a continuation of a to avoid a firmer comIylitIllCIlt 011 thiS kSUc. roll’)* Will hC failing iIl their moral duty to ~l;~sp tile uufStrctch2d 1tilIld 01 the t]lird world in its re:lcjlirlg OlJt for rLX~$!Ilitii~ll 111’ thC obligations of n comIllorl hIIll~~I~~~~, and will :IIstr 1111 I’;lilirtg tile peol,Ie of my coutltry -white anti bl;tck irr their llclur of mortal danger. 57. ‘j’]le family of m;lIl is gr<1willg ClCjsCr iiIld ttlC Ldd cllauvinisms l]efiIlod by Il;~tioIlnl huurlthrics a’1’ iIlcrwsiIl~iy seen to llave less sigIlificaIlW. The rnylh th;tl srly ccwfltrj could flourisll iIl is&ItioIl is irlcrcasin~~y CX~~~SC’~ ;IS iI fallacy, Indeed, it is surprising tIIiI1 it has pcrsi!Xt!tl 50 Ic~I&!, because history 118s SK) often rn:ftk n~rnsCn,K, of’ thC itlC;r th;lt frontier posts were the natural irihcritancc l)I’ miirrkinrl. 58. The old belief that C;IC~ tribc”s lIiclll\w!hip WiIS defined forever by ;tccitkrttS Of birth llIld ~Lftl~:I’;l~~~I~~ ililti that each race has a permanently ordainud turritttr), is now rightly consigned to the realm of ithsurdity. In hist\lr)s it 1~1s long been an absurdity highlighted hy the hi& incidc‘ncc of intense nationalisms articulatctl hy foreign-hrVn ICiIllCl’S in the lands of their adoption. Nopt&W was Hot IIorri in France; Stalin was not born in Russia; do Valer;t w;1s not born in Ireland; Hitler was not born in German>-; V’c‘rw~Icrd was not born in South Africa. ‘I’otl;ty thcrc is INI ltrrlgcr blk of white Africans being L’Europeans*‘. .Ad jrlst ;IS tcldily there are white Africans, SO thcrc arc today hhck bhghtlmen and black Americans rccognized and itlcntilicd niorc LIS members of those nations than ;IS rncrnhcrs of’ iI rm. 59, As mankincl progresses, so the Family of III;I~I thws closer together. And just as a mcmher of any fl~ily nlight have to be chastised for his owrl good and in coristxlmrux be drawn closer into the body of the flunily. so twhy I believe that the rulers of my country lrovc to fxc the concerted chastisement of the united family ol‘ 1t1;ui ifGcy are to be brought peacefully intro its hrtrthcrht)~ld. Wtrcther this can be done in time to prevent larl:c-scalc wiolcncc in South Africa now depends, IIS I have said, on the West. Can the nations of the West decline the appeal it’ t11c rest of’ tlrc world community? 60. To the Americans I Say this: C’nn t11c hxl wllicll produced Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and which fought a bitter civil war so long ;lgrt over the issue 01 human enslavement, seriously consitlcr tftat its conirriitmcnt to the central idea upm which the (~~lnstitution 0t’ thcsc United States was founded, IIBIIIL’I~, human litxrty, 11t~t now be confined and go no further than Ltifr(\lIi sea to shining sea” ? 61. TO the Frwh I WY this: You wcrc ;lle first n;ltion in histo~ to dedicate yourselves to the precept tll:it the few maY not arrogate to themsclvcs the right ttr rule the ml\ny On grounds related solely to heredity. YUU were the first to articulate the constitutional concept of liberty, ~CI[lality and fraternity. It would be unworthy of I::ranco to be the last to he uP to this concept in the counci[s c)ftllp world. 63. To the Canadians I say this: The black people of South Africa are grateful to you for taking the lead in commencing the process of dissociation from their rulers. This action by you has had a valuable effect on black morale in my country, and the growing hope there is that your example will be followed by others whose present involvement is more extensive. 64. To the British I say this: You have evolved the most civilized society I have encountered; you have contributed more to human freedom than any other nation with an imperial past and you have enacted more reforms within your society at less cost in human blood than any other ancient State. But the achievement for which you will be best remembered is that you once stood alone and turned back the onslaught of a more powerful foe whose success, had you wavered, could have led to the enslavement of most of mankind. Do not stand alone now against those who wish to end the enslavement of others. 65. I should like to follow these appeals to the Western Powers with a challenge to the ideals of Western society. That challenge is this: Never again condemn the Vorster Government if the basis of your reluctance to bring any particular pressure against it is your own self-interest, for that is Vorster’s basis as well. But, as an admirer of the Western ideals of democratic liberty, I expect that, in the light of recent events in South Africa, there must now be an end to Western hesitancy on the score of positive response. 66. During the past few months, the actions of the South African authorities have removed all doubt as to the direction in which they are heading. In killing Steve Biko, whose personal friend I had the honour to be, the regime became responsible for the death of the forty-fifth black victim of the security laws authorizing imprisonment without trial, charge or even accusation. And shortly after this outrage-an outrage made all the more outrageous by the fact that Steve Biko was the most important political leader among our people-the regime acted to repress the final remaining area of effective criticism of u~artheid-the press. 