Conditions in South Africa: Motion.

Professor Stanford

I move:

That Seanad Éireann requests the Government and the Minister for External Affairs to take further steps in the General Assembly of the United Nations to expedite the sending of an international commission to South Africa to investigate the conditions under which political prisoners and other prisoners of conscience are held in that country; and also requests that the Government should make contributions to the United Nations Trust for South Africa and to the United Nations Education and Training Programme for South Africans.

Since this motion was put on the Order Paper there have been two encouraging actions by our Minister for External Affairs. First of all, many of us welcome his strong condemnation before the General Assembly of the United Nations on 4th May of South Africa's refusal to withdraw from South West Africa. He also, we read with acclamation, requested firm action by the Security Council of the United Nations on this matter. There was a second action which, I think, all of us welcome, too. The Government decided that they would make a contribution to the United Nations Trust Fund for South Africa. The sum that the Government allocated was $1,000 for the year 1967-68.

Previously, some 25 nations had contributed sums to this fund. The contributions ranged from $50,000 by Sweden—I should like to emphasise that Sweden has been extraordinarily enlightened and generous in their dealings with this problem in South Africa —to $1,000 by Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cyprus, Guinea, Israel, Turkey and ourselves. No contribution has yet been made by our Government to the United Nations Education and Training Programme though already 17 other States have contributed or pledged contribution to this. I hope our Government may see their way to make a contribution to this fund also.

Perhaps at this point I should give the House a brief description of these two most meritorious funds. Both, of course, are the direct result of the appalling conditions caused by South Africa's policy of apartheid. First, let me outline what the United Nations Trust Fund is trying to do. It was established by the General Assembly on the 15th of December, 1965. Its purpose is to make grants to voluntary organisations and other appropriate bodies towards relieving dependants of persons suffering under the Government of South Africa for their opposition to apartheid. It also makes grants towards providing legal assistance to persons charged under the discriminatory legislation of the South African Government. It offers grants also towards educating prisoners in South Africa and their dependants, and giving general relief to refugees from South Africa. The Chairman of the Committee of this United Nations Trust Fund has made the following comment on the general aim of his Fund. I quote:

Its purpose is to meet a limited, albeit urgent and clear need of a humanitarian character. There is no doubt, however, that if assistance is given to the victims of apartheid by joint efforts of the international community, this provides moral support....

I emphasise that. It is not just a matter of money. Let me return to the quotation:

.... to those inside and outside South Africa who work for racial equality and social justice. In this sense, our work has implications beyond the purely humanitarian field. It is important that this bond of human solidarity be preserved.

That is the first fund.

Let me say a word or two about the second. The United Nations Education and Training Programme in South Africa was also established in 1965. As its name implies, it is specially directed towards the education and training of South Africans of all races in exile from their own country—training them especially as lawyers, engineers, agriculturalists, public administrators, teachers and skilled workers. This is the fund to which Ireland has not yet made a contribution. In fact the contributions in general amount to only something like 200,000 dollars according to my latest information, whereas the target is 2 million dollars by 1968.

Those are the two funds. The position is that Ireland is subscribing to one at present, not to the other. While these two funds can do much good to improve the lot of the oppressed majority, and remember it is the majority, just as it was in Ireland 200 years or so ago, of South Africans, yet something far more drastic is needed to remove the root cause of these harsh conditions. This brings me to the other recommendation in the motion before the House. I shall read it once again:

This is a matter of extreme urgency. As I speak here in this House, I am conscious that in South Africa at this moment there are hundreds of defenceless political prisoners detained in atrocious conditions. At this moment some of them are probably being brutally tortured, while we in civilised Western Europe debate and delay. I should like the House to realise that. Every delay in action of this kind means pain and agony of mind and body of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of our fellow human beings. The evidence for these atrocities is, I think, beyond question. Let me emphasise—these atrocities are committed on one basis and one basis alone, namely, on something that is given by God, something that nobody has a choice about—the colour of people's skins. I do not want to harrow the House by quoting details of the kind of thing going on at this very moment in South Africa. Those details can be made available to any Member of the House. I can supply them with reliable sources who will give them every help in the matter. The punishments range from starvation, fifth, forcible degradation and gross indignities to beatings and tortures as bad as anything attributed to the Nazi Gestapo or to the communist secret police. I have here before me a description by an eye-witness, Mr. Dennis Brutus, of what he personally suffered. There are the routine things—the beatings, the starvings and all the rest of it but there are worse things and I must mention them for a moment. I shall read a paragraph from the statement of Mr. Dennis Brutus as to the conditions on Robben Island. This is what he says:

An evil place. A vicious place. Of this one was aware daily, in a thousand ways. For some, it was the appalling depravity of the criminals, the forced sodomies,

I hope we realise the implications of that—"the forced sodomies"—

the boots lashing out, the self-made knives flashing. For others the viciousness of the warders, their apostolic zeal in defence of their fascist regime, their anxiety to break the spirits of the men who opposed their society. And for some, simply the horror of the sterility and barrenness of existence in those concrete grey walls and roofs and passages; an entirely grey existence. And the knowledge that men have been condemned to live out their lives amid this stone. That they would serve a life sentence here— here literally be asked to end their lives.

That is what we are debating about today. That is what we are trying to reach a decision about.

The most diabolical aspect of this persecution in South Africa is this. It is based on a difference entirely beyond the control of the victim—his natural colour and his race. In this respect, it is worse than any religious or political persecution, as such. I know that this is a daring statement to make in this country but I believe I can justify it. The person who is persecuted for his religion or his politics has at least the choice—perhaps at the risk of the eternal soul—but he has the choice, of changing his principles and of escaping further persecution—in fact, possibly—as we have seen in this country in the past—he would get a certain amount of favour for that change. But this is what the coloured South African is entirely debarred from doing by the fact that he is born not white. He is condemned to this; if he makes the slightest opposition to injustice he is condemned to this. Nothing that he can do can change his colour.

A few months ago I was reading in the British Museum and, in a moment of revelation, I saw the kind of feeling that this atrocious policy is engendering in educated coloured people from Africa. In a certain purlieu of the British Museum there was written on the wall the following statement: "Brown, yellow, red are the colours of nature. Albinoids are diabolical apparitions". We are the albinoids from the point of view of people whose hearts have been filled with hatred as a result of the apartheid policy and we are the diabolical apparitions. When we see our faces in such a looking-glass so to speak we realise the kind of pressure of anger that is building up as a result of this policy.

I shall not delay on that side of it. I think the majority of people in Ireland understand what persecution for principles alone is like. Obviously, subscription to such funds as are mentioned in the motion cannot stop these abominable injustices. They can only do something to mitigate the inhumanity that comes from this evil of apartheid. If we send a commission and if it sees what is happening, the conscience of the world can be fully awakened. That is why we are insisting, if the House agrees to the motion, not merely on contributions but on an effort to awaken the conscience of the world. Therefore, I appeal as strongly as I can, in the name of Christian civilisation and in the name of the traditional Irish sympathy for oppressed people, to act firmly and clearly and promptly in this matter. Obviously, many difficulties and problems are involved. The South African Government will say: "This is interference in domestic matters and does not come under the Charter of the United Nations." Another argument the South African Government will use is: "Equally abominable things are being done elsewhere in Africa, why do you not send your Commission there?" We know that kind of argument. It is like: "Other people are committing other sins so why cannot we commit our sins?" We had something like that on the censorship debate this afternoon. The plain and compelling fact is that until we in Ireland or some other country which upholds human freedom initiates some such effort to relieve these thousands of sufferers, members of a majority persecuted and oppressed by a minority, until we take those steps we are betraying the basic principles of Irish nationality and of Christian humanity.

We are all inclined—it is a very easy thing to do—to condemn those who condone the awful Nazi persecutions in the late 1930s and 1940s. It is very easy for us to do that now. In fact, what we are virtually doing at the moment is condoning this state of affairs in South Africa by not interfering. How can we in the one breath condemn the Nazis and in another breath say: "The South African Government have their own way of dealing with things. We had better let them be."

There is much more that I could, and perhaps should, say on this topic but there are other speakers following me. I shall simply end by thanking the Minister for what he has already done to oppose the injustices by the South African Government and to relieve the victims of abominations. But I do urge him with all the earnestness that I can command to go on to more radical measures than mere contributions, to measures that will strike at the root cause of this evil. Every week we delay means another week of agony and degradation. That, I think, is the worst thing of all. Many of us here could probably endure direct torture up to a point but when one's human dignity, one's human self-respect, is deliberately broken down, then I think the end would come for most of us. That is the worst thing. We read of terrible persecutions on both sides in the religious controversies in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries but they did not try to destroy the human soul or break down the human personality. That is what these South African jailers are trying to do. Therefore, I appeal to the Minister to act quickly and to act resolutely.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

