Apartheid Axis: The United States and South Africa [1 ed.] 9780717803194, 0717803198

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LITTLE

NEW WORLD PAPERBACKS LNW-28

by WILLIAM

J.

POMEROY

APARTHEID AXIS The United States and South Africa

Other Books by the Same Author

Guerrilla

and Counter-Guerrilla Warfare

rilla

A

Personal Record of the Struggle in the Philippines

The Forest:

Huk

Beyond Barriers (poems) Half a Century of Socialism Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism (editor) American Neo-Colonialism: Its Emergence the Philippines and Asia

Guer-

in

Apartheid Axis The United States

and South

by William

J.

Africa

Pomeroy

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS New

York

Copyright

©

by International Publishers Co., Inc., 1971

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED First Edition, 1971

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-150661

SBN

7178-0319-8

Printed in the United States of America

Contents 7

Introduction 1.

THE APARTHEID STATE Historical

2.

3.

4.

Background

of

11

Apartheid

11

South Africa's Fascist Racist Laws

15

COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID

30

The Record,

31

U.S.

Official

and Private

Investments in South Africa

38

U.S.-South African "Understanding"

49

SOUTHERN BASE FOR U.S. PENETRATION OF AFRICA

53

The Portuguese Colonies

56

Rhodesia

63

South Africa: The Military Threat

65

South Africa: The Economic Threat

70

STRUGGLES AGAINST APARTHEID AND RACIST COLONIALISM 76

APPENDIXES I.

II.

The Freedom Charter: Revolutionary Program of the African National Congress 80 General Declaration of the

June 27-29, 1970

Rome

Conference,

92

Suggested Reading

95

About

96

the

Author

Introduction The Vietnam war

is the great eye-opener of our has revealed the true nature of a U.S. foreign policy that can be pursued ruthlessly for the benefit of a few in the "military-industrial complex" while being opposed by the majority of the American people. For many, it has shown the link between the suppression of a brown people fighting for freedom abroad and the suppression of black Americans struggling for complete freedom at home. It has shown that anti-democratic policies at home are matched by anti-democratic policies on an international scale, and that they serve the same narrow interests. Vietnam, however, is not the only place where these lessons are being taught. In many ways, a

time.

It

example is now occurring in Africa, the huge continent that has been held back from development, by colonialism, longer than any other part of the world. The African peoples, from the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope, have been engaged for decades in a great struggle for liberation, and the big western powers, including the United States, have sought in every possible manner, from means open and brutal to methods subtle and indirect, to keep the African as a clearer

low-paid laborer digging out the riches of his soil for the benefit of foreign big business. From Africa, up to a century and a half ago, 7

APARTHEID AXIS

8

came the slave coffles that, transported to America, became part of the foundation of American capitalism, and led to the suppressed existence of millions of black Americans who are still barred from an equal place

in the capitalist society their

labor helped to create. Black America

is linked African past but also with present African struggles for freedom. For both, the liberation struggle is a common one, against common forces that hold them back. For white Americans an association with that struggle is equally compelling: the immorality of discrimination at home erodes their own liberties and endangers their part of the society as well, and the immorality of racial oppression and exploitation in Africa worsens the domestic problem by enriching and making more powerful those

not only with

who

benefit

its

from

The struggle

it.

has come to a focus in southern Africa, where the western imperialist-minded forces are seeking to build a forfor a continent

bastion of colonialism to halt the march of and even to turn it back where it has achieved victory. Within the bastion lie the Portified

liberation

tuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, the British colony of Rhodesia, and the white minority dictatorship that is the Republic of South Africa.

Increasingly, southern Africa is becoming the arena of national liberation struggles. What Vietnam has been for the 1960's, southern Africa promises to be for the 1970's. The battle, in fact, has already been joined, with guerrilla armies of liberation

waging armed struggle against the

colonial rulers in all parts of the region.

9 INTRODUCTION The keystone of the imperialist bulwark is the Republic of South Africa, the worst and the ugliest example of racial oppression in the world today. There a small white minority maintains

known

as apartheid, the segregation and dismost extreme form of racial crimination yet practiced. Condemned by almost all members of the United Nations, and regarded as an outcast and criminal system by the vast majority of mankind, it is able to exist and to defy censure solely because of the aid and support given to it by the western imperialist countries. Next to Britain, which once held South Africa in its colonial empire and therefore is in on the ground floor of its system of exploitation, the chief prop and protector of the racist rulers in this richly-endowed country is none other than the United States. Without the American money poured into South Africa in the form of investments, and without the United States' shielding of South Africa in the United Nations against sanctions and other strong measures to bring down apartheid as demanded by the great majority of nations, the brutal South African white dictatorship could not stand for long. the ruthless dictatorship

American imperialist policy toward South Africa and toward its racist allies in the rest of southern Africa is much more clever than the policy of reckless aggression pursued in

Vietnam.

From

is

the moral standpoint, apartheid

utterly

indefensible. Officially, therefore, the U.S. gov-

ernment gives

lip service to a disapproval of the apartheid system. In a variety of subtle and back-door ways, however, it enables apartheid not only to survive but to become more pervasive.

10 APARTHEID AXIS At the same time, the U.S. government opposes

the African liberation

movements that seek

to

end apartheid and colonialism and helps to provide the racists with the arms and equipment to fight them. This is the same way in which ruling circles in the United States have treated the question of racism at home, giving lip service to democratic ideas (or laws) on equality while continuing to foster discrimination and segregation and to sup-

who

struggle to make racial blocking equality a The of equality and the suppression of the Black Panthers and others at home, and the support of racists and the suppression of anti-apartheid forces in South Africa, are two facets of the same policy. At its beginning, the Vietnam war found most Americans, black and white, relatively unprepared for its moral and political challenges. Such should not be the case in southern Africa, where American imperialism has already chosen its side in the developing struggle. It is hoped that this booklet will help to clarify the issues, and the stakes, in that critical region, and be useful to the friends of African freedom. press brutally those reality.

1

The Apartheid State Black Americans suffer discrimination and segregation as a persecuted minority in a predominantly white country. In South Africa, the black Africans are the overwhelming majority in a country where the white rulers are a small minority. In a population of

around 21 million, nearly 15

million are black, about 2.6 million others are

designated as "colored" (that is, non-white, of mixed race or Indian), and only 3.7 million are white. Both black and colored are the victims of extreme racist laws, with power, rights and privileges reserved for a white minority of little more than one-sixth of the population.

Historical

Background

of Apartheid

This situation came about as a direct result of South Africa's colonial past. The first white colonialists were Dutch, arriving in 1652 to set up a commercial settlement. From the outset they wrested land violently from the native Africans

and subjected them to a master-slave relationship. These were the forerunners of those who were formerly known as Boers and who today call themselves

Afrikaaners,

the

Dutch-descended

They developed a narrow, bigoted, intolerant community that resisted any liberal ideas of government or society. n

sector of the population.

APARTHEID AXIS Such tendencies were heightened after British colonial interests moved in to annex the Cape area in 1795 and later the area called Natal on the east coast. The Boers refused to submit to, or to cooperate with, British rule and moved inland in 1830 in what they termed the "Great Trek," 12

dispossessing the black inhabitants of their lands

and crushing their resistance,

to set

up their own

self-governing areas, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. One of the resentments of the Boers was against the slightly more liberal British racial policies,

which gave a few minimum

privileges to blacks in order to incorporate

them

in their colonial system.

In the latter part of the 19th century diamonds and gold were discovered in the Boer areas, at Kimberly in the Orange Free State and around Johannesburg in the Transvaal. This was the

time of the British imperialist empire-builder, Cecil Rhodes, who had the aggressive plan of making all of resource-rich southern Africa a British preserve. The independent and isolationminded Boers tried to fight off the encroachments of British investors

and diamond

who were out to seize the

the imperialist Boer

them

gold

deposits, but the British launched

War of

1899-1902 and forced

to submit.

Although much sympathy was then given

to

the Boers as the victims of imperialist aggression, the war had nothing to do with the freedom of the

African people,

who were oppressed by Boer and same way that the American

British alike, in the

Revolution against British colonialism had no meaning at the time to the Indians or to the black slaves in the American colonies. Having won the

13 THE APARTHEID STATE war, Britain brought the Cape, Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal together in a British colony, the Union of South Africa. However, the Boer-Afrikaaner outlook was neither subjugated nor changed. British rule in South Africa, a colony where the Afrikaaners were a considerable majority in the white population, was a history of compromise and concession to the extremist Afrikaaners, who developed a more virulent racist nationalism as a result of their exper-

iences.

In the long run,

it

was the Afrikaaners who

became the dominant

force in South Africa, reon the one hand and opposing any rights for black Africans on the other. Finally, in 1948, their Nationalist Party, under the leadership of its extreme right wing, came to power and has remained in power ever since, proceeding step by step to carry out a thoroughgoing racist program. In 1961 they severed ties with the British Commonwealth and the colony became the self-proclaimed Republic of South sisting British rule

Africa.

Behind the rise to power of the Nationalist Party was a secret society of the Afrikaaner elite, the Broederbond, founded in 1918 and dedicated to the ideology of white supremacy. All the prime ministers of South Africa since 1948 (Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd, and Vorster) have been members of the Broederbond, which today is estimated to number no more than 7,000. In 1938 the Broederbond created a Nazi-type organiza-

Ossewa Brandwag (Ox-Wagon Brigade), up along military lines, which supported HitGermany during World War II and conducted

tion, the

set ler

APARTHEID AXIS

14

armed sabotage

South Africa

to disrupt the country's participation in the anti-fascist war.

in

Today's South African prime minister, B. J. Vorster, was a "general" in the Ossewa Brandwag. The Nationalist Party itself during World War II identified with the cause of Naziism, especially the fascist Aryan "master race" philosophy. The cutting of the colonial tie with Britain and the erection by the Afrikaaners of history's most extreme white dictatorship has reduced not at all the British stake in South Africa. Its territory holds some of the richest mineral deposits on earth, including about one-fourth of the world's uranium, and yields 75 per cent of the world's gold production outside of the Soviet Union. To exploit this and other sources of wealth, British direct private investment, shareholdings and other financial commitments have virtually doubled since 1961. By 1968 over 490 British

companies had subsidiaries in South Africa, and between 1964 and 1968, when the apartheid system was attaining its cruelest form, over $500 million of British private direct investment poured into the country. Of South Africa's total foreign liabilities, $2.8 billion were held by the sterling area (mostly British) in 1962, but these

reached $4 billion in 1968 (62.6 per cent of the total). Britain's annual earnings (profits) from South Africa rose from $81 million in 1960 to $168 million in 1966, representing a rate of return on investment of 10 to 15 per cent, higher than the average rate on all other British overseas interests.

This has meant that, for Britain, economic partnership with the South African racists has been very profitable, to a degree not realized

15 THE APARTHEID STATE during the pre-apartheid days. During this period, British governments, both Conservative and Labor, have piously asserted their disapproval of apartheid, but none have made the slightest move to discourage the foreign investment in the apartheid state that enables it to survive. The former British Labor defense secretary, Denis Healey, reported after a visit in September 1970 that he "was struck in South Africa by the failure of many British firms to use opportunities available to them to soften the strictures of apartheid on their workers and found that some British firms were noted for being even more severe in their enforcement of apartheid than their local rivals." It may be said that the British stake in apartheid is not surprising because British interests had long been predominant in South Africa. As will be shown, however, the investments of American companies in South Africa have increased over the same period at a far faster rate, by leaps and bounds, and represent a much more deliberate desire on the part of American investors to

profit

from apartheid.

South Africa's Fascist Racist Laws

What is apartheid and why is any form of support for it immoral? In 1947, when the Nationalist Party was preparing the electoral campaign that brought it to power in 1948 (with black Africans denied the right to vote), it issued a program pamphlet putting forward the new doctrine that "The policy of our country should encourage total apartheid as the ultimate goal of a natural process of separate development."

16

APARTHEID AXIS

Calling the "primary task" for the state that of "preserving and safeguarding the White race," the Nationalist election pamphlet asserted that "the Bantu [a tribal term used derogatorily to apply to all blacks within the urban areas should be regarded as migratory citizens not entitled to political or social rights equal to those of the Whites." Apartheid, it said, should also be applied to the Coloreds. The elements of apartheid (literally, "living apart") had always been in the Afrikaaner outlook. Inequality of black and white was inscribed in the constitutions of the old Boer free states, and they maintained a color bar in voting and in land ownership. Pass laws for blacks were an old restricting device continued throughout British rule. While holding a majority in the old colonial government from 1924-1938, the Nationalists had pushed through legislation that virtually wiped out limited common voting rights for nonwhites, even in the predominantly British Cape province. As early as 1913, a Land Act had restricted land for black African possession to only 13 percent of the total land in South Africa. After 1948, however, the apartheid system was pushed relentlessly and methodically to monstrous extremes that are still being extended. The main features of the great number of racist laws put on the statute books are these: Abolition of political and social rights for black Africans. The 70 per cent of the population that are black are denied the electoral franchise, and are denied representation in Parliament by either black or white members. In segregated African

17 THE APARTHEID STATE rural homelands, or "Bantustans," where "separate self-government" is supposed to exist (only one such area, the Transkei, has reached this point), defense, internal security and foreign affairs are held firmly in the hands of the white government. Elected officials are national screened and handpicked by the white dictatorship, which has outlawed all anti-apartheid parties and organizations. In a few urban centers so-called "Bantu Councils" have been set up in segregated black "townships" by the white urban authorities for regulatory purposes, with council members partially elected on an extremely limited ballot, but these are rendered functionless by the ruling that they cannot make representation to the authorities on behalf of individual African

residents.

All South Africans must carry identity cards on which their racial designation is stamped (thus preventing any colored person with a very light complexion from passing as white), but black Africans over the age of 16 must carry a pass

book, containing identity card, tax

payment

in-

formation and receipts, employers' signatures, labor records and movement control records. Fingerprints are taken for centralized records. Pass

books must be carried on the person and produced on demand, an offender being arrested on the spot. As many as 2,000 arrests per day have been occurring under the pass laws, and it is estimated that convictions add up to between one-third and one-half of the black population.

Marriage between white and non-white (black is illegal. In 1950 an "Immorality Act" prohibited intercourse between white and non-

or colored)

APARTHEID AXIS 1966 over 6,000 people had been convicted under this Act, in cases brought to the courts as a result of the most obscene invasions of privacy. Conviction cases have included white relations with persons of any other color whether inside or outside of South Africa. In 1957 the 18

white.