67. Another valued friend of mine, Percy Qoboza, editor of The World newspaper, was detained without trial and is in detention as I speak to you, and his newspaper was closed down by the State on 19 October. I was banned on the same day, and one of my reporters, Thenjiwe Mtintso, already banned, was and remains detained without being informed of what she is thought to have done to deserve 68. Some degree of criticism is still allowed in the press, but only if it is ineffective and does not constitute a significant embarrassment to the regime. 69. As to the implementation of apartheid, this will clearly intensify with the further imposition of the policy of bantustanization, whereby the regime seeks to drive territorial wedges of division between the tribal groups among the blacks-a policy which would be comprehensively rejected by most blacks in South Africa if they were ever given a chance to signify this by vote following an open canvassing of the issue. 70. The commitment given to the Organization in October 1974 [180Oth meeting/ by South African spokesman Roelof Botha that South Africa would move away from discrimination based on race was a piece of public deceit. He was playing with words, because what he had in mind was the “homelands” policy of bantustanization which aims at creating the fiction that the various tribal groups of South Africa would each be accorded so-called nationhood so that apartheid discrimination would be based on so-called nations rather than races. 71. This semantic formula envisages a day when all South Africa’s blacks, being regarded as citizens of “foreign” bantustans, would have no claim to equal civil rights in so-called white South Africa, enabling Ambassador Botha to proclaim before the General Assembly that there was no longer any discrimination against his black fellow-citizens because he no longer had black fellow-citizens. 72. In contrast to Mr, Botha’s public pronouncements here, I can tell you that in his speeches at home during the recent all-white election, in which barely 10 per cent of our people chose the entire nation’s Government, this same Mr. Botha uttered some of the most extreme defiances of the very world opinion he was courting so fervently here with his dramatic declaration in 1974. 73. I was among those guilty of being taken in by his words at that time. I was among those who welcomed his speech and applauded Premier Vorster’s statement of “give us six months” and wrote then that these were welcome statements which deserved to be taken at face value and that, therefore, Mr. Vorster’s Government should be given a chance to implement these undertakings. Today, however, we know that it was a vain hope based on distorted meanings being given to ordinary words. 75. I have to tell you all that the level of black anger in my country today is so high, and the determination of most white voters-as illustrated in the recent all-white electionto resist fair compromise is so strong that both sides are on a collision course towards a racial civil war. Unless there is concerted action by the world community, such a tragedy is a real probability. 76. In the name of millions of my people who cannot speak for themselves at home or abroad, I ask the world community to intensify as soon as possible a policy of ostracism of the Pretoria rhgime. The first necessity is for the co-operation of the nations of the West in following the lead so long given here on this issue by the African and, in particular, the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. The first priority of the Western nations should, I submit, be an immediate policy of disengagement-disengagement from diplomatic, cultural, sporting, trade, military, investment and general economic ties now existing. 77. To those Western industrialists and investors who plead that their money is benefiting blacks in South Africa and who oppose disengagement on the ground that this would harm the economic well-being of blacks in that part of the world, my reply is this: Put your money where it can do even more good, while helping essentially the same beneficiaries; put your money into Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland; pour your philanthropic millions into these poor territories whose unemployed masses at the moment have to seek work in apartheid territory. 78. To those who argue that further pressure would only serve to drive the white South Africans into a laager, my reply is: they arc already in the laager. Their State-controlled television, radio and Afrikaans-language newspapers have seen to that. Indeed, during his recent election campaign, Mr. Vorster gained many votes by defying the world to, as he put it, “do your damnedest”. I think that challenge should be accepted. 