I should like to support this motion in the strongest terms. Before dealing with the general issue there are one or two points on the motion itself which I should like to seek clarification on from the Minister. The motion calls on the Minister to take further steps in the General Assembly of the United Nations to expedite the sending of an International Commission to South Africa to investigate the conditions in which political prisoners and other prisoners of conscience are held in that country. I understand that this matter has been already taken up with the Minister by an organisation here concerned particularly with this matter and that the reply received was that there is already in existence a United Nations body with a broad mandate to examine such matters which the Minister felt would give adequate attention to this matter. I understand that in fact this committee have recommended that an International Commission composed of eminent jurists and prison officials be set up to investigate treatment of prisoners in South Africa and have been pressing this recommendation which requires the endorsement of the General Assembly to be put into effect. Our concern is that the Minister should support the recommendation of the committee to which he has referred and in which he has expressed confidence which has not yet been carried out. I hope that in this debate the Minister will indicate the categories of action he intends to pursue in this matter.

The second point is:

that the Government should make contributions to the United Nations Trust for South Africa.

I understand that it is, in fact, the intention of the Government to make a contribution this year although the contribution I am informed is what can only be described as nominal, 1,000 dollars. I know there are many claims on our resources but I would have thought that we could have given more. It is I suppose a token, an indication of our support and interest but compared with the contributions of other countries, some of them not much wealthier than ourselves, it seems a very small sum. We often compare ourselves with Denmark and they are giving 80,000 dollars. I do not think our contribution compares with that.

The third point, contribution to the United Nations Education and Training Programme for South Africans, I think would be a matter near to the Minister's heart because he has always been concerned with assisting the training and education of people in developing countries. I am not aware that we are making a contribution to this. I may be inadequately informed but I hope the Minister will tell us what the Government's plans are and I hope he will be able to tell us that it is proposed to make some contribution. There are various countries contributing and I think we should be able to make some contribution also. In referring to Denmark I think that figure relates to the second fund and not to the first. I was incorrect in attributing that figure to Denmark. Nevertheless, Denmark in relation to the first fund has given 29,000 dollars and even in relation to that our contribution seems very inadequate and we do not seem to be giving anything to the other fund for training South Africans. That is on the actual substance of the motion, but it would be wrong and inadequate to speak on this motion on the particular points and not to refer to the general background of the position about South Africa and apartheid. It is an issue of principle not to be confused with propaganda, and every effort has been made to do this. Apartheid rejects the concept of equality of human beings, the realities of education and ability, and the right to be employed with other members of the human race.

This situation in South Africa has been defended by its supporters on many spurious and false grounds. It has been said that the Europeans arrived first or at the same time in South Africa as the African inhabitants. That is an argument to which we should not attribute much weight. It certainly cannot be a reason for apartheid, though it could be regarded as being a reason for Europeans having some role in South Africa, to live there and to play their part appropriate to their numbers; but certainly as an argument in favour of apartheid it does not operate, it does not exist.

Then there are arguments that there are Africans as badly off in other parts of Africa and this is shown by the fact that Africans emigrate from other parts of Africa to this part. This argument has been used in this country. It was used in relation to north and south. We have been told by propagandists from another part of this country that conditions for Catholics until 1947, when conditions of employment for Catholics became impossible, were such that Catholics emigrate to Northern Ireland and we know well the spuriousness of that argument. We have also been told that some or many of those who opposed apartheid are Communists and this is thought to be a conclusive argument by which we should be bound.

I am sure many who oppose this South African regime are Communists. It is not surprising because, faced with this sort of operation, it is not strange that many people would be driven to Communism which, with all its fallacies, places emphasis on the doctrine of human equality. The fact that many people who opposed the South African Government's policies are Communists is not something which need concern us. South Africa is a country in which Christians and Communists have found themselves working side by side in a common cause which transcends their differences.

Also we have been told this is a policy of separate development involving the setting aside of parts of the country where Africans can develop themselves and find their own opportunities. This, of course, is totally spurious. First of all, there is no such division where Africans can develop themselves, because Europeans depend on and exploit the Africans' position and, therefore, have no intention of segregating them into two separate geographical areas. The areas allocated to Africans are small in extent and bear no relation to the numbers of Africans. In those areas they are given only a limited right to self-development, only puppet government which could not ever satisfy the legitimate aspirations of any people to run their own affairs.