Up

to

maximum

penalty for interracial intercourse was increased to seven years' imprisonment. Mixed-racial sport is also forbidden. Sports facilities for non-whites, where they do exist, are minimal and primitive in comparison to those for whites. The notorious apartheid policy in sport caused South Africa to be expelled from the Olympics organization in May 1970, and its allwhite teams have been barred from international football, fencing, boxing, table tennis, judo, weightlifting and pentathlon games. In 1969 the black American tennis champion, Arthur Ashe, was denied a visa by South African authorities, barring him from entering the country to compete with white tennis players. Africans are denied the right to acquire a freehold title to land anywhere in South Africa, including in the segregated "Bantustans." "Petty-apartheid" laws carry the social inequality into every aspect of life. Buses and trains are segregated. There are separate toilets, benches, waiting rooms, beaches, and writing and stamping tables in post offices. The Factories Act contains a special clause providing for segregated toilets for each race group of workers. It is forbidden by law for a white person and a non-white person to drink tea together in a tearoom, unless

by special permit. An amendment to the Native Laws, passed in 1957, empowered the Minister of

19 THE APARTHEID STATE Native Affairs to forbid the attendance by black Africans at any church service in a white area.

Education, Segregated and Unequal. Educais not only segregated but is grossly inferior to that given to whites. A Bantu Education Act in 1953 transferred black African education from the provincial and national departments of education to the Department of Native Affairs. Hendrik Verwoerd, who was prime minister from 1958 to 1966, said in the debate during the passage of this Act: "I just want to remind Hon. Members that if the Native in South Africa today in any kind of school in existence is being taught to expect that he will live his adult life under a policy of equal rights, he is making a big mistake. There is no place for him in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor. For that reason it is of no avail for him to receive a training which has as its aim absorption in the European community. What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? ... It is therefore necessary that native education be controlled in such a way that it should be in accordance with the policy of the State." In 1966, out of the total enrollment of black Africans in the segregated schools, 96 per cent were to be found in primary classes, 72 per cent in the lowest primary classes, and a mere 3.3 per cent in secondary schools. Black children start school two years later than whites, and 25 per cent are forced by poverty to leave school after one year. In 1969, out of a total black school tion for Africans

.

.

.

.

.

.

APARTHEID AXIS

20

population of 2.5 million, less than 2,000 reached secondary matriculation, and less than 200 obtained a university degree. Expenditure on education per head of population in the school year 1969-1970 was $321 for whites and a mere $20 for blacks. Black teachers are paid barely one-half of the salary of white teachers and have to teach classes averaging 58 pupils; cases have been cited of classes of 500, held in the open air for lack of school facilities. For white children education is free, while black parents must pay costs of $23 per year for the lowest primary grades (this is roughly equal to a month's salary for a black worker in the mines), $40 per year for higher primary school, and up to $91 per year for a high school student.

Racial Ghettos. The Group Areas Act of 1950 initiated a policy of wholesale segregation of the

and Asian population. and tightening, this Act and its associated laws make up the rigid and inhuman framework of apartheid, the physical separation of the races. Embodied is a

entire

black,

colored

Amended many times

for extension

two-phased process: the compulsory transfer of the bulk of Africans from wherever they may have been residing to the "homelands," i.e., to the 13 per cent of South Africa's land "reserved" for them; and the forcible removal of all non-whites from the central districts of cities and towns to new settlements (called "townships") on their outskirts. (Black servants retained to

work

in

white homes must be kept in quarters wholly separate from the house the law forbids any connecting passage or door and white families are fined $500 for any violation of this.)

— —

21 THE APARTHEID STATE of these laws, black shaping relentless In the Africans have been stripped of citizenship, residence, property and family rights. No black person is allowed to remain in an urban area or township for longer than 72 hours without a permit, while one who may have been born in a town and lived there for 50 years and who may have left it for as brief a period as two weeks is prohibited on return to remain for more than 72 hours. Only black Africans who are employed in "productive" labor may reside in an urban township. They have no rights as such to have wives, children or old folks living with them (these are termed "unnecessary appendages" by white officials); the law tears wives and children away from husbands and fathers and forces them to live apart in distant "reserves." White urban authorities have the power to cancel the residence permit of any black African and to expel him arbitrarily from a township. "It is accepted Government policy that Bantu are only temporarily resident in European areas as long as they offer labor," reads a circular of the Department of Bantu Administration, dated December 12, 1967.

The

large-scale expulsion of black Africans

from urban areas

(in 1969 people were being "endorsed out" at the rate of 70 per day from Johannesburg) has often occurred in the most callous manner. Agricultural "homelands" are generally marginal or barren land without conveniences or facilities, without industry or other

means of livelihood. "In some of these settlements," stated a report in the Manchester Guardian of March 3, 1970, "the Government builds houses before the people arrive. But in most they do not. They are either

APARTHEID AXIS

22

dumped on

the open veldt, or allowed to rent to dig their own latrines. The water supply is often poor." Other reports tell of makeshift settlements without any water; it is transported by truck, the people having to buy it by the can. Lacking industry or other means of livelihood, the "homelands" or "Bantustans" have become reserves for migratory labor to serve the needs of white farmers or industrialists. In the supposedly selftents.

They have

governing and separately-developing Transkei, only 1,700 black Africans are employed in anything approaching industry, and 80 per cent of the male labor force is used as migratory labor in various parts of South Africa, during which they are cut

A mas

away from

their families.

Catholic priest in South Africa, Father CosDesmond, in a book written in 1970 entitled

The Discarded People,

told of the malnutrition,

disease and starvation found in the Mogogokela

"Bantustan" 50 miles from Pretoria, the South African capital: "Local missionaries say that there was a tremendous number of deaths from malnutrition and cold in 1966-67 when the people were still in temporary shacks. It was not possible to obtain accurate figures (most deaths are not registered and the graveyard is so full that I gave up the attempt to count the more recent graves at 200). There are still obvious signs of malnutrition everywhere." (A representative of the United Presbyterian Church of the United States, Mary McAnally, told the UN Human Rights Commission in 1969: "Kwashiorkor, the African name for the disease of malnutrition, claimed 40,000 infant deaths in 1967, but there are no official figures.")

23 THE APARTHEID STATE Rooted in the Afrikaaner fear of being in proximity to the black majority and of the consolidation of a black urban proletariat, the apart-

heid mass segregation acts are aimed at creating a black mass of very cheap, unprivileged, semislave labor that can be shifted about at will to satisfy the needs of

white-owned enterprises.

more gigantic and more heartless scheme

A of

racially-based exploitation has never been conceived.

Black Workers Under Apartheid. The chasm of is graphically seen in the racist "twotier" wage system. In 1969 the average black African family had an annual income of $528; for the average white family the annual income was $5,832. In certain industries the gap is far wider. Statistics in 1968 from the mining industry, which employed the largest number of black workers (in the gold mines alone, 380,000 blacks to 21,000 whites), the average monthly cash earnings of black workers was no more than $24, while white workers earned $418 per month. According to the Financial Times, London (May 12, 1970), "It is further estimated that in real terms the cash earnings of black miners in 1966 were no higher, and possibly even lower, than they were in 1911." A Native Labor (Settlement of Disputes) Act in 1953 outlawed strikes by black workers (the penalty for a black worker striking: $1,200 fine or 3 years in prison or both). The same act denied inequality

recognition to black trade unions, and there is active discouragement of the formation of any

black unions or blacks joining any union. In 1969 there were only 8,500 black African members of

APARTHEID AXIS

24

trade unions, i.e., 0.3 per cent of the total 2.55 million black workers. In any industrial dispute, black workers are represented by state-appointed

white

officials.

government decree threw thousands of black Africans out of jobs they had formerly held: as counterhands in shops or cafes, as receptionists in commercial or professional enterprises, as telephonists or switchboard operIn April 1970 a

as clerks, cashiers or typists in shops, This was hailed by the deputy minister of Bantu Administration, Dr. Piet ators,

offices or factories.

Koornhuf, as "the end of labor integration in South Africa." Suppressive Laws to Enforce Apartheid. To impose apartheid on South Africa, the Afrikaaner Nationalist government has resorted to erecting one of the most thoroughgoing police states since the Nazi regime of Hitler in Germany, which was so much admired by Nationalist leaders. Introduction of apartheid was opposed by the overwhelming majority of people, including many whites, and by organizations with a wide following. This opposition was suppressed by the most ruthless measures. First of the suppressive laws was the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act. This outlawed the Communist Party of South Africa, but it had a much wider intent. It included in its punishable definition of "communism" anything "which aims at bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change within the Union by the promotion of disturbance or disorder, by unlawful acts or omissions or by the threat of such acts or

25 THE APARTHEID STATE omissions or by means which include the promotion of disturbance or disorder, or such acts or omissions or threats/' Under the intricate com-

plex of apartheid laws, this could be applied to virtually any opposition to the racist system, and

thousands of people have been convicted under

its

provisions.

was only the opening wedge of Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1953 prescribed heavy fines and prison sentences for protesting against a law or for campaigning against a law. Police in 1955 were empowered to enter and search any premises without a warrant, a measure designed specifically for use against political opposition. The Riotous Assemblies Act of 1956 did away with the freedom of assembly and provided for fines and imprisonment for most forms of picketing, for boycotts, and for "inThis, however,

suppression.

A

timidating" others to join any organization, including a trade union. A campaign of mass resistance to the pass laws and other apartheid measures conducted by the broadly-based African National Congress in 1959-60 was met by the shooting down of peaceful demonstrators, especially in the Sharpeville massacre of March 20, 1960, where 69 black men, women and children were killed and over 200 wounded. The Unlawful Organizations Act passed immediately afterward banned the African National Congress and an off-shoot, the PanAfricanist Congress. The president of the ANC, Nelson Mandela, is now serving a life sentence on the bleak Robbens Island, for continuing to organize struggles against apartheid. Efforts by outlawed organizations to continue

APARTHEID AXIS

26

resistance brought a succession of General

Amendment

Law

Acts, the most severe, adopted in

1962, the so-called "Sabotage Act," providing to the death penalty for 22

heavy sentences up

categories of offenses, only one of which

is

con-

cerned with sabotage as such. Subject to the death penalty are possession of anything that can be termed a "weapon," and the simple act of trespass (if the accused "enters or is upon any land or building"). In 1963 and 1964 other amendments permitted the detention of persons without trial, as well as the continued confinement without further trial of persons after the expiry of a sentence. In 1963 the notorious "90day detention" law was passed, permitting detention for that period without trial for interrogation and immediate rearrest for further 90-day periods; this was increased in 1965 to repeated periods of 180-day detention, without allowance of bail. Another law, in 1964, provided that anyone refusing to give evidence, even when selfincriminatory, could be imprisoned for 12 months. These measures were capped in 1967 with the passage of the Terrorism Act, a sweeping law providing for penalties ranging from a minimum

imprisonment to the maximum of the death penalty for acts "endangering law and

of five years'

order" or for the intention to commit such acts; included is a provision for indefinite detention in solitary confinement of anyone suspected of "ter-

rorism" or suspected of having information about "terrorism." (This law was adopted when the outlawed African National Congress, after all legal and peaceful means to oppose apartheid

THE APARTHEID STATE were denied to the people, determined course

of

armed struggle against

27

take the the racist

to

system.) The ever-increasing arsenal of repression was further augmented in 1969 with the passage of a

General

Bureau

Law Amendment Act of State Security.

that created a

BOSS, as

it is

called,

has super-powers of investigation, arrest and detention. It has been set up as an untouchable agency: it is unlawful for anyone even to know anything about it or its activities. Anyone mentioning or communicating to anyone else refer-

ence to matters dealt with by BOSS commits an offense; this includes journalists and the press. No evidence concerning BOSS or its investigation methods or findings is allowed in a court and no witness, whether in his own defense or not, may disclose information within the scope of BOSS ("prejudicial to the security of the state").

A pamphlet issued by the African National Congress in May 1970 stated that political prisoners in South Africa, "including persons detained incommunicado without trial under the Terrorism Act and Proclamation 400 applying to the Transkei, those detained under the 180-day law, persons banished to remote regions and to so-called transit camps, and those under house arrest/' total roughly 10,000. Since 1960 over 50 political executions have taken place "legally," and death sentences as a whole carried out due to convictions merely between July 1963 and June 1965 totalled 194, or 47 per cent of executions throughout the world for that period. Periodically, elections are held in South Africa,

APARTHEID AXIS western press as if the democratic process is being maintained. Actually, all parties and organizations opposing apartheid and the fascist laws have been outlawed and have utterly no legal means of expression. Those parties permitted to exist are governed by the Prohibition of Political Interference Act, which prohibits anyone belonging to the four officially defined racial groups (black, white, colored and Asian) from: (a) becoming a member of any political party of which any person who belongs to another racial group is a member, (b) giving assistance as an agent or as an election committee member to any political party of another racial group or any candidate belonging to another racial group, or (c) addressing any meeting of which all or the majority belong to another racial group or to other racial groups. There are other parties besides the dominant Afrikaaner Nationalist Party in South Africa's parliament: the United Party, which is based mainly among the whites of British origin and 28

and these are reported

in the

was the

chief party of British colonial rule, and the small Progressive Party, which has one par-

liamentary representative. The United Party and the Progressive Party are critical of only the most extreme apartheid measures, such as the "petty apartheid" laws; both oppose either the political and non- white, and their most liberal stand is to advocate that whites be able to represent non-whites in parliament. Within or surrounded by the territory of South Africa are three small nominally independent black states Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland which are dominated by the apartheid re-

or the social equality of white

—

—

THE APARTHEID STATE 29 gime and whose labor is used and exploited as if they were glorified "Bantustans." To the west is the huge territory of South West Africa, a former colony taken from Germany after World War I and placed then under "trust administration" by the old Union of South Africa, under League of Nations mandate; this status was continued by the United Nations. South Africa has now virtually annexed the territory and has introduced into it the complete array of apartheid laws. The United Nations has thereupon ordered South Africa to evacuate South West Africa (named Namibia by UN decision), an order defied by the apartheid rulers who are exploiting its mineral wealth with the aid of western investors. Such is the apartheid state of South Africa, with which the United States maintains cordial relations, is indirectly allied as part of the "free world," conducts trade on an increasing scale, and in

which

it

has a mounting investment stake.

2

U.S. Collaboration

With Apartheid The South African apartheid system and the laws that implement it have been condemned internationally for two decades by all but a tiny number of imperialist, racist states, such fascist

as Portugal. Nevertheless, the Afrikaaner white dictatorship has been able to continue existing and to grow more powerful, and the white minority has been able to flourish in increasing prosperity. This has been possible solely because

massive reinforcement of racist South Africa by the big western powers, in the form of

of the

investments and trade. Total foreign investments in South Africa in 1960, the year of the Sharpeville massacre, were $3.7 billion. By the end of 1968 these had jumped to $6.4 billion. In the same period trade by South Africa with Western Europe, the United States and Japan went up by 40 per cent. The significant fact about this trend is that it has occurred while the main countries involved have been giving lip service to the condemnation of apartheid, and while the great majority of members of the United Nations, especially the newly independent, developing and socialist countries, have been calling for economic sanctions against South Africa to compel its abandon-

ment

of

inhuman

racist policies. 30

U.S.

COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID

Britain's leading role in

the fortunes of

31

its

former colony is reprehensible to very high deit can be said to have an historical basis, however indefensible. Far less easy to explain away is the role of the United States which, although in second place in South African investment and trade, has been increasing its profitable association with apartheid in the past decade at a much faster rate than has Britain. American direct investments in South Africa, which stood at $288 million in 1956, had climbed to $692 million by 1968, an increase of 250 per cent in a little over a decade. This was a rate five times as fast as the increase in British investments in the same period. American companies in South Africa numbered around 160 in 1964; today there are over 260. It is a trend that suggests the need for a hard look at U.S. policy toward apartheid, as expressed officially and as carried gree, but

out in practice.

The Record,

Official

and Private

International condemnation of South African apartheid can be dated, in the effective sense, from 1960. In that year the Sharpeville massacre shocked mankind and brought a widespread recognition that the nations of the world could not stand aside on a moral question that was becoming on a par with the gas chambers of Hitler Germany. Prior to that date, the efforts of many states to make apartheid the concern officially of the United Nations was shunted aside by the argument (supported by the United States) that a condemnation of apartheid would be interference in the internal affairs of South Africa.

APARTHEID AXIS

32

In April 1960, the

month

after Sharpeville, at

the request of 29 African and Asian states, the Security Council met to consider "the situation arising out of the large-scale killings of

UN

unarmed and peaceful demonstrators against

ra-

discrimination and segregation in the Union of South Africa." The Security Council adopted a resolution recognizing that "the situation in the Union of South Africa is one that has led to international friction and if continued might endanger international peace and security." It called upon South Africa "to abandon its policies of apartheid and racial discrimination." Only Britain and France abstained in the voting on this resolution. The United States was one of nine nations voting in favor. South Africa's cial

argument about "domestic jurisdiction" was thus over-ridden by the United Nations. The stand of the United States at the beginning of the 1960's was certainly influenced by the great civil rights struggles then under way that were placing American democracy

itself in

an embarrassing American

light by exposing the racism existing in

society itself.

International reaction to the Sharpeville mascame close at that time to tumbling the

sacre

Afrikaaner regime from power. In expectation of a possible collapse, capital began to leave the country $225 million in the months after March 1960 and foreign interests held back from further investment. At this point American bankers extended a $30 million loan to the Anglo-American Corp., South Africa's biggest monopoly, at the plea of its president, Harry Oppenheimer. Such an extension of confidence by racist

— —

33 COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID reversed the tide, interests American important and once again foreign capital flowed into South U.S.

Africa, strengthening the apartheid regime.

This two-faced position by the United States, officially deploring apartheid while private American interests unrestrainedly pour investments into South Africa that bolster the racist system, has typified American policy for the past decade. It is, in fact, precisely since 1960, while the fascist-style apartheid laws condemned by the United Nations have proliferated in South Africa, that American capital has flooded at an increasing rate into the apartheid state. A similar deception has been practiced on the critical question of supplying arms to the South African government. In August 1963 the Security Council again met on this issue at the request of 32 member states. It dealt with "the question of race conflict in South Africa resulting from the policies of apartheid." Whereas in 1960 it was agreed that apartheid "might endanger international peace and security," in 1963 the resolution adopted stated categorically that "the situation in South Africa is seriously disturbing international peace and security," and it "solemnly calls upon all states to cease forthwith the sale and shipment of arms, ammunition of all types and military vehicles to South Africa." The United States voted for this resolution. Adlai Stevenson, who was then the U.S. delegate to the United Nations, said after the vote that the United States felt that South Africa was failing to carry out its obligations under the UN Charter and that by stopping the sale of arms "we will emphasize our hope that the Republic will of

34

APARTHEID AXIS apartheid." In Decem-

now reassess its attitude to ber 1963 the Security Council adopted another, stronger resolution calling for the strict implementation of the arms embargo, and Stevenson announced that the United States would go even further and would ban the export of equipment used in the manufacture of arms. What actually happened in the period following this officially-stated American stand? The South African Rand Daily Mail said on November 4, 1969 that between 1962 and 1968 the United States delivered weapons worth $45 million to South Africa. The British Guardian declared editorially on March 30, 1970: "In spite of the arms embargo, Mr. Vorster still receives about 35 million dollars worth of military supplies from the United States annually, mostly in Lockheed transport aircraft." On January 1, 1969 the defense correspondent of the London Times wrote, "American light aircraft, which could be useful for counter-insurgency, are being assembled [in South Africa] under license"; he said further that South Africa "has acquired licenses to build 140 different types of ammunition and bombs from overseas." Also manufactured in South Africa, under license, is the NATO FN rifle, with which the entire South African army and police force are equipped; this would require American approval in NATO committees. The president of the outlawed anti-apartheid South West Africa People's Organization, Sam Nujoma, said in a statement on August 27, 1970 that the United States had sold to South Africa radar and heat detection devices of the type used for anti-guerrilla opera-

35 COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID tions in Vietnam, and that the Lockheed Corporation had sent technicians and blueprints for the F-104 jet fighter to the Turin Fiat plant in Italy, from which the military aircraft were sent to South Africa. When the newly-elected Tory government in Britain announced in July 1970 its decision to resume open shipment of arms to South Africa, U.S.

the UN Security Council, at the request of the Afro-Asian states, met and passed a resolution calling for the strengthening of the arms embargo. It went further than previous resolutions by extending the embargo to spare parts, to technical assistance for weapons manufacture, and to granting of licenses for the local manufacture of arms. The United States joined Britain in abstaining on the vote for this resolution. The U.S. delegate, William Buffum, contending that the United States abhored apartheid, explained his vote by saying that his government had specific objection to the demand for a halt in spare parts supply and to the demand for the prohibition of investment in the manufacture of arms in South Africa. This stand, in effect, substantiated the charges that the United States has been evading the spirit of the arms embargo and has been all along providing the South African racists with the means of suppressing by violence any resistance to the apartheid system. In September 1970 the United States, casting aside pretense, announced in a statement in Chicago by David Newsome, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs that it "would now consider licenses for limited numbers of small

— —

APARTHEID AXIS

36

unarmed executive-type

aircraft" for South Afri-

ca. This type of aircraft is used extensively for spotting and attacking guerrilla forces.

On October 13, 1970 the UN General Assembly passed its own resolution on the question, calling on all members to "take immediate steps" to implement the arms embargo. The vote was 99 in favor to 2 against (South Africa and Portugal), the United States abstaining. A further service to the South African regime has been the consistent opposition by the United States to any policy of economic sanctions that would shut off the economic aid that the racists receive from foreign sources. Measures on sanctions brought before the Security Council in 1964,

1965 and 1969 met with abstention by the U.S. who argued against such steps on grounds that they would be "unwise" and "ineffective." An abstention by a major investing and trading country like the United States of course would render any such move "ineffective." This same attitude has been expressed in regard to the question of South African refusal to relinquish control over the territory of South West Africa (Namibia). In two resolutions of March and August 1969 the Security Council called on South Africa to withdraw from Namibia and warned that it would act under the Charter articles providing for economic sanctions and for expulsion from the UN on failure to comply. The U.S. delegation abstained on the latter resolution, and stated its disagreement with the princidelegate,

ples of sanctions or expulsion,

making

it

plain

that the United States would not be bound by such international decisions.

37 COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID in South West that pointed out It needs to be Africa, or Namibia, there are private direct American investments of at least $55 million. The biggest mining firm exploiting the territory's U.S.

rich resources, the

Tsumeb

Corporation,

is

con-

two American mining companies, American Metals Climax and Newmont Mining, each with a 29 per cent shareholding. Both conduct extensive operations in South Africa itself. Furthermore, the Tidewater Oil Co. (owned by Paul Getty) has the dominant interest in Diamond Mining and Utility Co. of South West Africa, which holds the concession on diamonds and all other minerals in the territory's huge Diamond Area No. 2. Tidewater embarked on this venture in 1964, four years after the United States went along with the condemnation of apartheid and while international protests were being made against South Africa's introduction of trolled

by

apartheid in the trust territory. Under gathering international pressure on the question of Namibia, the United States has felt it necessary to resort to empty gestures to evade responsibility and to appease world sentiment. The Nixon administration on May 20, 1970 announced that it was officially discouraging further U.S. investment in South West Africa. It turned out to be another exercise in meaningless words. As the Financial Times pointed out in London the following day: "Mr. Nixon's decision will not be translated into any formal ban on new investments and will not affect existing U.S. investments in the territory." The trend, in fact, has been toward a hardening of resistance by the United States to UN demands

APARTHEID AXIS South Africa to relinquish its control over Namibia. A resolution adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1970, condemning South Africa for refusing to withdraw and calling for "effective measures" to force it to do so, had 95 countries voting in favor, but the United States joined with Britian, France, Portugal and South

38

for

Africa to vote against

it.

Investments in South Africa

One needs merely to compare the

verbal opposi-

government with the the large American monopolies in

tion to apartheid by the U.S. activities of

South Africa to understand the true nature of what can only be described as American neocolonialism in Africa. Such an examination would uncover the true meaning of the argument presented in the UN about economic sanctions being "unwise and ineffective." It would also show that behind the screen of anti-apartheid statements American investments have streamed into South Africa precisely during the period of

mounting international revulsion against

its rac-

ist policies.

American investments in South Africa predated the rise to full power of the Afrikaaner super-racists. The bulk of these had been in mining, the automobile industry, and oil operations. Ford had built an assembly plant in Port Elizabeth in 1924, and General Motors had followed suit in 1926. Firestone erected a

tire plant

Goodyear in 1947. World War II brought the first big jump American investment and trade, due in part in 1936,

in

to

U.S.

COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID

the quest for minerals for

39

war production and

in

part to a drive to replace such rivals as Britain which were fully occupied elsewhere in the war effort.

South African imports from the United

States, less than $50 million in 1938,

had

in-

creased nearly five times by 1954, to $233 million,

while exports to the United States (exclusive of gold bullion) went up from $2 million to $58 million in the same period. These exports were almost wholly mineral ores, especially copper, chrome and vanadium, and came from the entry of large American investments into mining. The American-owned O'okiep Copper Co. Ltd., largest in South Africa at the time, with 57.5 per cent of its shares held by Newmont Mining, opened its

Namaqua mines

in 1940.

The American stake in South Africa did not increase to major proportions, however, until after the Nationalist Party had become strongly entrenched in power following its electoral victory in 1948, and until after its laws implementing apartheid and a police state were in operation. The significant year was 1957. In that year Charles W. Engelhard, Jr. of Newark, New Jersey, chairman of one of the largest mineral and ore companies in the world, the Minerals and Chemicals Corp. (assets in 1967: $471 million), joined with South African Anglo-American Corp.

Harry Oppenheimer in a coup to take over Central Mining, one of the big South African holding companies. In 1958, American-South African Investment Corp. was set up by American interests, with Engelhard as its chairman and with M. D. Banghart, vice president of Newmont Mining, as a

of

APARTHEID AXIS Within a few years it had invested $40 million in a wide range of industries. The report of American-South African for the third quarter of 1970 refers to an increase of share holdings in the East Driefontein, Kloof, Southvaal Holdings, President Steyn and St. Helena gold fields, and in the platinum-chrome-coal conglomerate, Transvaal Consolidated Land. Also mentioned are its holdings in Palabora copper mine and in De Beers diamonds (in which 2,457,700 shares are held). In the same year as American-South African was set up, a branch of the First National City Bank of New York was opened in South Africa, and the following year, 1959, the Chase Manhattan Bank began operations. A Rand-American

40

director.

Fund

Inc.

was established

in

New York

in 1961,

by Intervest Inc., to promote shareholding in South African ventures, particularly gold shares. (South African gold shares have long been held extensively in American hands, and Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd., perhaps the biggest of the South African gold mining companies, channels much of its refining through a 60-per-cent-owned subsidiary in the United States, American Zinc Co. of St. Louis.)

an organization of South African businessmen, with Harry Oppenheimer playing a leading part, the South Africa Foundation, was set up to promote South Africa's "image" abroad and to offset the massacres and brutalities of apartheid. Much of its activity was centered on the United States. Engelhard was identified with it. Other American businessmen associated with its propaganda and lobbying activities have been In 1960

Clarence B. Randall of Inland Steel, a leading

U.S.

COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID

41

State Department adviser on international investments, and John W. Snyder, former U.S. secretary of the treasury, who provided the South Africa Foundation with one of its most widelycirculated statements: "South Africa

is

worthy of

our closest association in building up a strong

world economy, and also in the protection of the world against the encroachment of Communism." The huge Kennecott Copper Corp. had had scattered interests in gold and uranium mining. In 1961 these were reorganized into the large Virginia-Merriespruit Investments (Pty.) Ltd. which immediately obtained a contract to supply uranium to the South African Atomic Energy Board. A partner in the Virginia-Merriespruit enterprise is the Anglo-Transvaal Consolidated Investments Co. Ltd. with which Kennecott is further linked, holding 50 per cent of its subsidiary, Anglo-vaal Rhodesian, which mines coal, copper, chrome and nickel in white minorityruled Rhodesia. In 1963 the vice president of Newmont Mining, M. D. Banghart, publicly urged American companies to go to South Africa because they could make an average profit of 27 per cent, far in excess of earnings at home or anywhere else. The profit, needless to say, came out of extremely low-paid black labor, barred from union organization or from striking by apartheid laws. Among the large-scale American investments subsequently made in South Africa, after the UN condemnation of apartheid for which the United States voted, have been the following: Newmont Mining, in 1965, expanded its already extensive interests by joining with the

APARTHEID AXIS huge British Rio Tinto Zinc Corp. as the major shareholders in the $130-million Palabora Mining Co. Ltd., South Africa's biggest copper mine, 42

Northeast Transvaal. General Motors embarked on expansion of its operations with the construction of a $38-million engine manufacturing plant in Port Elizabeth, which started production in 1965. Ford opened a similar plant with equal investment in 1967, causing Port Elizabeth to become known as the "Detroit of South Africa." In 1967 Chrysler opened a $45-million engine and assembly plant near in

Pretoria.

The American

oil

behind. Standard

companies have not been far

Vacuum had

built the first oil

refinery in South Africa, at Durban, in 1954.

