: I move:
That Dáil Éireann expresses its condemnation of apartheid and its solidarity with all engaged in promoting International Anti-Apartheid Year 1978.
It is less in anger than in sorrow that I move this motion for which I look forward to the support of all sides of the House. In condemning apartheid we are condemning man's inhumanity to man but we are not suggesting that there is a facile solution to the agonies of the different races in South Africa.
The question of apartheid in South Africa has been on the agenda of the United Nations for about 26 years during which time it would have been difficult to recognise any significant progress towards a solution to the racial tensions of South Africa. To a large extent the reason for apartheid is an underlying fear. Anybody who has read Cry The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton, will recognise the veracity of the words in that famous novel that “the agony of South Africa is the bondage of fear from which so many Europeans suffer and the fear of bondage from which Africans suffer”. It is the fear and distrust on the part of each race as to the sincerity and the capacity of the other to behave reasonably and to honour an agreement if and when an agreement might be reached. One does not like talking in racist terms but it is impossible to discuss apartheid without talking from an assessment of the racial position. The fear of the white minority is of a sudden and violent intrusion in which they would become the victims not merely of the dispossession of property but also of the destruction of their lives and the lives of their children and dear ones.
If one is to be sincere about a problem one must recite these facts before engaging in a condemnation of apartheid. The euphemism for apartheid is separate development of race groups. In a healthy environment that would appear to be something capable of being considered if as a consequence there were richer cultural development and a full achievement of each group's individual potential. However, one of the great drawbacks of apartheid is that as applied it does not allow the development of the potential of the majority of people of Africa. Not only does it deny them the opportunity to achieve full potential but it belittles them as human beings. Because apartheid is an affront to the dignity of man, because it is a system which discriminates against people on the grounds of the colour of their skin and because it denies the fundamental truth of the equality of those who are created in God's likeness, it is a system which must revolt anyone who has a conception of the equality of human beings.
Some idea of the scale of discrimination which is apartheid can be found from some figures I should like to put on the record. If the facts are studied carefully, any fair-minded person would have to join with the many organisations around the world and in Africa in particular who are opposed to apartheid and who can join in opposition to apartheid without engaging in any violent or vicious act. It is possible that an error was made in recent decades in that well-intentioned people who are opposed to apartheid have engaged in such a propaganda war and in such unqualified condemnation of apartheid that they have created an embattled minority attitude in South Africa which has blinded the white people of that country from seeing not merely the evil of what they are doing but also, from their own point of view, the folly of their policy.
On the basis of the last census, which I think was in 1976, the white population of South Africa was 4,300,000. They are the privileged people of South Africa but because the society there is racist, people are segregated into many different groups, the main ones being whites and coloureds—people of mixed race and people of black blood. The coloured population is 2,400,000 while the Indian population, which in accordance with the local phrase includes all Asiatics, is 760,000. The black population is 18,760,000. Therefore, the total non-white population is 21,900,000 as against a white population of 4,300,000. The latest year for which I have income statistics indicate that the white population, which represents less than one-fifth of the coloured and black population, had an income of 68.2 per cent while the Asiatic population, most of whom are engaged in commerce, had income of 10.7 per cent and the black population had an income of 21 per cent. Clearly there is something wrong with a society in which there is such a disproportion in incomes. I shall not refer to the incomes as earning capacity because earning capacity is different from the way in which income is awarded.
In accordance with the solution to the racial tensions of South Africa suggested by Government there the white population would take 87 per cent of the land of South Africa. That would include all the cities, all the industrial centres, the ports, the mines and the best agricultural land. The remaining 13 per cent would be given to the coloured population of 22,000,000. In the main that land would be the poorest land and the land remote from industrial areas, the areas that have been neglected deliberately because of a policy in South Africa to concentrate development on what is described as the "white areas". That 13 per cent of the land on which the 22,000,000 would be confined to live, would be divided or subdivided into nine Bantustans, in a manner which would crystallise all the national and different family tensions which traditionally existed in Africa, and in many other parts of the world before people were allegedly civilised.