None of these arguments can offer any reason for depriving a people of the basic human rights to choose whom they should marry, to employment with other people of similar attainments, to education in whatever institutions their abilities entitle them to be educated in, to share fully in the government of their own country—the country in which they are the vast majority of the people. We must accept the fact that a problem exists. It is all too deceptively easy for us to condemn the way in which people run their affairs in other countries. I know it can be thrown at us when we stand up here denouncing the South African Government that we do not live there and that if we did live there perhaps some of our liberal views might not survive very long. There is all too much evidence that this is the case, that so many people, including Irish people who have gone there, have too readily succumbed to prevalent attitudes there. We read people who have rushed into the newspapers to try to justify the situation there and in Rhodesia in the words of Pearse and Tone—to support the people who impose psychological pressures on human beings.

It is easy for us to condemn but there is a problem, like any minority has imposed on it, of race, of religion and country. There is the temptation on the part of the minority to defend their historical position of life. I have always thought this is a very powerful argument against emigration to those countries like Rhodesia and South Africa. We like to think as we stand here that we would be different, that if we were there we would be prepared to go to jail in defence of human rights, but I do not think the evidence of what happens when Irish people go there suggests that we can be all that sure of how we would react under the psychological attitudes, under the threat of imprisonment and, as Senator Stanford said, of torture.

Knowing that this is the case, I do not think many of the Irish people know themselves well enough or can be sure enough of themselves to go to South Africa or Rhodesia. They might think that when they go they will reject the psychological pressures and continue to uphold human freedom, but so many of them do not that I think it would be a good thing if our people decided not to risk themselves or their consciences, or indeed the reputation of their country by emigrating to countries where so many of them will be unlikely to uphold their traditions and their consciences under powerful pressures.

One could accept up to a point that people living as a minority in those circumstances might feel that under majority rule by people who, through no fault of the majority, have not had the educational opportunities of the minority the minority would suffer, and might be reluctant, therefore, to hand over the reins of government on a democratic basis forthwith to the majority of that country. Faced with this situation, with this pressure, if the Europeans were at least honest with themselves and faced that fact and proposed some kind of policy, as rapidly as they could, for raising the educational standards of the majority and for giving equal treatment to everybody of any race of attaining some standard of an objective character, even though this would mean equality of one man with another, of one vote one person which we have inherited and operated in this country, one could accept such a gradualistic policy if it were genuine and honest—the giving of human rights to people according to some criteria. It would be a situation and an attitude which one could make a defence.

But no one can defend, even those of conservative views who may feel that the piper should play the tune and that nobody should vote in local elections except the ratepayers, a situation in which certain people are deprived of certain rights because they happen to be of a certain race or religion. This is something that is literally intolerable and unacceptable. All the specious arguments put forward by the defenders of apartheid in South Africa we must reject as irrelevant arguments, some of them that might justify a different policy and might go some distance towards justifying a gradualist policy of raising educational standards and gradually handing over control to the majority in the country over a period of time. But no arguments could support the inhuman policy of dividing people by the colour of their skins. That we have to reject, because, as Senator Stanford said, it is the ultimate degradation to condemn people because of something which they cannot change no matter how much they might want to. Even if their spirit is broken and they were prepared to reject and renege on their inheritance, even if they were willing to do that and succumb to that temptation, they cannot do so. It is physically impossible to do so. To condemn anybody to perpetual slavery and degradation because God created him with one shape, form, size or colour of any nature is something which we have to reject.

Having said that, there is little we can do. It is all too easy to make speeches and to condemn other people faced with pressures who react in a certain way—all too easy and safe to do so here. There is so little of practical help that we can do, but whatever that little is we should do it. We should at least be put on record as giving moral support to the majority of the people of South Africa. Perhaps some of them at some stage may hear of this and other resolutions passed. Perhaps it may give them some bit of hope and encouragement. We cannot feel that it will help much. If we were in their position we might feel rather cynical about such expressions of support given safely from a distance. Nevertheless, any hope that may help to encourage someone somewhere we should give, because it is all that we can do in that area.

There is another way to aid, however, and that is to assist financially where assistance can be given—in the first of these things, to help people who have fallen foul of the inhuman legal code in South Africa and give them legal aid to defend themselves as far as the vestiges of the rule of law remaining in that country permit them to be defended in the courts. We can at least offer some financial assistance there, and I would hope rather more than the token sum we have voted so far.

We can also help—and this is something we have been doing in regard to other countries in a very small way —in regard to educating South Africans, particularly those who are refugees or have been able to get out in the hope of equipping themselves to help their people later on in some way or another. We could offer financial assistance here, and this is what we should do. Though we in this House are not in a position to vote money we can, I think, under the rules of order pass this motion and address a call to the Minister in it to make provision for giving more financial assistance.