Caltex, in 1967, erected a $24-million refinery in

Western Cape, the start of a large petrochemical complex. Esso took an 8,500-square-mile exploration concession on the west coast. Mobil and Caltex have been in a consortium with British Petroleum and Shell that controls 73 per cent of South African oil distribution. In 1968 the U.S. Natural Gas Corporation took a 1.7-million-acre offshore oil and gas concession east of Cape Town. For South Africa, oil is a vital commodity, since it has no producing fields of its own. Of all items on a sanctions list, oil is the one that could hurt its economy the most. South African sensitivity to this became most pronounced when the United Nations clamped an embargo on oil to Rhodesia in 1965. The 1967 Caltex refinery has an interesting sequential link with South Africa's supplying of Rhodesia with oil, in defiance of the UN resolution. American corporations have been cooperat-

U.S.

COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID

ing with the crash South African quest for

43 its

own

oil.

Early in the 1960's, also in this connection, the Export-Import Bank of America provided the loan capital for the setting up of SASOL, the South African government's project for extracting oil from coal, the largest of its kind in the world.

A

major American venture was launched in when U.S. Steel put up the largest share of capital for the huge new mining concern, Africa Triangle (U.S. Steel, Anglo-Vaal and Middle Wits), which will deal in all minerals. Among its initial projects is an enormous copper-zinc deposit in the Prieska area of Northwest Cape. U.S. Steel also has a 30-per-cent interest in Ferralloys, which is in turn tied in with Associated Manganese Mines of South Africa Ltd. In 1970 the Computer Sciences Corporation of Los Angeles, the largest independent computer 1969,

soft-ware

company

in the world, entered into

partnership with Anglo-American to set up Computer Sciences, South Africa. Superior Oil, an American company, entered into partnership in November 1970 with British and Canadian companies in the formation of a new South African venture, Western Platinum. Involved are the huge British mining monopoly, Lonrho, which has investment interests throughout Africa, and the Canadian Falconbridge Nickel. Superior Oil put up $6 million for 2.4 million shares. Further loan capital was expected to come from customers (the U.S. automobile industry is a major customer for South African platinum).

APARTHEID AXIS

44

A

central figure in the expanding South Afri-

can investment field continues to be Charles W. Engelhard, who has a personal fortune of $250

and whose extensive interests in the United States, South Africa, Australia, Latin America and Europe are intertwined with those of Oppenheimer's Anglo-American Corporation. Engelhard is chairman of the Acme Timber Industries Ltd. of South Africa, the AmericanSouth Africa Investment Co., and the South Africa Forest Investments Ltd. He heads two companies that engage in the recruitment (at apartheid wages) of hundreds of thousands of black African workers for the mines of the Oppenheimer empire. His largest concern is Rand Mines Ltd. of which he is chairman, a financial, mining and industrial holding company that controls a group of 31 companies in gold, uranium, coal, cement, steel and concrete pipes, chrome ore and ferrochrome, timber and metal exploration. Rand Mines in 1965 joined with the Eastern Stainless Steel Corp. of America to set up the Southern Cross Steel Co. (Pty.) Ltd., in Middleburg, Transvaal, with an initial production capacity of 25,000 tons, mainly for export. American capital's most important associate in South Africa is the gigantic Anglo-American Corporation, which has assets of nearly two billion dollars. It has direct control of over 150 companies, and interests in an unknown number of others. While based in South Africa, it has ramifications throughout Africa below the equator. It is an ideal structure to assist American capital to penetrate most of Africa. Besides the Engelhard million,

45 COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID number of other major American corporations and financial institutions are connected with Anglo-American, including the Guggenheim interests (American Smelting and Refining Co.), U.S. Steel, American Metals Climax, Roan Selection Trust, Foote Mineral Co., First National City Bank of New York, and Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. U.S.

interests, a

Publicly, Oppenheimer is a supporter of the small Progressive Party in South Africa and is identified with a view that apartheid should not be carried to extremes. His differences with the Nationalists, however, are minimal: he opposes the carrying of segregation and "separate development" to that point of herding so many black Africans in "homelands" that it would interfere with the supply of cheap labor for his mines and industries. Oppenheimer is not in favor of equality or of eliminating apartheid as such; he is in favor of an apartheid system that keeps cheap blacklabor handy to exploit. The main American interests tend to adopt a similar view, which, it is hoped, would turn aside the more glaring spotlights on the South African situation. The significant feature of American investments is the shift in the past decade into manufacturing, the growth sector of the industrializing South African economy that is turning it into an expansionist force on the African continent. Manufacturing represented 38 per cent of U.S. investment in 1963 ($158 million), 45 per cent in 1966 ($271 million), and over 48 per cent in 1968 ($332 million). The investment spread in 1968 (U.S.

Department

of

Commerce

figures)

was as

follows:

APARTHEID AXIS

46

Industry

Value ($ million)

Mining Petroleum Manufacturing Banking, Finance Trade

78 147 332 38

_96 692

These figures for 1968 represent direct investment, but they are not by any means the total stake. If indirect investments and minority shareholdings in South African corporations are added, it is estimated that the aggregate exceeds one billion dollars. This is still not the real total, since a large part of American investment is present in British-based companies and in multinational corporations operating in South Africa, while further types of investment take the forms of licensing, sale of technology,

One

and the

of the significant factors in the

like.

shaping of

American

policy toward South Africa in the decade of the 1960's has been the flow of American capital to Britain and its penetration and takeover of British industry. By 1970 this resulted in control of more than 10 per cent of total British industry, and it accounted for 20 per cent of British exports, including exports to South Africa. It was in this period, for example, that Chrysler took over Rootes Motors, which has its biggest export market in South Africa. A typical step in the process of a merged American-British South African stake, underpinning apartheid, was the taking of a 15 per cent, $8.5 million, share in the British boilermaking firm, Babcock and Wilcox, by an American firm bearing the same name,

under a licensing arrangement. The American

U.S.

COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID

47

company was not concerned with the home operations of Babcock and Wilcox, which lost $2.4 million in 1969 and another $1.2 million in 1970. "More significant for investors," said the London Times in its Business News on November 9, 1970, commenting on the shareholding deal, "are Bab-

Among these is a prospering South African subsidiary, Babcock and Wilcox of Africa (Pty.) Ltd. Another example of the hidden American investment is the step taken by Chase Manhattan Bank in 1965 to merge the branch it had set up in South Africa in 1959 with the British Standard Bank, which has innumerable branches in that country. Between 1964 and 1968 Standard Bank's assets in South Africa jumped by over 40 per cent, cock's trade investments abroad."

from $1

billion to $1.42 billion. Since 1968 the South African government, undoubtedly at the behest of foreign investment groups feeling the pressure of anti-apartheid sentiment, has ceased to publish figures on foreign holdings in various sectors of its economy. The earnings of American corporations from direct investment show a continual sharp increase. These were $50 million in 1960, and $124 million in 1966. When Newmont Mining's Banghart, early in the 1960's, forecast average rates of profit of up to 27 per cent, he was not far off: average rates of return for U.S. investments in South Africa which were 17.5 per cent in 1960 had moved up to 20.6 per cent in 1966, and are continuing to rise as earnings increase. These rates of profit were double the average profit rates for U. S. overseas investments in the world as a whole (10.4 per cent in 1966), and far exceeded

48

APARTHEID AXIS SUBSIDIARY CORPORATIONS IN BRITAIN WITH SUBSIDIARIES IN SOUTH AFRICA

U.S.

U.S. Parent Celanese Corp., NY.

British Paints Ltd.

Buffalo Paints Ltd.

British Subsidiary

S.A. Subsidiary

Chicago Pneumatic

Consolidated Pneu-

Consolidated Pneu-

Tool Co., N.Y.

matic Tool Co. Ltd.

matic Tool Co. S.A.

Chrysler Corp.

Rootes Motors Ltd.

Corona

(Pty.) Ltd. (Pty.) Ltd.

Atlanta Industries (Pty.) Ltd.

Rootes (Pty.) Ltd. (10 subsidiaries)

Hoover

Co.,

Canton, O.

International Tele-

phone and Telegraph

Hoover

Ltd.

Hoover S.A.

(Pty.) Ltd.

Standard Telephones Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd. and Cables (South Africa) Pty. Ltd.

Supersonic Africa (Pty.) Ltd.

Raytheon

Co.,

Mass.

Seismograph Service Ltd.

Seismograph Service of South Africa (Pty.) Ltd.

Standard Pressed

Unbrake

Ltd.

Steel Co., Pa.

United Shoe British United Shoe Machinery Corp., Mass. Machinery Ltd.

Gordon-Webster

&

Co.

(Pty.) Ltd.

British United Engin-

eering (Pty.) Ltd. Bostik (Pty.) Ltd. British United Shoe

Machinery

(Pty.) Ltd.

the average rates of return for the dominant British investments in South Africa (12.1 per cent in 1965).

These are the considerations that have shaped United States policy toward South African apartheid. The trend is toward greatly increasing the American investment stake in the racist system. A survey published on September 21, 1970 by the Office of Business Economics of the U.S. Depart-

49 COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID of Commerce showed that, of the heavy increases in planned capital spending overseas by American corporations in 1970-71, the largest percentage increases would be in South Africa and Western Europe, with all other areas trailing U.S.

ment

emphasis. This governmental forecast of planned investment was complemented at the same time by changes made by the Nixon administration in October 1970 in the Advisory Council on African Affairs, a panel of non-government people to advise the State Department and the White House. Council membership was cut from 50 to 17, leading businessmen and bankers replacing liberal academics and churchmen. in

U.S. -South African

"Understanding"

A sequence of events in late 1969 and early 1970 indicated that an even higher level of understanding had been arrived at between the United States and the South African regime. In December 1969 an agreement was reached between American banking and monetary circles and South Africa on the marketing of South African gold. In world gold production South Africa has the dominant position, producing 31, 094,466 troy ounces out of a world total of 46, 168,319 in 1968. Since early 1968 South Africa had been endeavoring to take advantage of the

monetary or inflationary

crisis of the capitalist

world to press for wider maneuverability in the gold market e.g., to be able to sell directly to foreign central banks and thus obtain for itself increases over and above the fixed price of $35 per

—

—

50

ounce that

is

APARTHEID AXIS maintained internationally to keep

hegemony of the American dollar. Since any concessions to South Africa would have to come from the United States, it was, as The Economist put it in March 1969, in an ideal position to "blackmail South Africa over its apartheid policies. " What actually happened? In the eventual agreement, South Africa, despite its strong gold bargaining position, accepted an arrangement that preserved the fixed 35-dollar international price level and continued to bar free access for South Africa to bank gold markets. (It is only gold sales for jewelry and ornaments that are permitted to go through the price ceiling, since these do not affect monetary standards.) Overall, the agreement seemed to be a surprising surrender by South Africa to the U.S. stand. This aroused speculation as to what kind of a deal had been struck. Evidence was not long in forthcoming. President Nixon, in a long foreign policy speech on February 18, 1970 included an outline of policy toward southern Africa, and in March 1970 this was further elaborated in a policy document released by the State Department, entitled "The U.S. and Africa in the 70's." The Nixon report stressed that the "primary challenge facing Africa" is not the need for expanding the African liberation until the whole continent is free, but "economic development"

the

American "development aid") and "regional cooperation" (by which was inferred cooperation with an expansionist South Africa). Said Nixon about the liberation struggle: "The racial problems of the southern region will (with, of course,

not be solved quickly. These tensions are deeply

U.S.

COLLABORATION WITH APARTHEID

51

rooted in the history of the region and thus in the

psychology of both black and white ... we cannot agree that progressive change in southern Africa is furthered by force." In other words, black and white are equally guilty in the case of apartheid, and the black are even more to be blamed for turning, out of desperation, to armed struggle to free themselves.

The State Department document went further, declaring that the United States would not cut its ties with "the rich, troubled land" of South Africa, although it would continue to make known its "strong views on apartheid."

continue to

make

It

said:

"We

will

clear that our limited govern-

mental activities in South Africa do not represent any acceptance or condoning of its discriminatory system." Then it got to the essential point, emphasizing that while the United States held this attitude, it rejected "the fatalistic view that only violence can ultimately resolve these issues," and felt that any changes must come through "the constructive interplay of political, economic and social forces."

In sum, the edge of American policy, as expressed in these statements, is to be directed toward opposing the African liberation movements, which have been forced into armed struggle because all other avenues of "constructive interplay" have been ruthlessly closed by racist regimes, and toward aiding the economic development of South Africa regardless of its apartheid system. That the South African regime fully understood the essence of the American policy was quite apparent in the statements immediately

APARTHEID AXIS

52

made by Prime Minister Vorster and minister, Dr. Hilgard Muller, who

his foreign

hailed the

Nixon and State Department reports as "realistic" and "refreshing." For the South African apartheid regime the fact that the United States had taken the formal stand of opposing the forces genuinely was worth weight in gold.

political

fighting against colonialist apartheid its

3

Southern Base for U.S. Penetration of Africa American

political

and economic policy toward

South Africa is better understood in the context of U.S. policies toward Africa as a whole, in particular the southern third of the continent. Africa, immensely rich in resources but the least developed of the world's regions, is increasingly the scene of a scramble for investment, especially

by the big mining corporations and oil companies that have had their worldwide operations curtailed elsewhere by the growing number of socialist and anti-imperialist governments. The focus on Africa was expressed by Robert McNamara, former U.S. Defense Secretary, in his first public speech on September 30, 1968 after becoming president of the World Bank. He asserted that the greatest expansion of the World Bank's activities should occur in Africa, and proposed to triple the lending to Africa. The dominant interest in the World Bank is held by the United States, and its policies reflect American foreign policy aims. A further aspect of the African emphasis was provided in a speech made early in October 1970 by Ian MacGregor, chairman of American Metals Climax, which, as has been shown, has extensive investments in South Africa, as well as in Zambia 53

54 APARTHEID AXIS and other African countries. MacGregor warned of a possible critical shortage of metals and

minerals by the year 2,000, saying that the United States "will never again be self-sufficient in most of the metals it requires, indicating continued and increasing dependence on foreign sources." He urged the adoption of governmental policies to help promote overseas mining ventures. It did not pass unnoticed by leading financial journals that the MacGregor statement coincided with highly optimistic forecasts from South Africa about the future of its mining operations

and exports. In 1968 the

investment stake whole was $2.67 billion. Approximately one-third of this was then in South Africa; if indirect investments are added, the stake in South Africa alone would equal or overtop that in total U.S. direct

in Africa as a

the rest of the continent. It is not difficult to conclude that South Africa provides the base from which much of the penetration into the rest of Africa, black Africa, is to be carried out. This is an extremely profitable field. In 1968 total direct investment earnings from Africa as a whole were $671 million, representing a rate of return of 25.1 per cent, the highest rate of profit in the world for U.S. investments. From 1960 to 1968 the total of profits taken out of Africa by American private enterprise was $2.84 billion, compared with a total U.S. investment of $1.7 billion in the same period, i.e., $1.70 taken out of these underdeveloped economies for every $1 put all

in.