There have been some improvements in South Africa in the seventies and figures are often quoted to suggest that the rate of progress has been more rapid than might otherwise on reflection appear to be true. When you have people starting from an extremely low base of income, any substantial percentage increase obviously is meaningless. I have already quoted figures which show that 4,300,000 people enjoy 68 per cent of the income while 22 million enjoy only 21 per cent of the income. There has been some improvement but I think it is necessary to look at these things so that one can identify that there can be progress for the majority of the black population in South Africa without upsetting the settled pattern of life. It certainly brings about changes, but it is sometimes argued that you cannot have any improvement without insurrection and destruction. I do not believe that is so.
For instance, the income of black workers in Johannesburg increased by 112 per cent in 1975 while the increase for the white population in the same area for the same period was only 57 per cent. There have been tentative moves on what I might call the less important aspects of apartheid in relation to sport and the provision of increased money for housing, education, health and so on.
I mentioned sport very deliberately because it appears to be regarded as the most important aspect of apartheid in international circles. There are many people who do not play sport and I imagine in the social economic conditions of South Africa that the proportion who engage in competitive sports is probably smaller than it is in other parts of the world. I do not always go along with the campaigns to obstruct international sports meetings, but I must acknowledge that apparently that campaign has had some success because the South African authorities are now prepared to accept that the Republic of South Africa's sporting teams should be selected without regard to the colour of the people on them. Perhaps this is an indication that international pressure and comment can bring about an improvement of the situation in South Africa. I mention that as an aside because I do not regard it as the most serious aspect of apartheid. The matters to which I have already made reference speak for themselves, including condemnation of the system of apartheid.
I am not going to labour this point. If anybody thinks I am making a political issue, I am not. In 1977 South Africa shared with Ireland an extraordinary experience. That Government like the Irish Government achieved the biggest majority for a Government ever. Obviously there are dangers in giving governments historically large majorities. Last year the white population, the only people qualified to vote in the South African elections, a population of only 4.3 million, gave the Government 134 seats and the Opposition 31. South Africa must be the greatest evidence of the silent majority in the world today or at any time in the history of mankind. I assume the Opposition are opposed to apartheid and represent 22 million plus, but they have only 31 seats. There is something indefensible about such a system. Because the white people are the only people entitled to vote, the African population regard elections and political matters as the white man's affair.
Why did the white people of South Africa vote in that way? I do not pretend to be an electoral analyst but I suspect most of them voted for the Government, not out of an inherent love of them—on many occasions they have protested about various aspects of the policy of apartheid and about ordinary economic and social management, as is done in any system of elections where people are free to complain—but because they were concerned about their own economic and group interests and the manner in which they were threatened. They voted for that Government because they regarded them as being their main protection, the protection of the white economic and group interests. They also voted at a time of Immense international political emotion and excitement. I believe they voted against western liberalism and eastern communism. They gave this dangerous support to the Government of South Africa because they were alarmed as they have never been alarmed before by the presence of Russians and Cubans in Angola, Mozambique and the guerilla warfare in Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe as the majority in Rhodesia call it.
This underlines an argument that has often been advanced, and rightly so, that if apartheid is continued in the form we have seen it, or in any form, it will inevitably end in violence in which those who have sought to preserve the old order will suffer most, in which western society and the western economic order will be damaged, and in which the principal profiteers will be Russia and the Communist world. It has always been argued by reasonable people that a peaceful solution would benefit South Africa and Western Europe from which the white people of South Africa came, the Afrikaaners and those of English decent. A peaceful solution would benefit those people who now have behind them centuries of living in South Africa. They argue that they arrived, cultivated and developed many areas of South Africa long before many of the people in adjoining areas moved into the industrial areas developed by the white settlers.
