February 2, 1972(1)
Mr. President, I should like to greet you and thank you and the Security Council for having granted me this hearing, and particularly the three African members for sponsoring my request.
I bring greetings from the Reverend Canon L. John Collins, President of the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, who sent me to Addis Ababa for this occasion. On behalf of Canon Collins and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, we greet you, Mr. President, as you preside over this important series of meetings of the Security Council. We greet as well the new Secretary-General and congratulate him on his recent appointment. We greet too Ambassador Farah, your immediate predecessor, with whom we have had a long and close association through the Special Committee on Apartheid.(2)
The Security Council is meeting in Africa as a result of the initiative of the Organisation of African Unity, and we pay a warm and special tribute to His Excellency the President of Mauritania and His Excellency Mr. Diallo Telli, as well as to the Ethiopian Government and His Imperial Majesty, for having brought about this session on African soil to consider African questions.
Much has been said about the historic nature of this series of meetings, but, in addition, it also represents a great victory for Africa. Africa has ensured that all the questions concerning this continent are discussed together at a single series of meetings, and in essence they are all different aspects of one major problem.
It is for that reason that I have been sent, at some considerable expense, to Addis Ababa to add the voice of the International Defence and Aid Fund and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement to that of Africa and the liberation movements.
Anyone giving careful consideration to the background of all the items before this Council would reach the inevitable conclusion that on all those questions the policies and votes of three permanent members are identical in so far as they block all meaningful action by the Security Council to resolve the major problems of racial oppression and colonialism in Africa. The pattern is all too familiar, and the behaviour of the three permanent members has led the white regimes in Africa to defy the United Nations and flout its appeals and decisions because they have come to rely on Britain, France and the United States as their friends and allies in resisting the advance of African freedom. But it is more than that. The policies of the Western Powers towards southern Africa have resulted in the permanent members themselves contravening collective decisions, and even mandatory resolutions, which they once supported and voted in favour of.
It is not, therefore, particularly surprising that in Africa and among democratic people in the West there appears to be little confidence in this supreme organ, when the majority of its permanent members ignore and violate decisions on the question of race and human dignity which was once acknowledged by Prime Minister Douglas-Home(3) as being the greatest single threat to the peace and security of the world.
Some claim that there is a crisis of confidence in the United Nations; the crisis of confidence, however, is not so much in the United Nations as an institution but arises as a result of the totally inadequate response of this Council to the major threat to world peace and security presented by the southern African situation. It is this state of affairs that has brought into question the relevance of the Charter and the United Nations to the major problem of today's world.
We, for our part, believe that there exists a considerable potential for the advancement of African freedom within the United Nations framework. That is why today in Addis Ababa we should like to pose through you, Mr. President, a question for three of the permanent members, namely, the United States, France and our own Government, the Government of Britain: Tell us clearly, who are your allies? Portugal and South Africa or the African people?
That is the supreme question of this session; it is the Addis Ababa question to which the peoples of Africa and the world demand an answer. If this session of the Security Council does nothing else besides elicit a genuine commitment by France, Britain and the United States on the side of the African people, then this Council will have cured itself of a long paralysis and finally advanced towards discharging its solemn obligation to the world community.
As Honorary Secretary of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which has associated organisations in Western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries, I can say that we have from our inception declared ourselves on the side of the African people. We now ask the major Western Powers, and in particular Britain and its allies, to do the same.
Since the 1960 Sharpeville killings in South Africa we have demanded a total arms embargo against that country. In 1963, the founding summit conference of the Organisation of African Unity, meeting in this very hall, took the matter to the Security Council, which adopted the first resolution on the subject of the arms embargo.(4)
By December 1963 the Council considered that the situation in South Africa constituted a serious disturbance of the peace.(5)
In 1963 and ever since, the Western Powers have effectively prevented the Security Council from recognising the situation in southern Africa and Guinea-Bissau as constituting a "threat to the peace". As a result of the special status of the three Powers, the Council has been prevented from recognising reality - the reality that there is a fighting war of differing dimensions going on in African areas under white occupation. Instead the Western Powers invite us to show realism by suggesting that the world community is impotent in challenging the white regimes in Africa. We are urged to accept the status quo of African oppression and this is described as a policy of realism.
