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Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure to extend to you, in the name of the African National Congress, the warmest fraternal congratulations on your assumption of the presidency of the Council during the last month of this eventful year and on the eve of what we believe will be declared International Anti-Apartheid Year by the General Assembly at its thirty-second session. Indeed, we are singularly happy that you, a tested brother and comrade-in-arms, whose experience, dedication and skill as the doyen of the African ambassadors and the representative of a country whose active commitment to our struggle is well known, should assume this office at a time when the Council at long last appears to be poised for action against the apartheidregime.
The unanimous adoption of the resolution on the setting up of a Committee to monitor the implementation of resolution 418 (1977) marks the first but an extremely important point on our joint scoreboard. We are mindful and highly appreciative of the fact that this is the result of the magnificent and indefatigable role played by your two immediate predecessors, Mr. Jaipal of India and Mr. Kikhia of Libya, under whose able guidance the Council, depending on the political will of all parties concerned, has made considerable progress towards performing the task expected of it by the international community for decades now. Your outstanding qualities as a diplomat and freedom fighter have helped us to achieve the goal of our unanimous decision this morning. And as we approach International Anti-Apartheid Year, during part of which the Council will be presided over by Mr. Harriman, the Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheidand representative of Nigeria, whose illustrious head of State, General Obasanjo, has recently and solemnly committed his country to action not only against the apartheidregime but also against its collaborators, we are convinced that today`s decision is yet another landmark in ever-escalating international action towards the total ostracism of the Vorster regime.
I thank you most heartily for allowing me to speak on behalf of the African National Congress. Our position on resolution 418 (1977)is well known. We maintain that the content of that resolution is too little and has come too late, and this has been confirmed by a series of statements by the Pretoria regime`s authorities. But, as we said on the day it was adopted, we welcome it as constituting the basis for future and more meaningful action, such as economic sanctions under Chapter VII of the Charter and strict observance of the limited arms embargo it sets out to impose.
On the subject before us today, since our position has been repeatedly confirmed by the fascist Pretoria authorities, who openly boast of self-sufficiency and the assurance of continued supplies of war equipment, as the representative of China said this morning, quoting Botha, the Minister of Defence, we hold the strong view that this resolution is the last test of the sincerity of the Western countries.
The gravity of the military collaboration between some Western countries [and South Africa], of which the Council has been seized since 1963, was ably expressed by our late President Albert Luthuli when, in a statement addressed to the international community in general and to Britain in particular - then the major supplier of arms to South Africa - he said:
"To the nations and governments of the world, particularly those directly and indirectly giving aid to this contemptible regime, I say: Cast aside your hypocrisy and deceit; declare yourself on the side of oppression if that is your secret design. Do not think we will be deceived by your pious protestations so long as you actively support the tyranny in our land. The test is your stand on the principle: No arms for South Africa. No expression of concern, no platitudes about injustice will content us. The test is action - action against apartheid."
That statement was made in 1961 by Chief Luthuli, after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Later, he was assassinated in what we maintain and will soon prove were mysterious circumstances. Particularly now that the world is receptive to information about the brutal crimes committed by the apartheidregime since the Steve Biko case, we shall soon prove that Albert Luthuli, a man of great stature, was not hit by a train. We have been making a study of the case and we maintain that he was killed and then put on the railway line so that it could be declared that he had been killed in a train accident.
It is important to recall that, since Luthuli made that appeal, there has been a great deal of action in support and in defence of apartheidin the form of economic, diplomatic, military, cultural and nuclear collaboration, despite the countless General Assembly resolutions and the 1963 Security Council voluntary arms embargo. As the racist regime frantically stepped up its arms race in preparation for full-scale internal repression and external aggression, so did some Western Powers step up the delivery of sophisticated military hardware and the furnishing of licences to ensure the regime`s self-sufficiency and the perpetuation of apartheid, that unique racist system and instrument for super-exploitation which has now become an integral part of international imperialism.