These are small things to do, so small that one is ashamed that they are so little. Nevertheless, they are things within our power to do. They will show where we stand and probably offer some encouragement somewhere to someone of these oppressed people. For that reason I would hope that we will pass this resolution and that the Government will take the steps we call on them to take.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

I regard it as a privilege to support this motion, and I think that all in this House are glad to get the opportunity of having the Minister here and thus giving us this chance of putting on record our concern about what is happening in South Africa under the theory and practice of apartheid.

I should like to say at the beginning that our Minister here with us today, as Minister for External Affairs, has shown in my opinion great independence of mind at the United Nations, and great courage in dealing with a wide variety of matters related to external affairs and situations in all parts of the world extending from China to North Africa, from North Africa to South America. I think we can say without any exaggeration that he has represented Ireland well as having a mind of its own and the courage to show that it is a nonaligned nation, prepared to stand up and be counted on behalf of those who are suffering anywhere from injustice. I would not pretend that there have not been occasions when Ireland has abstained from voting which I regretted and which caused some surprise to me, but in general I feel that our record is good, and I take this opportunity of saying that I regard the responsibility for this as being largely that of the present Minister. Therefore, it is with some confidence that I support this motion today to put the three points before him so carefully and precisely explained by the proposer and seconder, and to put on record our abhorrence not only of the practice of apartheid but also of the very theory.

We read specious accounts of how the theory is that each section of the community, divided by the colour of their skin, is to have a "free" right to develop itself to the best of its ability, and so on. I would say that even if the practice were anything like the theory, which suggests free and independent but separate development for each race, it should be utterly condemned. This is not the way in which a healthy community can grow up. But when we find the practice is, in fact, nothing like the theory, as Senator FitzGerald has made clear, a practice in which retention of privilege by the minority of whites is the main object, then we must condemn even more strongly the whole theory and practice of this segregation by colour and by race.

A book by André Gide on French Equatorial Africa written forty years ago, his "Voyage to the Congo", bears witness specifically and personally to the ignorance displayed about Africa by many people who have lived there for 10, 15, 20 or 30 years. He is confronted by French colonialists there who tell him—he writes in 1926 —that he does not realise what it is like to live among the Africans, and they say: "Just wait till you have been here a month, then you will treat them the way we do", which is the way he deplores from the start, making the point that many of them are treated with physical violence but that the verbal violence is almost as bad, because of what has been pointed to by the two previous speakers, the loss of dignity and the degradation to which the African is subjected. He says: "We waited not just one month but ten months and traversed a large quantity of the terrain in the hinterland of French Equatorial Africa, and always with the same African porters and helpers. the same all through."

He waited ten months he says and he never came to the slightest inclination to treat them badly, either physically or in any other way. On the contrary, he says that they responded to what we would regard as normal behaviour. They responded with friendship and with help; and that friendship had lasted down the years since then. He makes a comment and says that when he is confronted by some of the colonials, in his own sentence: "The less intelligent the white man, the more stupid the black man appears to him to be." It is the stupid white man who talks about his intellectual superiority. There is no question but that that is so.

I remember, if I might illustrate the fallacy which one meets frequently in relation to racial theory, asking a friend of mine, who was a pathologist in Nairobi, and who was out there for a number of years, whether he noticed as between the various races, of which there are many converging on Nairobi, any difference in potential intelligence. His answer was that his predecessor had spent 30 years measuring skulls and taking similar measurements as between various races, many of them Africans and some of them Europeans. He reached the conclusion that the European's intelligence was something like .1 per cent greater than that of the African. My friend then paused and added that, in fact, the theory upon which all those measurements were made had now been demonstrated to be totally false. His predecessor had wasted his 30 years of measurement. In my friend's estimation, potentially, given the same chance, the level of intelligence is identical. The average is identical and most of those who depart above or below will work out at almost exactly the same figure in the African or in the European. In other words, a great deal of nonsense is talked about the so-called intellectual superiority of the white man, the European; and Gide's expression comes back to me: "The less intelligent the white man, the more stupid the black man appears to him to be."

In practice, as far as we find it in South African conditions, there are things which if we were brought close to them would make many of us, even the most peace-loving of us, inclined to resort to violence. This is something we have to realise. In 1962 the socalled Sabotage Act was introduced for the purpose of punishing those people who engage in sabotage, but the word "sabotage" is so defined as to mean things like encouraging the achievement of social change, of economic change and political change. Under this Act you can get jail for engaging in sabotage, so called, when, in fact, you have tried by constitutional political means to alter conditions in which large sections of the population live in what is regarded as normal peace-time conditions. In other words, if you resort to an effort by constitutional means to change the system, you will find you are arrested, often persecuted, under this type of legislation, framed purposely, one would almost think, to drive the African and those who sympathise with him to engage in violence.