79. I repeat, however, that such acceptance should be moderate and non-violent. I think that a.ll the nations of the world should consider a full range of psychological pressures against the supporters of apartheid. One form of such pressure could be a refusal to grant visas to known supporters of apartheid, or at least to those who refuse to sign a declaration condemning it. There would be considerable moral force behind such a measure. 80. It would be a mistake to believe Mr. Vorster’s rhetoric when he shouts into radio microphones at his party rallies that he and his followers do not care about world opinion. They care considerably, and the only reason why world opinion has up to now not had the effect of modifying 82. International pressure against the Vorster Government should have a positive, realistic and specific aim in view, and that aim should be not to destroy the assets of my country nor to harm any of its people but, in their own interests, to bring them to their senses. Such a positive, realistic and specific aim should be the aim of bringing them to the negotiating table with real representatives of the black majority. The Vorster Government should be pressured in1.o calling a genuine national convention to be attended by the chosen leaders of the various communities there. The rCgime could not claim that the world was trying to prescribe internal policies to the people of South Africa if the demand were limited and aimed at the goal of merely bringing them to the negotiating table with the majority of their own countrymen. This would involve the process of having the real spokesmen of the black majority chosen by the people, and this in turn would involve setting free Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, all the political prisoners on Robben Island, all the political prisoners throughout the country, all detainees, all banned persons and all the legitimate spokesmen of the political movements, wheth:r banned or underground, inside the country or in exile. If the regime claims that they arc ordinary criminals and not political prisoners, let the rCgime prosecute them in open courts under normal law. 83. If concerted international action based on such moral force, backed by such practical action, is aimed at the Vorster Government with this goal of bringing it to the negotiating table, most, of my countrymen will begin at last to see the dawn of liberty in that unhappy land. 84. Since apartheid was first legislatively programmed ,in 1948, an entire generation of black South Africans has been born into it and has suffered under it, and far too many have died violently under it. The time has surely come 110 begin the only practical process that can peacefully end their oppression and, appropriately, the initiative for the commencement of that process now lies in the hands of those countries whose constitutions most emphasize the principle of individual liberty, namely, the Western democracies. 85. Lastly, 1 appeal to the Security Council, in the light of the United Nations declaration making apartheid a crime against humanity, to consider opening a register of known criminals pre-eminently guilty of excesses in the furtherance of such crime. To ensure that such censure will carry the full weight of international moral force and to prevent such a measure from becoming a method of pursuing 86. I believe that the scope of jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice should be widened to include the power to add names to the proposed register of such international criminals. I also believe that the mere listing of their names in the proposed register, together with prohibition of all international travel or movement by them under risk of prosecution, would constitute a powerful sanction. 87. It will be realized that crimes against humanity are committed in countries other than South Africa, and one trusts that complainants from the countries concerned would apply to the General Assembly for permission to present the appropriate indictments. But, as a South African, I am primarily concerned at this stage with the racial policy in my country which has already been declared a crime against humanity and, in the name of the many millions of my countrymen who have suffered under the unique crime of apartheid for so many years, I claim the right to initiate the process whereby its arch-perpetrators may go down in history as the first to be branded individually by the court of the family of man for all posterity. Let those who most fear the implications of such a register cast the first veto. 88. These, then, are the various ways in which effective moral force can be mobilized against those who have affronted more than two thirds of humanity by elevating their own esteem of white skin pigmentation above all considerations of human decency. Their actions are an outrage not only against their victims but against all people everywhere; just as their continued impunity creates one of the most divisive issues straining international relationships today, so would the new sense of international unity flowing from concerted action to end this affront to all mankind result in a new forward surge towards a wider world peace.