That is a valid argument but it does not mean that the basic human and political rights of people are to be denied today on the grounds of colour or because they arrived later on some area of the earth. That is an unacceptable doctrine. I am talking about arguments and the kind of thoughts that motivate people. One does not have to go to South Africa to see how people are motivated by thoughts of that kind. We cannot find a solution to these problems unless we recognise that they exist and recognise the motivations of people who become inheritors of these dangerous, unhealthy traditions. Race relations in many parts of the world are more difficult and potentially more explosive today than ever before. That is the dilemma of the modern world.
Race relations, family disputes, geographical rivalries and so on have upset the world in the past, have caused a lot of misery and have changed the maps of the world. Powers have come and gone and the lives and fortunes of people have been changed. We live in an age of mass communication at a time when we have what are called world powers, where the fortunes of people of small military significance are changed not because of their own ambitions and legitimate desires but because of the rivalries of the big powers. That is one of the most sinister aspects of Africa today. In the sixties we, having been the first emerging nation of the 20th century, and having had such close attachment with the oppressed people of Africa down through the years, as our missionaries and others worked on behalf of the African people without looking for a return in this world, shared with the people of Africa a great sense of joy and pride as one area after another was granted or won its freedom. Nowadays we share an immense concern with the African people that their fortunes are being dictated not by their own interests but by the interests of external powers with little regard for the interests of the people of Africa.
It is significant and encouraging that the African churches in South Africa which do not represent the majority, and the Islamic system, have expressed their concern about developments. The purpose of our motion, which as we all know has no political mileage here, is to put on record that Ireland, which has an international influence, partly voluntary and partly involuntary through unavoidable emigration, is, through its public representatives, expressing solidarity with all who work for the promotion of human dignity and for the legitimate aspirations of oppressed people. It is our belief that a society that cannot exist without imprisoning people and interrogating people until they die or that bans people and what they say is not worth defending. That, unfortunately, is the basis of the racist regimes in South Africa.
So much has been said about apartheid and so many comments continue to be made that it is almost dangerous to pick one comment and criticise it without criticising them all, but I will refer to one particularly nasty comment which appeared in a magazine which most Deputies and Senators received through the post. This magazine has a great deal of merit in it, in some of its comments and it gives a tremendous amount of coverage to Africa. Because of that it is worth reading but there is a certain bias in it. A fortnight ago this magazine had a leading article in relation to Africa which made savage, unfair comments on Bishop Lamont and on Mr. Seán MacBride. It referred to Bishop Lamont as a despicable cleric who ought to be denounced as the chaplain to the Kremlin and to Mr. Seán MacBride as an emissary of Soviet Russia. Most of us know both gentlemen to be Christian people concerned with human dignity and human rights and they insist that these be respected without regard to the political nature of the regimes under which people live. This unfortunate article condemned these two Christian gentlemen, who suffered a considerable amount for their beliefs and who worked for the cause of human rights far beyond what was required of them as human beings. They made their contribution with an absolute conviction about the correctness of what they are doing and nobody could challenge the objectives of Bishop Lamont and Mr. MacBride who have invariably acted from right motives. They should certainly not be condemned in the intemperate and vulgar way they were condemned in To the Point recently. The author and publisher of that article bring no credit to themselves in their defence of the white people of South Africa, Rhodesia or any other area, by making attacks upon concerned people endeavouring to secure fair play and decent opportunities for personal development for the majority race in Africa. Whatever else might be said on this I hope we will not have such vicious personal attacks in the future on two splendid people who have done a great deal for people throughout the world without regard to colour, religion, race or political views.
The campaign against apartheid is not helped by the sinister and unhelpful presence in Africa today of Russian and Cuban interference in Angola, Zaire, the Horn of Africa and Zambia. Unfortunately that involvement has arisen due to the failure of the western world to convince those who emigrated from the western world to Africa of the consequences of their policies. The only way in which the evil influence of the communist world can be eradicated from South Africa is by convincing the indigenous Africans that their real friends are the people of Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand and so on, the people of the western world, the people of the free world. There is nobody free under communism, under the type of society Russia has maintained in Eastern Europe and now wants to impose on central Africa so as to divide the African continent and to hold it and the western world in its sinister grip.