We know, of course, it is possible under South African legislation today for men and women to be held for 90 days without trial. I am glad to say that to us this appears to be an abomination, but I think any South African Government should be challenged as to why it should be necessary to have a law which permits the South African Government to hold a man or woman for 90 days without charging them and without submitting them to judicial trial. It takes three months for the South African Government to frame, I think that is the right word, its case against those who are arrested.

We in this country have a memory of our penal laws. They were regarded as the blackest chapter in the history of this country's relationship with our British overlords, as they were then, in which Catholics were deprived of their rights and they suffered indignity of this kind. Therefore, in Ireland the sight of penal laws in practice in South Africa today, being used not on religious grounds but on grounds of colour must, in fact, arouse the indignation of Irish hearts and the desire to express that indigation in practical terms both in debates like this and in the three methods suggested by the motion of giving aid to those now subject to such legislation, to the present victims of it in the modern world.

There are 15 million non-whites in South Africa and they are not by any means in a state of violent revolt but they are being driven to recognise that possibly justice will never come to them unless they accept the necessity for resorting to violence, which would ultimately be a thing to be deplored. It should be stated also that the United Nations Assembly has already condemned the racial policy of South Africa as a crime against humanity. That is the world Assembly of the United Nations, and we are all at one with such a judgment. We are also very much concerned—I know the Minister is—with the contemptuous way in which the South African Government have treated what is, in fact, a League of Nations, and consequently a United Nations, mandate which they have over South West Africa, and which they are very reluctant to give up although it was entrusted to them by the Parliament of the world, the international body.

The public opinion of the world must make it clear that this mandate must, in fact, be handed over to the United Nations for reallocation in order that fair treatment be given to the people of South West Africa. There was a United Nations seminar held last year in August and the beginning of September in Brasilia. I was sorry to hear that Ireland, having been invited to participate, felt obliged to decline. This is a pity. Ireland should have made an effort to be there, to send at least one delegate. It ought to have been possible to do that. Ireland as a non-committed nation in one sense ought to have made a special effort to be represented at this seminar. The findings of that seminar are exceedingly compelling, and I feel it was a pity Ireland was not represented. I was glad to see another nation did accept where we turned down the invitation. Pakistan was invited and accepted. Ireland and Belgium refused. That was a pity. I feel that we can salve our consciences a little for that failure by contributing now as has been suggested, and as is being suggested in this motion, to the United Nations Trust Fund which was established in September, 1965 which makes grants available to help refugee organisations and also for the helping of other types of relief work of various kinds.

Up to January, 1967 the contributions from some countries as has been mentioned, were considerable. So far we have given $1,000, about £300, while Denmark has given something like £9,000. Denmark £9,000, Ireland £300 makes me ashamed. I know that Denmark is richer than Ireland but not all that much richer. The Republic of the Congo gave £1,700, Jamaica gave £300, and Bulgaria gave £300. I think we could do better than that and I am confident that we shall. This was our first contribution but it will not be our last.

We have not so far given any contribution to the Education and Training Programme and here, too, we can help considerably not only by contributing but by helping emigré South Africans to train in various specialities.

I want to say something now about the Amnesty International Report on Prison Conditions in South Africa which was issued in September, 1965. It is called "Prison Conditions in South Africa" and it would, in fact, be a report that should be read in its entirety for the ascertaining of the kind of treatment that is meted out in the prisons to those who are taken up under the various pieces of penal legislation. I shall quote just one passage from a statement by a reporter from a well-known African Weekly, a colour magazine of a high standard—Drum— copies of which I was sent from Ghana. It has a wide circulation. Henry Nxumalo makes this statement. It is long but it is so representative that I feel it is worthwhile to put at least some of it on record. He says:

I served five days' imprisonment at the Johannesburg Central Prison from January 20th to January 24th. My crime was being found without a night pass five minutes before midnight, and I was charged under the curfew regulations. I was sentenced to a fine of 10s. or five days' imprisonment.

Two constables arrested me at the corner of Rissik and Plein Streets. I was taken to Marshall Square Police Station, charged, searched, given two blankets and locked up in the cells together with 37 others.

Before we appeared in court I asked one of the black constables to allow me to phone my employers and my family. This was refused.