A

major obstacle stands, however,

in the

path

of this imperialist penetration: the forces of liber-

ation

and

of independence in Africa.

55 BASE FOR AFRICA There are now liberation movements actively engaged in armed struggle in all parts of southU.S.

Movement for the Liber(MPLA) began its struggle in

ern Africa. The People's ation of Angola

1961; the Independence Party of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in 1963 (although this Por-

tuguese colony is far to the north, the PAIGC coordinates with its brother liberation movements, and western military aid to Portugal goes all of its colonial wars); the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) in 1964. In 1967 the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa and the Zimbabwe African People's Union

for

(ZAPU)

of

Rhodesia formed an alliance and

launched an armed struggle for the liberation of both of their countries, sending spearheads through Rhodesia to the South African border. In the same year the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) undertook guerrilla struggle for freedom in that territory. These are the movements, occurring in areas of increasing U.S. investment vital to American mining companies, and the U.S. government has put itself on record as opposing such movements and their objectives. The issue, however, goes beyond the southern region and deeper into black Africa, since the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which includes 41 newly independent African states, has officially supported the liberation movements and has set up a Liberation Committee to provide them with material and technical aid. Zambia and Tanzania, bordering on the southern white supremacy region, have permitted transit, base and other facilities to liberation forces. Liberation from colonialism and apartheid involves the whole of black Africa, and

APARTHEID AXIS

56

the lines have been

drawn with increasing sharp-

ness on the continent between the forces of freeof suppression.

dom and

American investments and

policies in southern

Africa, therefore, are not merely reinforcements

system of South Africa but come bear against the movements for freedom in the entire southern region and against the interests of the whole of black Africa. for the apartheid to

The Portuguese Colonies This conclusion gains strength from an examination of American investments in the rest of the "white supremacy" bastion in southern Africa. Most of these are located in the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, which are tied closely through Portugal's fascist regime in economic, military and political links with South Africa. Another large portion is located in Rhodesia, where a white dictatorship representing onetwentieth of the population issued a "unilateral declaration of independence" in 1965 and formed a tight relationship with South Africa. In Angola two of the main extractive industries diamonds and oil are controlled largely by American capital. Angola Diamond Co. (Diamang), which virtually monopolizes the industry, is a branch of Anglo-American Diamond Corp. Ltd., in which Harry Oppenheimer has a share; the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. was the principal financing agency. However, from a strategic standpoint, a more important investment is

—

—

that of U.S. Gulf Oil Co. in the enclave of Cabinda, on the northern border of Angola. Its sub-

57 BASE FOR AFRICA Cabinda Gulf Oil Co., backed by Chase Manhattan Bank and National City Bank of New York, is operating under a 50-year concession; by 1969 it was producing 7.5 million tons of oil per year. Portugal itself requires less than half of U.S.

sidiary,

amount for its own needs, and the rest is intended to solve South Africa's oil poverty problem. As the Financial Times (London) has said, "the fact that Cabinda could, in the event of U.N. sanctions and blockades, supply the needs of most of southern Africa ... is an important new factor in the international equation." Thanks to U.S. Gulf, and to American banks, South Africa is thus being shielded from the most important item on a possible sanctions list. The oil companies have built up an equal stake in the other Portuguese colonies. Standard Oil of New Jersey works a 40-year concession in Guinea Bissau, located in the bulge of West Africa. In Mozambique, Gulf Oil had the field to itself for a decade until 1968. Since then a virtual rush has occurred, with no less than six U.S. companies crowding in after oil and gas: Hunt International Petroleum, Pan-American Oil, Sunray Oil, Clark Oil, Skelly, and Texaco Inc. Hunt International asked for and received a large concession along the Rovuma River, in Niassa province, which is one of the provinces with areas liberated by FRELIMO, the Mozambique liberation movement. In Tete province, another area of FRELIMO activity, U.S. Continental Ore has a minthis

ing concession. All of these American companies have a direct interest in the Portuguese military

campaigns

of

suppression against liberation forces. In the Cab-

APARTHEID AXIS

58

inda enclave, Gulf Oil reportedly maintains its own private security army which has been fighting the MPLA guerrillas. Portugal has been engaged for nearly a decade in an all-out colonial war against the liberation movements in all three of its African colonies. The poorest and most backward country in Europe, Portugal and its home economy is largely (except for agriculture) controlled by foreign capital, principally British, American and West German. It has been able to carry on its extremely costly wars solely because, as a member of NATO, it has been provided with military equipment and loans by these three NATO allies. It is estimated that the annual cost to Portugal of keeping a suppressive army of 150,000 men in its African colonies is around $215 million (an amount far in excess, for example, of the yearly $168 million earnings from exports to the colonies). Marcelo Caetano, the Portuguese prime minister, said in 1969 that "all the military effort overseas has been and will go on being supported from the ordinary income which before was largely used to cover development expenses. Now we have to face many of these expenses with money obtained by loans." In 1965 to 1967 total foreign loans to Portugal's public sector were $4.12 billion. Of this, $345 million came directly from U.S. banks, and $1.04 billion was in the form of external loans in U.S. dollars. The rest was put up by the NATO partners of the United States and Portugal Britain, France and West Germany, all of which piously claim that they are not aiding

—

war effort in Africa. American support for Portugal's

Portugal's

colonial

wars

U.S. is

BASE FOR AFRICA

also given in a

59

much more direct fashion. From

1949 to 1961 U.S. official aid to Portugal totalled $370 million, of which $290 million was for "military assistance." Between 1962 and 1968 the military aid was $33.7 million, but this did not include a much larger undisclosed sum for "defense support." It is known that in 1962, in exchange for U.S. use of the big Azores Islands air base, one of the key installations in American global military operations, Portugal asked for $80 million in aid per year. When the treaty came up for renegotiation in 1970, Portugal asked for $200 million in arms aid for the next five years. There has been no indication that Portugal was denied its requests: the use of the Azores base by the U.S. continues. In November 1969 the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Charles Bob Moore, paid an official visit to Mozambique, during which he visited the two provinces where American oil and mining companies have concessions, Niassa and Tete, both battle fronts in the colonial war in that colony. His little-publicized negotiations while there reportedly included the question of the use by the U.S. 7th Fleet of the port of Nacala, which is big enough to accommodate the whole official figure for

fleet.

FRELIMO, in its resolution on foreign policy adopted at its Second Congress held in Niassa province in July 1968, declared that it: "Condemns the United

NATO

States

of

countries, in particular the

America,

West

Germany,

France, Great Britain, Italy and Belgium, as well as Japan, for their military, financial and moral support to the colonial fascist government of

APARTHEID AXIS

60

Portugal, support which enables the latter to continue to implement its criminal, outmoded,

war of genocide against the Mozambique people as well as against the people of Angola and Guinea Bissau." As in the case of South African apartheid, the colonialist policy of

United States has adopted a verbal stance of moral rectitude in the United Nations in regard complaints against Portugal's African policy, while refusing to commit itself to any steps that would restrain Portugal from its military supto

When

pression. first

Portugal's colonial policies were

brought before the Security Council for con-

sideration in 1961 (in regard to the case of Ango-

the United States voted for resolutions that from suppressive measures and to grant self-determination to its colonies. At the same time, however, the U.S. la),

called on Portugal to desist

delegation praised what it called Portugal's "intent" to grant colonial "reforms." A decade later, after ten years of mass killing, napalming of villages and martial law by Portugal in Africa, the U.S. State

the 70's"

Department

policy

March 1970, "The U.S. and Africa in took the astonishing position of making

document

of

a distinction between South African apartheid and "the declared Portuguese policy of racial toleration" which it said "holds genuine hope for the future." In the early 1960's Portugal began to concede an "open door" for other foreign investments in its colonies in exchange for military aid. The American support of the 1961 UN resolutions then became progressively watered-down. On numerous subsequent occasions when resolutions

61 BASE FOR AFRICA have been introduced in the Security Council or in the General Assembly's Special Committee on U.S.

Decolonialization, calling for the banning of mili-

tary aid to Portugal or for sanctions on Portugal,

the United States has each time abstained and

disagreement with such measures. On 12, 1969 the General Assembly approved by 76 votes to 5 a resolution asking all UN agencies to support the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies; the United States was one of five voting against it, along with South Africa, Portugal, Britain and Argentina. The liberation movements have supplied specific information on American military equipment employed against them in the Portuguese colonies. These have included the following in the "Portuguese" air force: 50 Republic F-84C Thunderjet fighters (supplied in 1952), 50 North American F-86F Sabre fighters (during the 1960's), 30 Cessna T-37C trainers and several hundred North American Harvard T-3 and T-6 trainers (1963-1964, all equipped with guns and bomb racks for anti-guerrilla operations), 18 Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon bombers (1954), 12 Lockheed P-2V Neptune bombers (1960-1961), 20 Douglas B-26 bombers (1965-1966), innumerable Skymaster and C-47 Dakota transport planes (1960-1962). In the "Portuguese" navy employed in anti-guerrilla coastal operations in the colonies are: eight minesweepers built and supplied by the United States (1953-55), four large minesweepers built and paid for by the United States (1955), three patrol vessels built in France and paid for by the United stated

its

December

States (1954-55), five patrol vessels built in Portugal and paid for by the United States (1956-58),

APARTHEID AXIS two frigates loaned by the United States and still in use (1957), fast frigate Pero Escobar built in Italy and paid for by the United States (1957), three fast frigates 50 per cent paid for by the United States (1966-67). Supply of the Douglas B-26 bombers in 1965-66 led to the trial of one of the American pilots involved in what was made to appear a smuggling case. It was revealed in the trial that the 20 bombers were provided by the CIA in complicity with the State Department. American delegates to the United Nations have contended, while abstaining on resolutions for an embargo on Portugal, that the United States prohibits "the direct export of arms" to the African colonies and that arms supplied to Portugal itself are given with the proviso that they are not to be used in the colonial wars. When confronted with evidence that the arms are used in Africa, the United States ascribes it to Portuguese violation of agreements. In Lisbon, however, there is a permanent American Military Assistance Advisory Group which has as one of its duties "to observe and report on the utilization of material furnished and personnel trained by the military assistance program."

62

As the

liberation

movements

in

Portugal's

African colonies grow stronger and as Portugal finds it increasingly difficult to contend with them, the fascist regime in Lisbon has offered its NATO allies the use of bases in Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique, thus hoping to "inits colonial wars and to draw American, British, French and other military forces into taking part in them. In Britain, the

ternationalize"

63 BASE FOR AFRICA Conservative Party's Commonwealth ruling and Overseas Council, set up as a policyrecommending body on the eve of the Party's return to power in June 1970, has urged the creation of a South Atlantic Treaty Organization to include Britain, Portugal, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. One of the proclaimed aims is "mutual defense arrangements" to maintain the Portuguese colonies as "military buffers for southern Africa." The interwoven ties of the United States with all the proposed members would make it improbable that the United States would stand apart from such an agreement. U.S.

Rhodesia South Africa's other regional partner

in con-

structing a white supremacy fortress in southern

Africa is Rhodesia, the British colony where a small minority of white settlers (a quarter of a million in a population of nearly five million blacks) declared a "unilateral declaration of independence" and set up a white dictatorship in 1965. The white settler regime has moved steadily since then toward an apartheid system modeled after South Africa.

A white supremacy Rhodesian Constitution was adopted in 1969 that, according to its auintended to bar African majority rule for 500 When Ian Smith, the racist premier, was asked in an interview in November 1970, "How long, in your view, will it be before there is universal franchise in Rhodesia one man, one vote?," he answered: "I hope never. I hope we never degenerate to that sort of thing."

thors,

is

to 1,000 years.

—

APARTHEID AXIS

64

The Rhodesian racists have been so flagrant in their acts and pronouncements that the United States and its NATO allies (except Portugal) have felt compelled to bow to world opinion and to support UN resolutions that not only condemn the racist seizure of power but take the unprecedented step of imposing mandatory sanchave failed to have because both South Africa and Portugal have ignored the UN directive, have continued to trade with Rhodesia and to supply its needs, and have propped up the racist regime tions on Rhodesia. If sanctions sufficient effect

it

is

militarily as well as economically.

Sanctions have been opposed strenuously by the American mining corporations that have over

$55 million of investments in Rhodesia, especially Union Carbide and Foote Mineral Co. that mine chrome ore in the colony. The mining interests have conducted a strong lobby in the U.S. Congress and State Department for the removal of sanctions. They have been supported by prominent Americans identified with policy making, including Dean Acheson, former U.S. secretary of state.

In the Security Council resolution of

December

16, 1966, voted for by the United States, it was stated, among other embargo measures, that

member

states shall "prevent the import into

their territories of asbestos, iron ore, chrome, pig-iron, sugar, tobacco, copper,

meat and meat

products, and hides and skins and leather orig-

inating in Rhodesia." In September 1970 the Nixon administration authorized Foote Mineral

and Union Carbide to import stockpiles of chrome ore from Rhodesia, a step seen internationally as

65 U.S. BASE FOR AFRICA encouraging breaches in the sanctions policy and as giving support to the racist regime.

The hypocrisy characterizing

all officially stat-

ed U.S. policies toward Africa held true in this instance as well, the authorization being accompanied by an announcement that U.S. companies operating in Rhodesia would be permitted to wind up their activities there, which would be a blow at the white settler government. Foote Mineral and Union Carbide both promptly exposed this for the empty gesture that it was by proclaiming they had no intentions of ceasing operations in Rhodesia, and reports from Rhodesia itself revealed that their mining activity, on the contrary, was actually being expanded.

South Africa: The Military Threat

For the United States and its imperialist allies, South Africa is the cornerstone of the white supremacist alliance and the chief instrument not only for dealing with the liberation movements in southern Africa but for spreading neocolonial influences into independent African countries.

To achieve the former aim, South Africa has been built into a military power. Its annual arms budget has risen from $70 million in 1960 to over $400 million in 1969. This has been greatly stepped up since 1968 by the creation of a government-backed Armaments Development and Production Corp., with an initial share capital of $150 million. In introducing legislation for this purpose, South African Defense Minister Botha said that "a number of overseas firms had

APARTHEID AXIS approached the Government to suggest the joint establishment with South African concerns of

66

armament factories in the Republic." The main South African firm in the manufacture of arms and ammunition is African Exploand Chemical Industries

Ltd., a huge company with 14 subsidiaries, in which Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) has the largest share, followed by the Anglo-American subsidiary, De Beers. It also has a sizeable American participation: Rand Mines Ltd., of which Charles W. Engelhard is chairman, has on its list of investment interests African Explosives and Chemical Industries Ltd. Defense Secretary Botha revealed in 1968 that there were 150 chief contractors and 800 subcontractors involved in military production, which included the manufacture of napalm bombs. A large number of these are foreign corporations, with an unspecified number of American companies participat-

sives

ing.

