When this debate was adjourned a fortnight ago, I was in posession. I was beginning to talk about South Africa's relations with its neighbours. We call them the front line states. It is important to examine this aspect of the problem in a discussion on apartheid. South Africa has, of course, in its usual malevolent way, involved its neighbours in the problem of apartheid in the region.
I read a recent report which shows that the front line States, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Malawi, Botswana and Lesotho, and perhaps one or two others claim that South African aggression has cost them 10,000 million American dollars since 1980. That has been the cost of the various aggressions carried out by the South African regime in Pretoria against them. That 10,000 million American dollars is greater in value than the total amount of foreign aid which these countries received in that period.
South Africa has carried out direct invasions in Angola, Mozambique and Lesotho, three of its neighbours. South Africa has also in a calculated way disrupted oil supplies to Angola, Mozambique and Malawi. There is a calculated evil in all of the attacks which South Africa carries out on its neighbours. Most of the attacks are carried out on rail and sea communication points. One has to understand the geography of these countries. They are linked to South Africa in the sense that many of their railways go to South Africa which naturally has a better developed rail link etc. The South Africans bomb and destroy by sabotage and by direct military action — nothing covert at all, absolutely overt, out in the open — railway lines in Angola, Mozambique and Botswana. The same thing happens at the sea ports of the coastline states among their neighbours.
The motive in Pretoria is to try to destroy the economy, the movement of economic goods and services within these countries. In a calculated way Pretoria tries to destroy the internal communications and the facilities in these countries to get their exports out or to get their imports in. If and when the international community impose full sanctions, the idea will be to bring down the South African regime by economic methods or measures. By being involved economically with South Africa, the front line States are forced, of necessity, to move their goods through South African ports and via South African road and rail links. The South Africans are saying to the western world: if you destroy our economy you are also destroying the economies of these countries in the front line with whom you purport to have friendly relationships. That point is also very well made by the South Africans to their neighbours.
Economic chaos has resulted from military attacks. Pretoria knows very well that military attacks in a country with a weak economy breed greater economic chaos. There is one very telling figure, that is, about 100,000 people have died in the region since 1980. We do not have accurate figures on how many people actually died as a result of bombings, shooting or whatever. We do know that the majority of them died from starvation and famine, especially in Angola and Mozambique, as a direct result of military intervention by South Africa in these countries. They died as a result of the chaos which destroyed the food supply. That was no accident; that was all part of the calculated campaign of the regime in South Africa to destablise as far as possible and to destroy ultimately their neighbours. They tried in this very calculating manner to draw all the front line States into the economic morass they see coming from full blown economic sanctions — if the international community had the courage to impose them.
I would like to say something about the internal political set up within South Africa. It has been a major plank in Pretoria propaganda to try to give the impression that the nationalist political groupings in South Africa are all subversives or Communist inspired. All Members of this House have received various propaganda leaflets issued from their Embassy in London. The theme of many of them has been to impress upon us as Members of this democratic House, that the Pretoria regime is essentially a democratic regime fighting forces of subversion and of Communism.
The Nationalist Party, the ruling party in South Africa, is purely representative of the white supremacy regime in that country. It probably represents 90 per cent of the white population. Its raison d'être, the reason it is there, is to represent the white population and the white interest alone. It makes no bones about that. It is there also to preserve and to perpetuate this policy of apartheid. There are other political parties or political groupings in South Africa representing some of the non-white population, some of them to the right of the Nationalist Party and some of them slightly to the left, or at least more liberal than the Nationalist Party. All in all they are quite insignificant in terms of the amount of influence they wield among the white population. It is interesting to note the move towards the more right wing HNP Party which is a ultra-white supremacist party in South Africa. It moved from getting just a few thousand votes in previous years to a point in the most recent contest where it had nationally about 200,000 supporters in the white community. In a by-election of less than two years ago it won its first parliamentary seat.
If we could move and have a brief look at the political groupings on the nationalist side in South Africa — that is, the non-white side in South Africa — we see that the largest non-white political grouping is the ANC, the African National Congress. This is one of the oldest nationalist political parties in Africa and was formed in 1912. It was originally set up to fight racial discrimination and to fight for majority rule. It has had among its leaders in our own lifetime people like Albert Luthuli who won a Nobel Peace Prize and nowadays its political leader is Nelson Mandela who had been in prison for the past 20 years. The ANC is socialist in character but it draws its membership from all elements of thought throughout South Africa, and from some thoughtful elements among the non-black community in the country. It has within its membership groupings from all religions, Non-conformists, Catholics, the Anglican Churches, Moslems and so on and even some people from the black consciousness movement, who believe in total black control in South Africa. I should point out that the ANC has been illegal since 1960 and has not been allowed to function as a normal political party or a normal political grouping.
In 1983 a new political grouping was formed, the United Democratic Front. That was set up in the wake of Botha's constitution which was to establish separate white assemblies. This new constitution greatly increased the power of the president and it provided assemblies for Indians and Africans but the whole arrangement was so constructed that the white majority nevertheless could always out-vote these separate assemblies. This meant that in democratic terms they were totally meaningless. At that time in 1983 there was very widespread oppression throughout the country which exists at the present time. It was probably the beginning of the more violent present problems which we see in that country and there was brutal repression.
Tens of thousands of people came together at that time at one particular meeting — I think it was in Johannesburg — and set up this new party, the United Democratic Front (UDF). It is important to point out to the House that 600 separate groups, including youth, sporting, trade union, religious and womens' groups throughout the country, have affiliated to the United Democratic Front. Its constitution sees South Africa as a multiracial, single country with no bantustans. Since the state of emergency in 1985 as part of the repression we find that thousands of the UDF members have been arrested and at least 40 of its leaders have been detained. There are many people among its leadership and membership who also have been murdered.
Another significant political grouping in South Africa is INKATHA. It was set up in 1975 by Chief Buthelezi, Chief of the Zulu tribe or clan in South Africa. In fairness to Chief Buthelezi and to INKATHA, they refused to accept "independence" for the homelands. They are unequivocally opposed to apartheid but they are not quite unequivocally opposed to the imposition of sanctions. As a political grouping in that country they have somewhat tarnished their image in recent years by their attacks within Zululand on United Democratic Front supporters. We have all read of these things in recent times in the newspapers. This has been exploited very much by the South African regime. I make these points of criticism about INKATHA because it was giving a stick to the Pretoria regime to beat the anti-apartheid movements throughout that country. Pretoria quickly seized upon the INKATHA attacks on the UDF people. With their censorship laws they made sure that the newsreels sent to the western world were newsreels of black people attacking black people in these townships. The whole idea of that was to give the world the impression that the troubles in South Africa were more related to inter-racial problems between coloured and black people rather than the problems caused by apartheid.
My criticism of Chief Buthelezi and his movement INKATHA is that he played into the hands of the South African regime by his failure to control the people who carried out these attacks.
We had an ANC friend from South Africa to see us last week and he made the point to us about a recent survey — and I have read this recently in a report also — that showed that only about 8 per cent of all non-white people in South Africa support INKATHA or would see INKATHA as a realistic nationalist government when that stage is reached in that country. That survey was carried out among Zulus as well as Indians and other Africans.
I am a member of the Joint Committee on Co-operation with Developing Countries whose report we are debating. I want to call on the Irish Government to impose no holds barred sanctions against South Africa.