Here I skip a bit. He went on:

After our cases had been heard by the magistrate...we were checked and taken to Johannesburg Central Prison by truck. We arrived at the prison immediately after one o'clock. From the truck we were given orders to "shayisa" (close up), fall in twos and "sharp shoot" (run) to the prison reception office. From then on "Come on, Kaffir" was the operative phrase from both black and white prison officials, and in all languages.

Many of us who were going to prison for the first time didn't know exactly where the reception office was. Although the prison officials were with us, no one was directing us. But if a prisoner hesitated, slackened his half-running pace and looked round, he got a hard boot kick on the buttocks, a slap on his face or a whipping from the warders. Fortunately there were some second offenders with us who knew where to go. We followed them through the prison's many zig-zagging corridors until we reached the reception office.

The reception office had a terrifyingly brutal atmosphere. It was full of foul language. A number of khaki-uniformed white officials stood behind a long cement bar-like curved counter.... When they were not joking about prisoners, they were swearing at them and taking down their particulars. Two were taking fingerprints and hitting the prisoners in the face when they made mistakes.

It goes on and on. This man is a journalist of repute who was taken up for being out without a pass five minutes after the hour of curfew. At the moment I am reading a book called "The Real Enemy" by Pierre d'Harcourt describing his treatment by the Nazis at Buchenwald. It seems to me that this passage could be taken directly out of Pierre d'Harcourt's book.

What do you feel like if you are a coloured African and treated in such a fashion? I would say that you would feel like engaging in violent demonstration against the whole regime. I will not deal here with the Sharpeville massacres which were fully reported on but they must not be forgotten. Underlying the colour bar and the segregation and the victimisation of the coloured South Africans, which is the majority, there is the whole concept of a class system in which the lower elements in the system are exploited and kept down by a whole system of underprivilege based on the colour of their skin.

This basically, of course, is what must be changed. To change apartheid is not enough. It will be a big step forward when apartheid goes but the whole system of exploitation of the labour force of this 15 million African non-white population of South Africa must be brought to a close before real justice can be established. The defence that is made apparently by the South African Government in favour of the segregation is, of course, based on the notion that you cannot have a mixture of races. Intermarriage is what they are afraid of, and they say you must keep the races absolutely separate, failing to recognise that in the West Indies or in Brazil the normal mixture of the races is increasingly accepted and is producing a very fine race of people in both countries.

I remember arguing the point about intermarriage between Africans and Europeans some 40 years ago when I was a student in Trinity College and being told by an Afrikander girl who was arguing in favour of the colour bar, though she was not by any means a supporter of what became later the apartheid type of persecution. She said that in her school in South Africa there had been a girl who was extremely good-looking, who was the most popular girl in the school, was extremely intelligent and who got first place in the most of the examinations. When she was 18 a slight trace appeared on her fingernails which showed that she had some negro blood. Thereupon she had to leave the school, all her friends dropped her, her family had to leave the area. "Therefore you can see," said the Afrikander girl, "how necessary it is to keep the races separated." The whole story was a demonstration, on the contrary, of the folly of saying that the mixing of the races is a bad thing. This girl had by nature every advantage and merely the prejudice of conventional society broke her life. That is one of the facts that must be recognised: that man-made prejudice can destroy a life.

So far from apartheid being a legitimate thing, in fact in a normal mixing of the races—this is my opinion but it is soundly based—lies the full solution of the problem. It is not without its difficulties, but the difficulties are man-made and based on social prejudice which, in fact, has to be eroded and whittled away in the way that has been very successfully done in Brazil and is proceeding successfully in the West Indies.

I have spoken at greater length than I intended but I want to stree again the fact that Ireland can help towards the abolition of the insidious concept of apartheid and its foul applications in Africa. What is asked for for the Africans who are subjected to this colour bar and worse is fair play, a fair chance to develop what talent lies within them, the end of privilege, the end of exploitation of any kind, whether it is based upon race or not. What is the alternative? With what are the white South Africans faced otherwise? I would say that they are faced with an explosion, a violent revolution, and, unless the apartheid policy is stopped in South Africa, quite inevitably there will be large scale violence, slaughter and massacre, very often no doubt of the innocent of both sides.

I should like to add, before I conclude, that the anti-apartheid movement here in Ireland, which has been admirably organised with great drive and dedication by many people—I mention only two by name, Mr. and Mrs. Kader Asmal, who have done an immense amount to bring the whole problem vividly before the Irish public —has had wide support and sympathy in Ireland. Therefore, if we in this House put on record today our concern about the whole problem, and our desire to do more about it, then I feel we will be responding to what is the general view of public opinion in Ireland, against the South African Government policy of apartheid, and in favour of the people of South Africa as a whole, and their majority, the coloured people of South Africa.