So great is the scale of this collaboration that there is only one way for some Western countries to escape the verdict of first-degree active complicity, at what might very well be a South African Nuremberg after the holocaust the neo-Nazi Pretoria regime is being armed for by some of those Western countries. That way is to give their full co-operation in ensuring that the supervisory committee established under the resolution adopted this morning is made fully effective. Although this would not absolve them completely from the charge of systematic collusion in the criminal acts of the apartheidregime, we maintain that it would serve as a strong mitigating factor, strengthened by the fact that in most cases those agreements were concluded by the administrations and Governments that preceded those represented at the Council meeting today.
We stress the need for clear and meaningful terms of reference, which we hope will be given to the Committee concerned, because we have in the past been duped by these guilty Powers, which have mastered the technique of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. We could quote so many instances, including that of the 1963 voluntary arms embargo, after which the supplies of genocidal weapons continued unabated, either overtly or covertly, and despite our protests and condemnations, this was either denied or defended with such arguments as were often heard in certain Western circles, for example: if we do not do it, the Americans will do it; if we do not do it, the Germans will do it, and so on.
The most important example of the deceit we have been subjected to relates to the measures adopted against the Ian Smith regime, and it is at this juncture that I should like to express our disappointment at what I heard from several representatives this morning who maintained that the Committee on Sanctions against Southern Rhodesia had set a precedent. We maintain the contrary, that if the Committee on Sanctions against Southern Rhodesia is to serve as a guide, it should be only if we agree that it was riddled with so many loopholes that it was never intended to be effective. If we are serious - and we believe the members of the Security Council are at last serious - we shall, we hope, make sure that the loopholes that are to be found in the Committee on Sanctions against Southern Rhodesia are not repeated in the envisaged Committee. When the Committee on Sanctions against Southern Rhodesia was made a closed committee that takes decisions on the basis of consensus, it was tied hand and foot right from the beginning. Let us be frank: in such a situation the principle of decision by consensus is tantamount to giving veto powers to all members. The holding of closed sessions by that Committee also, in our view, enables the guilty parties to pursue their policies of deception and covert complicity.
If we sound over-pessimistic, it is because of our past experience. We are none the less encouraged by the sense of urgency manifested by the members of the Council following the adoption of resolution 418 (1977). The unanimous adoption of today`s resolution designed to set up a Committee to monitor the strict implementation of the mandatory arms embargo against South Africa is indeed encouraging. Since it coincides with the intensification of repression by the Vorster regime, on the one hand, and the growing resistance by the South African people under the leadership of the African National Congress, on the other, we have reason to believe that, this time, the Western members of the Council intend to make this belated and limited mandatory arms embargo effective.
It is for that reason that, when the time comes - in the immediate future, we hope - for the Council to define the terms of reference of the new Committee, we hope there will be unanimity in ensuring that the shortcomings to be found in the Committee on Sanctions against Southern Rhodesia will not be repeated. To this end, we hope that the envisaged Committee will hold open public hearings of experts in the various fields and that decisions will be taken by vote. We maintain that this would help to ensure the education of public opinion in Western countries, thereby strengthening the position of those convinced of and committed to the urgent need to ostracize the South African regime in all fields, in the same way as the community of nations ostracized the Hitlerite Nazi regime in response to the appeals of world statesmen, including eminent figures like President Roosevelt.
Finally, and in support of the position taken by the representative of the United Republic of Cameroon, who spoke on behalf of the 49 African Member States, I wish to appeal to the members of the Council to consider immediate action with a view to the imposition of economic sanctions against the South African regime under Chapter VII of the Charter and the extension of the recently adopted mandatory arms embargo to cover oil and petroleum products, as it is clear to all and is confirmed by South African legal and military experts that oil is a strategic product. No one can deny that the South African and Rhodesian planes and tanks and other vehicles used by those regimes to commit genocide in southern Africa would in no time be grounded if and when the Council took the appropriate decision to help to curb the threat to peace and international security constituted by the two regimes.
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