In July 1970 Premier Vorster injected a far

more ominous threat with an announcement that South Africa had developed a new uranium enrichment process and was setting up a plant to produce nuclear fuel, a step that could easily lead to the production of nuclear weapons. Since 1962 members of the South African Atomic Energy Board have been asserting that South Africa has the resources to make atom bombs; both the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union have been charging that a secret treaty exists between South Africa and West Germany to produce nuclear weapons. The chairman of the South African Atomic Energy Board said in April

67 BASE FOR AFRICA 1968 that "South Africa enjoys cooperation in the field of nuclear energy with many western countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom. " Any nuclear weapons that U.S.

come into the racist regime's hands would undoubtedly be placed there in part by the United States.

South Africa's military muscle has already been flexed on a number of occasions. In 1967, 1,700 South African troops, supported by planes, entered Rhodesia with the agreement of the white settler government to aid white Rhodesian

and have remained there permanently, participating in suppressive campaigns up to and across the Zambian border. By the latter part of 1970 South African troops in Rhodesia had increased to 4,000 and were operating in the Zambesi valley with armored vehicles and helicopters against guerrilsecurity forces in anti-guerrilla operations,

las.

President

Kaunda

of

Zambia has repeatedly

protested against South African military aircraft overflying his country with aggressive intent, and

Zambia more than once has arrested South African police who have intruded on Zambian territory. South African troops and police are fighting SWAPO guerrillas in the South West African

UN

has ordered it to relinquish. Since 1969 South African troops have been reported in both Angola and Mozambique, aiding Portuguese forces in their colonial wars. In Mozambique, South African armed units have been sent as far north as Tete province, to guard, and to operate in, the area of the Cabora Bassa trust territory that the

dam

site.

APARTHEID AXIS one phase of the South African military expansionist trend. Since 1968 a large South African military air base has been

68

These

activities are but

Katimo Mulilo in the Caprivi South West Africa that exthe Rhodesian and Zambian borders.

operational

at

Strip, the finger of

tends to

During 1970 arrangements were made with Malawi, the only independent African state to collaborate openly with the apartheid regime, for South Africa to use its large air base at Lilongwe for military purposes. This extends the South African threat up to the heart of Zambia and Tanzania. A South African cabinet minister stated in April 1970 that the "Communists" in Tanzania would be dealt with from the Malawi base, and that the "Communists" in Zambia would be dealt with from the Caprivi Strip base. Premier Vorster, in a speech in Natal on October 14, 1970, said in regard to British proposals to supply his government with arms: "South Africa needs weapons to prevent Communist domination in southern Africa." He continued: "It is clear that a terrorist onslaught is being planned sometime in the future. It was for this reason that I warned southern African states who made themselves available as terrorist bases that South Africa would pursue any terrorist right into the country where he came from." This drumfire of belligerency was carried further by Defense Minister Botha on October 23, 1970 in a speech at Wellington, Cape province, in which he boasted of South Africa's ability to manufacture napalm and all the arms and ammunition it needed so that "if Kaunda's terrorists should try to attack

U.S. BASE FOR AFRICA South Africa, they will soon find out that

ample means

to destroy

69 it

has

them completely."

This aggressive South African posture has its in a similar attitude by Portugal. Zambia, Senegal and Guinea have all complained to the UN about Portuguese military attacks on their villages bordering Portuguese colonies. In November 1970 a far graver incident occurred, the invasion of Guinea, organized and led by the Portuguese. The Organization of African Unity subsequently denounced NATO countries, including the United States, for their involvement in this and other attacks. When the UN General Assembly followed this up, at the behest of African countries, and adopted a resolution (with 94 votes in favor) calling on Portugal to give immediate independence to its African colonies, the United States was one of six countries voting against it. Reports of secret military treaties between South Africa, Portugal and Rhodesia have been printed for years, and the operational exchanges and the mutual use of training facilities by all three have borne out the existence of agreements. Premier Vorster, addressing a Nationalist Party provincial congress in September 1968, said: "South Africa and her friend Portugal understand each other very well and I need say no more on that subject. No treaties are needed between friends; they know their duty when a neighbor's house is on fire." It is this picture of a militarized South Africa, arming its white troops to the teeth with weapons produced in munitions factories financed and built by western corporations and employing parallel

APARTHEID AXIS

70

those troops to suppress liberation forces beyond its borders as well as to maintain its apartheid

system at home, that comes to mind when American delegates stand before the UN Security Council and the General Assembly and object to the demand for halting the shipment of American spare parts for arms and for prohibiting American investment in the manufacture of arms in South Africa. This is the picture covered over by U.S. policy statements on Africa that condemn only the use of force by liberation movements and remain silent about the expanding and aggressive force employed by the apartheid state.

South Africa: The Economic Threat

The aggressive military policy adopted by South Africa is the complement of a political and economic expansion underway since 1967. Called the "outward policy," it is an imperialistic drive to bring half of Africa, up to the Congos and Kenya, into a sphere dominated by the racist state.

Prime Minister Vorster told the American jourNews and World Report, November 14,

nal U.S.

1966: "In

much

many

respects

we have, with

respect to

of Africa south of the Sahara, a respon-

sibility

which the United States has undertaken

on a much larger scale with respect to the underdeveloped areas of the world as a whole." A motion passed in the 1967 session of the South African parliament declared that "this House approves the policy pursued by the government for friendly co-existence and fruitful cooperation with countries in Africa, with special

— 71 BASE FOR AFRICA emphasis on the Republic's ability to contribute to economic and technical development and the raising of the standard of living of Africa." This "outward policy" with which the Vorster government has been identified has since been given much emphasis. As soon as this policy was announced it was hailed by U.S. spokesmen as giving South Africa

U.S.

a new image in the world. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Palmer said on April 8, 1967 that South Africa's

moves "may prove conducive

improved international and human relations," and that "we certainly will welcome them welcome them very much indeed." Three years later, in February and March 1970, President Nixon and his secretary of state, William Rogers, again gave fulsome backing to the "outward policy," calling it "the constructive interplay of political, economic and social forces," and urging more "regional cooperation" of its to

kind.

By the end of 1970 a combination of pressures by western powers had begun to drive a wedge into the unity of the independent African nations, to the benefit of the South African regime. The heads of government in two former French colonies, President Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast and President Tsirinana of the Malagasy Republic, who both allow themselves to depend on subsidy aid from France, announced in November 1970 that they favored a "dialogue" and a rapprochment with South Africa. President Tsirinana was rewarded with a $3-million South African loan. The connection between the purchase of $100 million of arms from France by

72 APARTHEID AXIS South Africa in the preceding year and France's "diplomacy" in its former colonies was apparent Shortly afterward the counter-revoto all. lutionary regime in Ghana, which is heavily in

debt

American and British

bankers, defavored such a "dialogue." These attitudes have been denounced by the other members of the Organization of African Unity, which called for a firm and united stand against the imperialist-backed South African drive to the to

clared that

it,

too,

north.

What forms has this "constructive interplay" taken that American interests find so satisfactory? Between 1964 and 1969 South African exports to African countries have nearly doubled, from $190 million to $368 million. Over 75 per cent of these have been manufactured goods, representing South Africa's fastest growing sector of trade. It should be recalled that approximately half of American investments in South Africa are in manufacturing (48 per cent in 1968) and that these have been increasing steeply since the "outward policy" began. American firms, it may be concluded, are using South Africa as a base to penetrate the whole African market. Monopoly investment is following the same outward path. By 1967 it was estimated that South African investments in nine other countries within the southern African region (South West Africa, Rhodesia, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland) was around $975 million. This is but a portion of South African-based capital now flowing to the rest of Africa. It doesn't take into account the vast operations of the giant Anglo-

U.S.

BASE FOR AFRICA

73

American Corporation, which extend into Congo, Tanzania and into West as well as East Africa. Anglo-American is a central pipeline for an incalculable in

amount

of

American investment

Africa. Its network of holding companies

is

interwoven with the interests of innumerable

American as well as British corporations and financial institutions. Through it, American capiis able to pursue much of its half-hidden operations in Africa. The aspect of "regional cooperation" that has drawn the heaviest opposition in independent Africa and in progressive circles in many other

tal

is the scheme to erect huge hydropower stations in Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia, backed by South African and western capital. This is a scheme to further the economic integration of southern Africa under

countries

electric

white racist rule. Involved are power stations on the Kunene River on the border between Angola and South West Africa, at the Kariba site on the Zambesi River where it runs between Rhodesia and Zambia, and at Cabora Bassa in Mozambique, also on the Zambesi. It is the $320-million Cabora Bassa project, biggest of them all, larger than the Aswan dam, that has met with the greatest protest. With a potential of 17 billion kilowatt hours,

it

is

in-

tended mainly to supply South African industry and to reinforce the power of the white minority. FRELIMO has pledged to resist its construction and has called upon anti-imperialist forces internationally to press for the withdrawal of western financial and engineering support for it. This

APARTHEID AXIS done not because a movement like FRELIMO is opposed to progress and economic development but because the Cabora Bassa project will not be for the benefit of the black masses of southern

74 is

Africa, in the

way

that the

Aswan dam

is

for the

benefit of the Egyptian people, but for the benefit of the white supremacists alone.

Proof of this is the vast plan by Portugal, hinged upon the Cabora Bassa and Kunene River projects, to bring in one million white European settlers to colonize the development areas and to strengthen the base of white rule. In mid-1970 steps toward this included the compulsory evacuation of 34,000 black African people from the Cabora Bassa region, an operation assisted by South African troops airlifted to the spot. In July 1968 the contract to build the Cabora Bassa dam was awarded to ZAMCO, a consortium headed by Oppenheimer's Anglo-American Corp. Major banks of all the main western countries, as well as from South Africa, are participating in the financing of the project; these include the Bank of America in addition to the usual banks associated with the

Oppenheimer

interests (First

National City Bank and Morgan Guaranty Trust). Subsidiary contracts have been farmed out to a spectrum of western corporations. For example, Ingersoll Rand, an American company working through a British subsidiary, is supplying the drilling equipment. Parceling out of the subcontracts became a

major problem

for

ZAMCO

due

to a strong

cam-

paign developed in African and western countries against participation in a project that would strengthen apartheid and colonialism. In 1969

BASE FOR AFRICA 75 Swedish electrical engineering interests were forced to pull out of the scheme. In 1970 Italian participation was canceled. As European companies withdrew in the face of popular pressure, ZAMCO invited bids from the American General Electric and Westinghouse. The Cabora Bassa project is a perfect example of what the United States government means when it talks of support for "economic development" in southern Africa: the development of the foreign, imperialist investment stake in white minority power, drawing the highest profit rates in the world from the exploitation of the unU.S.

privileged black masses.

4

Struggles against

Apartheid and Racist Colonialism The question of South Africa, its apartheid system, its bolstering of colonialism and racial oppression in southern Africa as a whole, and its aggressive expansionist aims toward the rest of Africa, is one of the major political and moral issues for the 1970's. It is linked inextricably with all other questions and issues of colonial freedom and of liberation from racist oppression in the world today. In South East Asia, the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people and their organized liberation

movement

is

in all essential respects identical

with the struggles of the guerrilla liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Rhodesia. In the United States the struggle by black Americans and their white allies to eliminate the cancer of racial discrimination and persecution is essentially the same as the antiapartheid struggle in South Africa. They are interwoven, not only in their moral aspects but because the same forces are involved in the oppression in each case. When policies are traced to their origins, it can be seen that the same forces bear the responsibility for the

bombing 76

of

Vietnamese and

for

STRUGGLES AGAINST APARTHEID

77

the bombing of Africans. The policy of military intervention in South East Asia has been made in

Washington

the

same

and

New York where the policy to back the armed

offices

and board rooms

in

white oppressors of Africans is made. The same corporations banks, oil companies, aircraft that operate behind and firms, mining interests together with U.S. armed forces in South East Asia are the same corporations that work behind and together with the apartheid system in South Africa. If American troops themselves are not yet present in southern Africa, it is because white racists with armies are on the scene to protect the investments of American and European corpora-

—

—

tions.

South Africa and the United States are the two foremost areas of racial oppression on earth. They share the common background of the enslavement of black Africans by the white businessman. American ruling groups that adhere brutally and tenaciously to discrimination and segregation at home are leading supporters of a "realistic" and "businesslike" relationship with the South African regime that perpetuates the even

more brutal system of apartheid. The racist leaders in South Africa understand well the role played by their American counterparts. The chairman of the governmentcontrolled South African Broadcasting Corporation said the following in a radio lecture in 1965:

"South Africa will

make

a decisive contribution West as a white world united in its struggle against the joint forces of the yellow and black races of the earth. When America reaches this level of maturity in the emergent world period, overcoming the tran-

to the consolidation of the entire

78

sitional sickness of the

APARTHEID AXIS

modern period and taking

over the leadership of the whole white world, the West will be very favorably placed to win the racial struggle on a global scale." For Americans, black and white, the struggle against racist inequality at home and colonialist racism abroad is not a "transitional sickness" but one and the same fundamental and permanent battle for democracy and liberation. Birmingham, Alabama and Sharpeville, South Africa are linked in blood and brotherhood, as are civil rights marches and ghetto rebellions in American cities and the liberation movements in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia. Apartheid in South Africa is playing an important part in making it plain what that struggle basically is all about. By carrying racism to an extreme it has revealed the bare bones of what "the racial struggle" means to the white imperialist businessman: the creation of a vast mass of defenseless cheap labor. Standing out against the barren apartheid landscape, the imperialist corporation and its soaring profit rates is more clearly visible to the naked eye than it has ever been.

For this reason, the anti-apartheid movement, which has spread to many countries, has raised not only the moral issues and the broad political questions affecting South Africa, but the practical matter of pinpointing the guilty collaborators with apartheid and of penalizing them. The "dam-busters" campaign against the banks and companies in Western Europe involved in the Cabora Bassa project is one of the more successful practical steps against white racist rule in south-

ern Africa.