However, as long as the South African Government continue to behave in their evil ways they weaken their opportunity to convince the Africans that the Communists are not friends of the African people. I wonder just how sure are the South African Government of their policies. On 19 October last they banned 18 organisations working for the black people of Africa. They were not all political organisations, far from it. Some of them were not doing anything more than looking after the basic human needs of millions of underprivileged black people. They banned two newspapers for no other reason than that they were arguing for a fairer share for black people. They detained large numbers of leaders of African political movements and indeed of many non-political movements. They banned many African people, and many white people supporting the African's cause from moving out of their homes. Since June 1976 they have banned open air meetings. You do not change people's views and you cannot conquer a people by prohibiting them from meeting. All you do is to build up greater frustration.
One of the most unsavoury aspects of the South African regime is the large number of people who have died from violent causes while in police custody. Some 20 such cases occurred in 1977 alone. There is little point in reading out a litany of the martyrs, because that is what they are. Even if some of them had committed crimes of violence they were still entitled to be treated with dignity and not subjected to torture while imprisoned. At least one of them, like Mahatma Ghandi, condemned violence of all kinds, criticised those who engaged in it. He was a man who was noted for the calmness of his comments, and though he disagreed with those who championed the black man's cause in some other way, he always did it mildly, and when he was criticising apartheid he did it with mildness, always expressing his understanding of the fears that motivated people to pursue evil and foolish courses.
I speak, of course, of Steve Biko who died after three weeks in police custody in Port Elizabeth on 12 September last. One of the most horrific aspects of the South African regime exposed as a consequence of that is the manner in which the judicial system were prepared with euphemisms to conceal the ugliness of all that happened. It is impossible to have confidence in an administration that could allow such things to happen not merely to Steve Biko but to others. One can think also of the student Bonaventura Malaza who was held since July last year in prison and was found hanged in his own cell on 18 November last. Ahmed Timol was described as having fallen to his death in Johannesburg at police headquarters on 18 November 1971.
They are just three cases but there are many others, but I never believe in trying to stir up people's emotions by quoting individual cases. The fact that these can happen with such frequency and that those who criticise them can have restriction orders imposed on them while those who commit the crimes can be indemnified under an Indemnity Act which goes back to the Soweto Riots of June 1976 is in itself a terrible condemnation of the system of apartheid.
I did not intend to be unfair to anybody and I hope I have not been. I have tried to understand what can motivate people to such desperate and evil policies. Obviously it comes back to the main cause of man doing wrong through the centuries, and that is fear, and in our condemnation of apartheid, therefore, we should not try to suggest that there are any facile or easy solutions. There are not. We have known this on our own shores in relation to sectarian tensions.
A few years ago I was in Boston and at that time there were riots day after day there, in what were known as the bussing riots. Buses were overturned, people were killed and houses were burned as white people protested against black children being brought from black areas to white areas to schools. You can understand my sense of shame when in the most read local newspaper there was a leading article pointing out that the main protesters against bussing were the Irish in Boston—that they were doing to blacks of Boston what they objected to being done by violent people on the Orange side to the Catholic minority in the North.
So as we express our condemnation of apartheid, as we support those who are working towards its disintegration, let us not cast stones about us or pretend that if we had the problems or the anxieties of the people of Africa we would act in a different way. We might well not. I return to what I said earlier that as we condemn we must also work towards a solution. We must encourage progress along the right lines. We must persuade the embattled white community—they are not embattled but they seem to be—that their relations, as they see us in Europe and in America, have some understanding of what worries them. They have seen so much violence in Africa, the latest exhibition of which has been in Zaire promoted by Russia and Cuba, that we must consider what we would do in that situation. We must understand both sides, but let us, as we suggest in the motion, condemn apartheid because it is wrong, it offends human dignity and can never be defended. Let us also try to work in all channels, not merely in the sophisticated diplomatic international sphere but elsewhere, to try to bring harmony to these people without regard to colour of skin, because we are all made in God's likeness.