Do any members of the Council wish to address questions to Mr. Woods? 91. The statement made by Mr. Woods, a white South African, has special significance for the Council and is welcomed by my delegation as a very useful contribution to the struggle against apartheid waged by the United Nations. We find it difficult to comprehend how a minority of 4 million whites can expect in this day and age to dominate more or less indefinitely a majority of 18 million blacks and others, politically and economically, by denying them equal rights of citizenship. Are they perhaps taking a calculated risk? How long can they seriously expect to get away with this sort of exploitation, unless they are confident of the support of some important countries for trade and commerce? 92. My first question to Mr. Woods is this. Does he think that economic sanctions against South Africa will work and be effective and, if so, how soon will santitions make an impact on the rigime? How will the African population be affected by the sanctions? Will it welcome them? 93. Secondly, Mr. Woods spoke of the need to generate moral force on a massive scale to overthrow the apartheid rbgime. This would of course be possible in South Africa itself if Ieaders, both black and white, were free to organize pass&e resistance against apartheid. It seems to me, however, that the Pretoria regime locks up almost anyone who holds a different opinion, thereby depriving the black community of any effective leadership. In such a situation, does he think that this moral force that he speaks of should be generated and organized, in European and American countries in particular, as a mass campaign among their publics and their Governments so that they may collectively employ the method of passive resistance and non-cooperation against the Pretoria r8gime? 94. I should be very happy if Mr. Woods would throw some light on these various questions that have been troubling me, although I realize that, in the course of his statement, he did point to several possibilities in this direction. 95. Mr. WOODS: The reply to the first question is that the immediate effects of such a decision would be psychological. It would carry tremendous psychological weight with the Pretoria Government-the mere knowledge that all the countries of the world were united at last on the need to do this. On the other hand, if the imposition of total sanctions is considered to be too drastic a measure which might have no final outcome, then there exists the alternative of a selective and progressive set of graduated steps which could be correlated with specific demands, for example: “Do this by such and such a date or the following boycott or sanctions will be imposed”. So really what I am proposing when I speak of moral force here is the generation in the external world of massive psychological censure, the key word being “united”. Instead of the West putting the brakes on, and the third world and the East wanting one 96. The answer to the second question is that the economic effects on the blacks in South Africa would be minimal. I think it has been established that fewer than 2 per cent are employed in overseas-invested companies. Again, the effect would be tremendous psychologically. All the black leaders that I know-the genuine black leadershave always discounted the economic side of0 it and have said “We will look after our people. We would rather have that psychological censure from the external world and set that our own people will survive. We know what suffering is. We can survive the minimal suffering which could come from that.”

Mr. President, through you I wish to welcome warmly the very important statement made by Mr. Woods. There is one question I should like to put to Mr. Woods on a point on which he has not touched. 98. Mr. Woods has told us how the Western Powers have helped the racist Pretoria regime to maintain itself in power. For a long time, we were being told that this Western support for Pretoria stemmed from a policy of containing communism and protecting the important sea routes of the Indian Ocean. My question is: is this really so or was it just a cheap scare on the part of Pretoria to secure the support of Western Europe in perpetuating apartheid? 99. Mr. WOODS: The answer is: not so. In fact the irony of the situation is that the actions of the Pretoria Government have done more to promote the communist Litho in United Nations, New York Price: $U.S. 1.00 (or equivalent in other currencies) 78-700054anuary 1980--2,200

Mr. President, it is an honour for me, on behalf of the delegation of Bolivia, to extend to you our best wishes at this time when, as Commissioner for External Affairs of Nigeria, you are presiding over the first Security Council meeting of 1978. You are a distinguished leader of the new Africa. Your country and mine have joined hands in the struggle to raise living standards to a level of dignity and security befitting free men. Your presence as President is a good omen suggesting that we shall attain these lofty ideals. 102. As one of the new members of the Council that you were kind enough to welcome this afternoon, we should like to thank you for your kind words. Through you, we wish also to thank the members of the Council and we pledge the full co-operation of our Government in the efforts of this body to achieve the lofty goals of the Charter of the United Nations. 103. Finally, I should like to extend my best wishes to the representatives of Nigeria, Czechoslovakia, Gabon and Kuwait. Our good wishes also go to the outgoing countries, in particular to Panama. We shall try to be a worthy successor to that country and we shall do our utmost to further the work undertaken by it while it was a member of the Security Council. The meeting rose at 5 p.m.