STRUGGLES AGAINST APARTHEID 79 Arguments by American officials and other western spokesmen about the "unwisdom" of sanctions and boycotts directed against racist South Africa, Portugal and Rhodesia are the cries of those who know that such policies would hurt, by cutting into their own profits. It is not necessary to stop every wheel from turning in South Africa; it is only necessary to interrupt the flow of earnings from the labor of segregated black Africans. The fight for sanctions, both inside and outside of the United Nations, together with a boycott of South African products, is a necessary

conducted against the allies as well as the Afrikaaner core of apartheid. This is one phase of the anti-apartheid struggle that can be carried on in the streets, the shops and the legislatures of every country with corporations that abet South Africa and its racist allies. The other phase of the struggle, carried on in southern Africa itself, in its villages, mountains and forests the liberation struggle can also be aided internationally, with money, medicines, clothing, food, and the means to acquire the arms and equipment needed for a prolonged armed fight for freedom. The lines are clearly drawn in southern Africa. They are clearly drawn in the United States. They have been clearly drawn in Vietnam, enabling millions to see how the war against the Vietnamese people has been a war also against the freedoms of the American people. Those same millions will find it easier to understand that to knock the prop of American imperialist support from under apartheid in South Africa is to take a major step toward the demolition of the black ghetto and segregation in American life. fight to be

—

—

APPENDIX

I

THE FREEDOM CHARTER Revolutionary Program of the African National Congress* For over 250 years the African people fought wars of reEuropean invaders in defense of their motherland South Africa. Despite their heroism, courage and tenacity our people were defeated on the battlefield by the superior arms and organization of the Europeans. Although the conflicts and problems of South Africa have largely centered on the relationships between the Africans and Europeans, they are not the only peoples who form the South African population. The Colored and Indian people are, like the Africans, oppressed by the dominant European mi-

sistance against the

—

nority.

The South Africa of today is the product of the common labor of all its peoples. The cities, industries, mines and agriculture of the country are the result of the efforts of all its peoples. But the wealth is utilized by and for the interests of the White minority only. The African National Congress was formed in 1912 to unite the Africans as a nation and to forge an instrument for their liberation. From the outset the African National Congress asserted the right of the African people as the indigenous owners of the country, entitled to determine its direction and destiny. Simultaneously our forefathers recognized that the other groups in the country the Europeans, Indians and Coloreds were historically part and parcel of South Africa.

—

—

DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES The ANC rejected the claims of the European settlers to domination, and fought against all attempts to subjugate them in the land of their birth. But in the face of the gravest

ANC

never once abandoned the principle that home in the country of the Africans, were welcome, provided only that they accepted full and consistent equality and freedom for all. In this the ANC was not merely bowing to history and reality but believed that it injustices the

all

those

was

who had

their

correct in principle to

make

this position clear.

Over and

over again in the face of manifest inhumanity the

ANC

*This document appeared in Sechaba, official organ of the African National Congress of South Africa, Vol. 3, No. 7, July 1969.

80

THE FREEDOM CHARTER

81

refused to be provoked into abandoning

its

democratic prin-

ciples.

The ruling White minority rejected the concepts of the ANC and to that extent the movement and the people fought and will fight

them.

CONGRESS OF THE PEOPLE In the early fifties

when

the struggle for freedom was

new

intensity the need was seen for a clear statesaw it. Thus was ment of the future South Africa as the born the Congress of the People campaign. In this campaign

reaching

ANC

the African National Congress and

its allies

invited the whole

demands which would be a common document called the Freedom

of South Africa to record their

incorporated in Charter. Literally millions of people participated in the campaign and sent in their demands of the kind of South Africa they wished to live in. These demands found final expression in the Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter was adopted at the Congress of the People, representative of all the people of

South Africa, which met at Kliptown, Johannesburg on June 25 and 26, 1955. The three thousand delegates who gathered at Kliptown were workers, peasants, intellectuals, women, youth and students of all races and colors. The Congress was the climax of the campaign waged by the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the Colored People's Organization and the Congress of Democrats. Subsequently all these organizations adopted the Freedom Charter in their national conferences as their official program. Thus the Freedom Charter became the common program enshrining the hopes and aspirations of all the progressive people of South Africa. "HIGH TREASON"

From the moment the idea of the Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter was mentioned the White government of South Africa termed it "High Treason. After the Congress of the People was held and the Charter adopted, fresh threats were uttered by the government. Eventually 156 leaders of the liberation movement were arrested on December 5, 1956 and charged with plotting to overthrow the state and to replace it with a new one along the lines laid down in the Charter. This long trial which lasted four-and-a-half years resulted in the acquittal of all the accused. By that time the Freedom Charter had become one of the most famous documents in the history of man's struggle for freedom. The Charter was not the statement of this or that section of the population. It was a declaration of all the people of South Africa. It was a simple, honest, unpretentious document '

82

APARTHEID AXIS

and ideas of millions of common people. Therein lay the power of its revolutionary message. And always it should be borne in mind that both in its wording and intent the Charter projected the view not of present-day South Africa but that of the country as it should and will be after the reflecting the desires

victory of the revolution.

Today the African National Congress and its allies are engaged in an armed struggle for the overthrow of the racist regime. In its place the ANC will establish a Democratic State along the lines indicated in the Freedom Charter. Although the Charter was adopted 14 years ago its words remain as fresh and relevant as ever. Some who have forgotten its actual terms or the kind of document it is, or who detach this or that phrase from the document taken as a whole, imagine that the conditions of armed struggle somehow invalidate some provisions of the Charter. What we believe is that the Charter may require elaboration of its revolutionary message. But what is even more meaningful, it requires to be achieved and put into practice. This cannot be done until state power has been seized from the fascist South African government and transferred to the revolutionary forces led by the ANC.

THE PREAMBLE OF THE FREEDOM CHARTER The first lines of the Charter declare that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people. The expression "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White" embodies the historical principle which has characterized the policy of the African National Congress toward the peoples who have settled in the country in the past centuries. The African people as the indigenous owners of the country have accepted that all the people who have made South Africa and helped build it up, are components of its multi-national population, are and will be in a democratic South Africa, one people inhabiting their common home. No government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will, not just of the Whites, but of all the people of the country. The Freedom Charter thus begins by an assertion of what is and has been a cardinal democratic principle that all can live in South Africa, whatever their origin, in equality and democracy; that the South Africa of the future will not be a country divided unto itself and dominated by a particular racial group. It will be the country of all its inhabitants. It is the White people who in the past as now have rejected this principle leaving the people no alternative but to convince

THE FREEDOM CHARTER

83

them by the truth of revolutionary struggle. The preamble ends by calling on the people, Black and White, as equals, countrymen and brothers

to pledge to strive together sparing neither strength nor courage until the democratic changes set out in the Freedom Charter had been won. The preamble, couched in terms similar to many famous documents reflecting man's aspirations for freedom, called for a new state resting on the will of the people a repudiation of the existing state and a call for revolution. Hereunder we examine, briefly, each section of our Charter.

—

THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN! The Republican constitution of South Africa passed in 1961 is a monument to racialism and despotism. In terms of this constitution supreme legislative authority is vested in the White fascist State President, the House of Assembly and the Senate. Only a White person can be elected State President. The House of Assembly and the Senate consist exclusively of White representatives elected by an exclusive-White electorate. Therefore the power to make laws in our country is a monopoly of the White minority. The same applies to other organs of government such as the four provincial councils of Natal, Cape, Orange Free State and Transvaal which are headed by a White Administrator assisted by an all White Executive Council. Organs of local government such as District Councils, Municipal Councils, boroughs are manned entirely by White people. Such organs of local government as there are for non-Whites consist of the Transkei Legislative Council and an executive; the Indian Council; the Colored Council; urban Bantu authorities, Territorial Authorities and other such bodies. These are all undemocratic institutions with little or no power and serving merely as a sounding board for the White minority government. in South Africa is similarly manned at by White persons. successful armed revolution will put an end to this state

The administration all significant levels

A

of affairs.

The Parliament of South Africa will be wholly transformed an Assembly of the People. Every man and woman in our country shall have the right to vote for and stand as a candidate for all offices and bodies which make laws. The present administration will be smashed and broken up. In its into

place will be created an administration in which all people irrespective of race, color and sex can take part. The bodies of minority rule shall be abolished and in their place will be

APARTHEID AXIS

84

established democratic organs of self-government in provinces, districts and towns of the country.

all

the

ALL NATIONAL GROUPS SHALL HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS! In South Africa not only does the system at present enforce discrimination against individuals by reason of their color or race but in addition some national groups are privileged, as such, over others. At the moment the Afrikaaner national group is lording it over the rest of the population with the English group playing second fiddle to them. For all the nonWhite groups the Africans, Indians and Coloreds the situation is one of humiliation and oppression. As far as languages are concerned only Afrikaans and English have official status in the bodies of state such as Parliament or Provincial Councils; in the courts, schools and in the administration. The culture of the African, Indian and Colored people is barely tolerated. In fact everything is done to smash and obliterate the genuine cultural heritage of our people. If there is reference to culture by the oppressors it is for the purpose of using it as an instrument to maintain our people in backwardness and ignorance. Day in and day out White politicians and publicists are regaling the world with their theories of national, color and racial discrimination and contempt for our people. Enshrined in the laws of South Africa are a host of insulting provisions directed at the dignity and humanity of the oppressed people. A democratic government of the people shall ensure that all national groups have equal rights, as such, to achieve their destiny in a united South Africa. There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for the African, Indian, Colored and Whites as far as their national rights are concerned. All people shall have equal right to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and customs; all national groups shall be protected by laws against insults to their race or national pride; the preaching and practice of national, racial or color discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime; and all laws and practices based on Apartheid or racial discrimination shall be set aside.

—

—

THE PEOPLE SHALL SHARE IN THE COUNTRY'S WEALTH! Today most of the wealth of South Africa is flowing into the coffers of a few in the country and others in foreign lands. In addition the White minority as a group have over the years enjoyed a complete monopoly of economic rights, privileges and opportunities.

THE FREEDOM CHARTER An ANC government shall

85

restore the wealth of our counSouth Africans to the people as a whole. The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as try,

the heritage of

all

a whole. At the moment there are vast monopolies whose existence affects the livelihood of large numbers of our people and whose ownership is in the hands of Europeans only. It is necessary for monopolies which vitally affect the social wellbeing of our people, such as the mines, the sugar and wine industry to be transferred to public ownership so that they can be used to uplift the life of all the people. All other industry and trade which is not monopolistic shall be allowed with controls to assist the well-being of the people. All restrictions on the right of the people to trade, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions shall be ended.

THE LAND SHALL BE SHARED AxMONG THOSE WHO WORK IT! The indigenous people of South Africa after a series

of

resistance wars lasting hundreds of years were deprived of their land. Today in our country all the land is controlled and used as a monopoly by the White minority. It is often said that 87 per cent of the land is "owned" by the Whites and 13 per cent by the Africans. In fact the land occupied by Africans and referred to as "Reserves" is state land from which they can be removed at any time but which for the time being the fascist government allows them to live on. The Africans have always maintained their right to the country and land as a traditional slogan birthright of which they have been robbed. The "Mayibuye i- Africa" was and is precisely a demand for the return of the land of Africa to its indigenous inhabitants. At the same time the liberation movement recognizes that other oppressed people deprived of land live in South Africa. The White people who now monopolize the land have made South Africa their home and are historically part of the South African population and as such entitled to land. This made it perfectly correct to demand that the land be shared among those who work it. But who work the land? Who are the

ANC

tillers?

The bulk of the land in our country is in the hands of land barons, absentee landlords, big companies and state capitalist enterprises. The land must be taken away from exclusively European control and from these groupings and divided among the small farmers, peasants and landless of all races who do not exploit the labor of others. Farmers will be

86

APARTHEID AXIS

prevented from holding land in excess of a given area, fixed in accordance with the concrete situation in each locality. Lands held in communal ownership will be increased so that they can afford a decent livelihood to the people and their ownership shall be guaranteed. Land obtained from land barons and the monopolies shall be distributed to the landless and landpoor peasants. State land shall be used for the benefit of all the people. Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended and all land shall be open to ownership and use to all people, irrespective of race. The State shall help farmers with implements, seeds, tractors and dams to save soil and assist the tillers. Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed to all who work on the land. Instruments of control such as the "Trek Pass," private jails on farms, forced labor shall be abolished. The policy of robbing people of their cattle in order to force them to seek work to pay taxes shall be stopped.

ALL SHALL BE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW! In terms of such laws as the notorious Suppression of Act; the Native Administration Act; the Riotous Assembles Act; the Terrorism and Sabotage Acts and many other laws, our people suffer imprisonment, deportation and restriction without fair trial. These laws shall be abolished. No one shall suffer imprisonment, deportation or restriction

Communism

without fair trial. In our country petty government officials are invested with vast powers in their discretion to condemn people. These powers shall be ended. The courts of South Africa are manned by White officials, magistrates, judges. As a result the courts serve as instruments of oppression. The democratic state shall create courts representative of all the people. South Africa has the highest proportion of prisoners of any state in the world. This is because there are so many petty infringements to which a penalty of imprisonment is attached. In a new South Africa imprisonment shall only be for serious crimes against the people, and shall aim at reeducation, not vengence. It has been a standing policy of White governments in South Africa to prevent Africans and other non-Whites from holding responsible positions in the police force. The present police force and army are instruments of coercion to protect White supremacy. Their whole aim is punitive and terroristic against the majority of the population.

— THE FREEDOM CHARTER

87

the major aim of the armed revolution to defeat and destroy the police force, army and other instruments of coercion of the present state. In a democratic South Africa the army and police force shall be open to people of all races. Already Umkhonto We Sizwe the nucleus of our future people's army is an armed force working for the interests of people drawn from the land for their liberation. It consists of people drawn from all populaIt is

—

tion groups in

South Africa.

ALL SHALL ENJOY EQUAL HUMAN RIGHTS! South Africa has numerous laws which limit or infringe the human rights of the people. One need only mention the notorious Suppression of Communism Act, Proclamation 400 which imposes a state of emergency in the Transkei; the Proclamation of 1953 which bans meetings of more than ten Africans in scheduled areas; the Native Laws Amendment Act which introduces racial discrimination in churches and places of worship; the Bantu Education Act which makes education without a government permit an offense surely an offense unique in the world to educate without a permit! All the above Acts and regulations will be swept away by a

—

—

people's government. The law shall guarantee to all their right to speak, to organize, to meet together, to publish, to preach, to worship, and to educate their children. The Pass Laws of South Africa result in the arrest of an average of 1,100 persons a day. These laws control and prohibit movement of our people in the country. There are also

laws which restrict movement from one province to another. As part of their checking of the people numerous police raids are organized during which homes are broken into at any time of the day or night. Many laws give the police powers to enter people's homes without warrant and for no apparent reason except to terrorize them. All this shall be abolished.