Realism involves the recognition of reality, seeing the world as it is and adjusting to change. The recognition of an illusory reality, one which involves a compromise with racial discrimination and colonialism, can only bring disaster to the oppressors as well as to their appeasers, not to mention the resultant catastrophe to mankind in general. That is why the peoples of the world that cherish freedom and democracy demand that the three Powers - including our Government, that of Britain - end their present alliance with South Africa and Portugal.
I have already said that this meeting taking place in Addis Ababa is a victory for Africa. But it is a double victory in the sense that for the first time the Security Council has had to examine the whole question of southern Africa and Guinea-Bissau together with aggressive incursions by the white regimes into the territories of African States as a single question which constitutes a grave and clear threat and a breach of the peace.
I should like therefore to propose that the Security Council establish a standing committee charged with considering all the questions before this series of meetings in the context of a threat to peace and international security. That committee should be serviced by the Secretary-General and should sit in public. It should not, however, prejudice the existence and work of the two Committees which already exist at the moment.
Several speakers and representatives of liberation movements have referred to the situation in Rhodesia and we for our part are gravely concerned at the loss of life and brutal repression unleashed by the Smith regime against the African opponents of the settlement terms. But we are even more gravely concerned that because of the courageous opposition of the African people of Rhodesia to the British proposals, the Smith regime will take even more ruthless reprisals as soon as the Pearce Commission leaves Rhodesia. We have every reason to believe that South Africa will also be ready to increase its intervention to suppress the African people. We are gravely concerned for the safety of the African people in Rhodesia. We are also keen to know what action the British Government intends to take in the face of overwhelming African opposition to the settlement terms.
These meetings of the Security Council in Addis Ababa should only be the beginning. They should be followed by constant and dynamic action by the Council. We would therefore venture to suggest that, immediately after them, the Council and the Secretary-General, together with high-level representatives of the Organisation of African Unity, should go to London to confront the Heath Government with its direct responsibility for the lives and safety of the people of Rhodesia. We would also venture to suggest that as soon as possible the Council should hold another series of meetings on southern Africa at the foreign minister level to take adequate international action on the basis of the foundations laid at this historic series of meetings in Addis Ababa.
There is not much time to describe the important work of the International Defence and Aid Fund on the questions of southern Africa and Guinea-Bissau, but I should like to draw attention to the testimony of Canon Collins last month to the Special Committee against Apartheid in New York as well as an article by him which appeared in yesterday's Ethiopian Herald. I shall be pleased to provide further information on any of the subjects on the agenda of these meetings should it be requested by the Council or by members of delegations.
We in the Defence and Aid Fund and the Anti-Apartheid Movement will carry on with our work in support of the objectives of the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity.
When we in the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain urge our Government to ally itself with the African people, we do so in the firm belief that such a policy is in the best interests of the British people themselves. How can it conceivably help the people of Britain to be in alliance with the enemies of the African people? We see our role as a limited one of supporting the efforts of the oppressed African people who alone have the final responsibility and privilege to secure their own freedom.
Our duty, and we believe the responsibility of this Council, is to take meaningful action - and I mean action - against the racist and colonialist regimes in Africa and give every form of direct support to the liberation movements.
This Addis Ababa session provides the three permanent members with a unique opportunity courageously to declare themselves in alliance with the African people. However, should those Powers persist in allying themselves with South Africa and Portugal, then they will share a major responsibility for the racial holocaust which threatens to engulf us all.
There may still be time to act, but decisive action must come soon. There is not very much time.
We need an urgent answer to the supreme question which we have posed. We believe that the world has a right to demand the answer to this question: On which side are the major Powers? That answer will help to determine whether the Security Council can act to advance African freedom and human dignity. We sincerely hope that it can.
(2) Abdulrahim Abby Farah of Somalis was Chairman of the Special Committee from 1969. He was President of the Security Council in January 1972.