The privacy

of the

home from

police raids shall be protected by law. All shall be free to travel without restrictions

side to town,

from province

to

from countryprovince and from South Africa

abroad.

Pass laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished.

THERE SHALL BE WORK AND SECURITY! As with everything else the rights of

collective bargaining South Africa have been twisted and warped by racial ideas and practices. Africans do not have the right to

of

workers

in

APARTHEID AXIS

88

form registered trade unions and are prohibited from going on strike. Other workers are forced to belong to racially divided unions. The government has the power to determine what jobs

what racial groups. People of different races are paid differential wage rates for the same work. Migratory labor is a chief feature of the South African economy and leads to massive social upheaval and distress particularly among Africans. In the Democratic State the is determined to achieve, all who work shall be free to form trade unions to elect their officers and to make wage agreements with their employers. The State shall recognize the right and duty of all to work shall be reserved for

ANC

and

to

draw

full

unemployment

benefits.

Men and women

of

races shall receive equal pay for equal work. There shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for all workers and maternity leave on full pay for all working mothers. Miners, domestic workers, farm workers, and civil servants shall have the same rights as all others who work to form trade unions, and join political organizations. The use of child labor, the housing of male workers in single men's compounds, the system whereby workers on wine farms are paid tots of wine as part payment on their wages, contract labor all these pernicious practices shall be abolished by a victorious revolutionary government. all

—

THE DOORS OF LEARNING AND CULTURE SHALL BE OPENED! One of the biggest crimes of the system of White supremacy

damage

development of the people of and culture. On the one hand the minds of White people have been poisoned with all manner of unscientific and racialist twaddle in their separate schools, colleges and universities. There has been made available to them all the worst forms of so-called Western culture. The best creations of art, writing, the theater and cinema which extol the unity of the human family and the need for liberty are only made available in dribs and drabs, whilst the general position is one of a cultural desert. As far as the non-White people are concerned the picture is one of deprivation all along the line. One has to think hard to discover whether or not there is even one single theater, drama school, ballet school, college of music to which nonWhites are admitted in South Africa. In Cape Town there is some ridiculously slight opening for Colored people. Otherwise 80 per cent of the people of South Africa are by and large confined to patronizing the few cinemas whose fare is the most inferior type of American cinema art. is

the

South Africa

it

has done

to the

in the fields of learning

THE FREEDOM CHARTER A vigilant censorship system

89

exists to ensure that these cinemas do not show non-Whites anything that is considered to be bad for them by the authorities. It is not only that non-Whites are virtually debarred from the cultural productions of mankind, but in addition everything has been done to prevent them developing their own national cultures. Publishing is strictly controlled. Apart from the most banal forms of music, the people are not encouraged or allowed to produce such music as enhances their spirit. Such music as contains protest against conditions of life are searched for and prohibited. The languages of the people are not permitted to be developed by them in their own way. Ignorant and officious White professors sit in education committees as arbiters of African languages and books without racially separate

consulting with the people concerned. The grotesque spectacle is seen of the White government of South Africa posing as a "protector" of so-called Bantu culture and traditions of which they know nothing. The arrogance of the fascists knows no bounds! They apparently love African culture more than the Africans themselves! The truth is that they wish to preserve those aspects of the African tradition which contain divisive tendencies likely to prevent the consolidation of the African people as a nation. The forces represented in the present state after combating education of non-Whites for over one hundred years suddenly decided to take over all education as a state responsibility. The result was the introduction of a racially motivated ideological education; a lowering of standards; the emergence of tribal colleges; and the intensification of racial separation in university education. Science and technology are hardly taught to non-Whites. The training of doctors and other medical personnel is derisory. The Democratic State shall discover, develop and encourage national talent for the enhancement of our cultural life; all cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands. The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honor human brotherhood, liberty and peace. Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all

children.

High education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit.

Adult

illiteracy shall be

ended by a mass state education

plan.

Teachers shall have the rights of other citizens

to organize

90

APARTHEID AXIS

themselves and participate in political life. The color bar cultural life, in sport and education shall be abolished.

in

THERE SHALL BE HOUSES, SECURITY AND COMFORT! Migratory labor and its concomitant of separation of famiproblems and distress, is one of the tragedies of South Africa. Residential segregation is the order of the day throughout South Africa. Massive shortages and bad housing for non-Whites and huge homes and flats, most of which are lies, social

either empty or not fully used, for the White minority. The infant mortality rate in our country is among the highest in the world, and the life expectancy of Africans among the lowest. Medical services are haphazard and costly. The Democratic State established after the victory of the revolution shall ensure the right of the people to live where they choose, to be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security. The vast unused housing space in such areas as the flatland of Hillbrow and Johannesburg shall be made available to the people. Rents and prices shall be lowered, and adequate amounts of food shall be made available to the people. A preventive health scheme shall be run by the state. Free medical care and hospitalization shall be provided for all, with medical care for mothers and young children. Slums, which have to some extent been demolished in the nine major centers of the country, shall be eliminated in the middle of towns and rural areas where the majority of the people live. New suburbs shall be built where proper facilities shall be provided of transport, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centers. The aged, the orphans, the disabled and sick shall be cared for by the State. Every person shall have the right to leisure, rest and recreation. Fenced locations and racial ghettos shall be abolished and laws which result in the break-up of families shall be repealed.

THERE SHALL BE PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP! In the wake of the victorious revolution

a Democratic People's Republic shall be proclaimed in South Africa. This shall be a fully independent state which respects the rights and sovereignty of nations. South Africa shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of international disputes by negotiation not war. Peace and friendship amongst all people shall be secured by

—

THE FREEDOM CHARTER

91

upholding the equal rights, opportunities and status of all. The Democratic State shall maintain close neighborly relations with the states of Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland in place of the present veiled threats and economic pressure applied against our brothers and sisters in these states by White supremacy. Democratic South Africa shall take its place as a member of the Organization of African Unity and work to strengthen Pan-African unity in all fields. Our country will actively support national liberation movements of the peoples of the world against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Diplomatic relations will be established with all countries regardless of their social and political systems on the principles of mutual respect for each other's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. The economic and cultural interests of those countries which sympathize with and support the struggle of South Africa for freedom shall be respected. The revolutionary struggle is in its infancy. It will be a long hard road. To accomplish the glorious task of the revolution maximum unity among all national groups and revolutionary forces must be created and maintained. All South African patriots whatever their race must take their place in the revolution under the banner of the African National Congress.

Forward

gram

to revolution

of liberation!

and the victory

of the people's pro-

APPENDIX

II

GENERAL DECLARATION OF THE ROME CONFERENCE June 27-29, 1970 1.

One

of the essential characteristics of the history of our

the vigorous development of national liberation struggles which have been transformed for many countries into independence and the regaining of dignity for hundreds of millions of men and women in Africa and elsewhere. Portuguese colonialism, which refuses decolonization and conducts genocidal wars against the peoples of Angola, Guinea and Mozambique, is manifestly a crime against humanity. To dominate and exploit the peoples and riches of

times

is

Angola, Guinea and Cape Verde, Mozambique and Sao Tome, it has resorted above all to repressive actions. It has instituted forced labor, the compulsory export of workers, a system of obligatory cultivation of certain crops solely for its own profit and that of the companies. 2. Every time these peoples attempted to express, even by peaceful means, their rejection of the brutal exploitation which was enslaving them, the Portuguese colonialists in cold blood resorted to massacres. 3. That is why, in fully assuming their national and historic responsibilities,

FRELIMO, MPLA and PAIGC

led their

peoples along the only road which could bring them freedom and independence: armed national liberation struggle. In developing the popular fight toward victory, in identifying themselves with the interests of their peoples, FRELIMO, MPLA and PAIGC are confirmed as the true representatives of Mozambique, Angola, Guinea and Cape Verde. Their activities can be seen in the destruction of the structures of domination, new and traditional, and in the establishment of

a new and popular social order. 4. In order to oppose this situation, the colonialists of Lisbon are facilitating penetration of powerful economic interests of imperialist powers to ensure that these interests should consider their fate as linked to that of Portuguese domination. They become defenders of the cause of Portugal's colonialism, expressing themselves through the policies of their governments, and thus create conditions for an increasing internationalization of the confrontation. 92

DECLARATION OF ROME CONFERENCE

93

—

not to speak of 5. The direct and massive aid from NATO the military and economic support Lisbon receives from the governments of the United States, West Germany, Britain and France is a decisive factor in Portugal's ability to continue her colonial wars. The governments of member states of NATO must dissociate themselves from this crime,

—

isolating Portugal at both political and military levels and firmly condemning this colonial war. It must also be underlined that Portugal's grand design is strengthened by the racist and colonial alliance between Portugal, South Africa

and Rhodesia. 6. In spite of the assistance and the collaboration which she enjoys, Portugal cannot control the situation, so that her allies have been led to consider the use of South African troops and material in Angola and Mozambique. The struggle of the peoples of the Portuguese colonies becomes in this context a vital contribution to the cause of freedom in Africa, and to the cause that applies to all humanity national independence and human dignity. 7. At the same time, the activities of democratic and progressive forces toward these objectives, and in particular the development of the anti-colonialist movement in Portugal and the other liberation struggles in Africa, and throughout the world, are an important and necessary factor for the cause of the peoples of the Portuguese colonies. On this we must state that the successes already won by the peoples of Angola, Guinea, the Cape Verde Islands and Mozambique, while being the result of the efforts and sacrifices of these peoples in their fierce struggle, are also due to the active solidarity of the independent countries of Africa, of the socialist countries, of the non-aligned countries, and of the democratic and progressive forces throughout the world. 8. For the first time delegates from 64 countries, representing 177 national and international organizations, have met in Europe to study and decide upon ways of developing political, moral and material solidarity with the struggling peoples of the Portuguese colonies. 9. This solidarity must be translated into urgent and immediate actions, the nature of which will be decided by the evolution of the situation in each country, taking into consideration their specific conditions. They must first be concerned with forcing Portugal to grant immediate and total independence to these peoples, who already have sovereignty over large areas of territory administered in Angola by the

—

MPLA, in Guinea FRELIMO.

by the

PAIGC and

in

Mozambique by

APARTHEID AXIS

94

To achieve

we must

increase the isolation of the Portuguese colonialists by exposing the massive support they receive from the NATO Alliance in general, and in particular from the United States, West Germany, Great Britain and France. This must also be undertaken with regard to all the national and international economic and financial institutions that provide Portugal with the necessary means for continuing her aggression. 11. We must also, especially through mass popular action, prevent the countries linked with colonialist Portugal from committing themselves to a new phase of armed intervention to replace the failure of their political and military strategies. 12. Finally, our activities must concretely support the efforts toward liberation and national reconstruction made by FRELIMO, and PAIGC, whom the Conference considers as holding effective power in their countries, on the basis of the law of their peoples. This new legal situation must be recognized internationally. 13. In this tenth anniversary year of the United Nations Declaration on the right to independence of the colonial peoples, and on the threshold of the tenth anniversary of the launching of the armed national liberation struggle of the Portuguese colonies, the Rome Conference reaffirms its solidarity with the peoples of Angola, Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands, Mozambique and Sao Tome' and Principe, and calls on all countries, governments, national and international organizations, and to all men of good will, to accomplish these inspiring tasks. 10.

this,

MPLA

THE PEOPLE OF THE PORTUGUESE COLONIES WILL WIN!

PORTUGUESE COLONIALISM WILL DISAPPEAR!

Suggested Readings Mary Benson, The Struggle

for

a Birthright. Penguin,

1966.

Brian Bunting, The Rise of the South African Reich. Penguin, 2nd revised edition 1969. Basil Davidson, The Liberation of Guine. Penguin, 1969. loan Davies, African Trade Unions. Penguin, 1966. Govan Mbeki, The Peasants' Revolt. Penguin, 1964. Ruth First, South West Africa. Penguin, 1964. Ruth First, 117 Days. Penguin, 1965. Eduardo Mondlane, The Struggle for Mozambique. Penguin, 1969. Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. International Publishers, 1965.

UNITED NATIONS PUBLICATIONS

UN Office of Public Information Objective Justice, Vol. 1, No. 1, U.N. Treatment of Southern African Issues, 1969. Objective Justice, Vol. 2, No. 3. U.N. Action Against Apartheid, 1970. A Principle in Torment, I. The U.N. and Southern

Rhodesia.

A

Principle in Torment, II. The U.N. and Portugueseadministered Territories. Infringement of Trade Union Rights in Southern Africa, 1970.

Unit on Apartheid. Department of Political Security Council Affairs

and

Foreign Investment in the Republic of South Africa, 1968.

Banishment of Africans

in

South Africa, January

1970. 'Native Reserves" in South Africa, Chief Albert J. Lutuli: Statements cember 1969. 95

March 1970. and Addresses, De-

ABOUT THE AUTHOR William J. Pomeroy, born in New York in 1916, served in the Philippines during World War II as an historian attached to the Fifth Air Force. Returning to that country after the war, he married Celia Mariano, a Filipina, and together with her joined the Huk guerrilla movement. Captured in 1952, they were in jail for 10 years as political prisoners; they now reside in England. Journalist, author and lecturer, Pomeroy has written extensively on national liberation struggles. His book, The Forest is a literary tour de force describing the life of the Filipino guerrilla fighter. His is the editor of Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism and has written a number of shorter works on world affairs. He has published a volume of poetry, Beyond Barriers, and a collection of his short stories, Trail of Blame, is soon to American Neobook, appear. His latest colonialism: Its Emergence in the Philippines and Asia, is a study of the shaping of U.S. foreign policy during the early decades of this century.

partheid in the Republic of South Africa severe

form of

nature

of that state,

peoples and states, business ties with

by

oppression anywhere

racist

a leading student

tfre

grown

directly

he

has

political

British

become

base

for

economic and

U.S.

Africa.

NATO

through

of any other power, both

companies. The Apartheid State,

the

penetration of 01ack

Militarily,

how

the U.S. economic stake in South

faster than that

and through

reveals,

and concisely,

of liberation movements.

Pomeroy shows how Africa has

extensive U.S. governmental and

are depicted here in depth,

it,

but

also

directly,

he shows

the Pentagon supports the Apartheid Axis of South Africa,

Rhodesia and Portugal which liberation

movements and

There

is

more than

is

the

directed against the African

new independent

a historical

Apartheid and U.S. support of into a burning issue of the

Here

is

a

carefully

understanding of

it,

states.

background

between Black America and Black Africa. The

the

the most

world. The

colonialism toward African

racist

its

and

is

in the

he holds,

is

in

likely to flare

home

as well as in Africa.

researched and

pungent guide to

1

this

970's, at

great

issue.

Write for a complete paperback catalog

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS 381 Park

common

fight against

Avenue South, New York, N.

Y.

10016