To sum up, the three points we are asking are—a contribution to these two Funds, one for relief work, one for training; and the pressing for the sending out of a UN Commission to South Africa to find out precisely what are the present conditions in which so many coloured South Africans, and indeed white South Africans who support them, are suffering. Therefore, my hope is that this motion will be carried unanimously by this House this evening.

Mr. E. Ryan

I should like to support in general the views which have been expressed by previous speakers and to associate myself with the sentiments which inspired this motion. No opportunity should be lost of deploring the policy of apartheid and of condemning the suffering, the injustice, the degradation which exists in South West Africa as a result of this pernicious policy on the part of the South African Government. It is hardly necessary to go into any details, or certainly any further details of the suffering and injustice which exist. Anybody who has made any effort to acquaint himself with the conditions which exist there will be well aware of the sufferings, will be well aware of how necessary it is to take every possible measure to alleviate these conditions. Unfortunately, in spite of being aware of these conditions, we find very little being done. Very little, apparently, can be done, short of some massive display of force by the United Nations.

I think the policy of the Irish Government and of the Minister for External Affairs in regard to this problem is well known. Nobody will deny that when these matters came before the United Nations, the Government have always made their point of view clear. They have made it quite clear that the Irish people deplore apartheid and the Government, through the Minister for External Affairs, have made every effort at the United Nations to introduce or to support measures which would deal with this problem. In fact, many efforts have been made: committees have been set up; attempts have been made to send delegations and so on to South Africa to investigate this problem and to make an effort to find some agreement with the South African Government in dealing with this problem. Unfortunately, up to the moment this has not been successful but I do not think it can be doubted that efforts have been made, and it certainly cannot be doubted that in these efforts the Government here were entirely on the side of South West Africa, on the side of the people of South West Africa and that they made every effort to alleviate those conditions.

I regard this motion not in any sense as a criticism of the Minister or the Government but rather as an encouragement to them to carry on the work done up to now, as an encouragement to do even more in the future. I shall not deal in detail with suggestions which have been made as to the various funds which should be supported. We have, in fact, supported one at least of the funds in question. Whether we should support one fund rather than the other is a matter of detail and I do not propose to get involved in this matter of detail. I have no doubt we will continue to support this cause, that we will continue to make contributions as seem to be reasonable and as seem to be best. I look forward to hearing the speech by the Minister for External Affairs and to hearing whether he can hold out any hope that in the immediate future some concrete steps can be taken, some definite progress can be made, in dealing with this very unfortunate problem.

Mr. Crowley

This motion has the unqualified support of the Labour Party. I rise simply to endorse its purpose and to make it clear that we are completely at one with those who have already spoken in support of the motion. I do not think there is actually any necessity either to elaborate on or to repeat any of the arguments advanced by the movers of the motion in support of it. Certainly the motion is not a criticism either of the Government or the Minister. We prefer to look on it as a call on the Government of this country and, indeed, on the people of the country generally for more active and forthright support for the purpose and intention for which the motion has been placed on the Order Paper. Therefore, on behalf of the Labour Party, I formally support the motion.

An Cathaoirleach

The Chair takes it that the Minister is to conclude, except for the reply by the proposer of the motion.

Minister for External Affairs (Mr. Aiken)

I welcome the speeches of the Senators who put some of the horrible aspects of the apartheid system on the records of this House. May I add "once again," it is not the first time it has been done. I do not think it is necessary to argue at any great length in the Irish Seanad against the system. It is completely and absolutely abhorrent to the Irish people, particularly to those of us who have read our own history and realise the resentment of the Irish people when they were treated as the native Africans are treated in parts of Africa. The white South Africans plead that there are similar horrors going on in other parts of the world and that they are no worse than this, that or the other country. They have a long litany of instances of man's inhumanity to man under various systems of government et cetera.

However, the job of a representative of Ireland at the United Nations is to express the horror of the Irish people at the system but then we cannot spend all our time at that. The United Nations came together not merely to condemn injustices but to try to do all in the power of the Assembly and the Security Council to right injustices and that is where United Nations is breaking down. I am sure if somebody would present the Assembly with a magic wand to get rid of apartheid and many other injustices in the world they would gladly wield it. But as they have not got a magic wand the members of the General Assembly have to work within the limits of their capabilities and power. One of the sections of the Charter that is quoted very often by the representatives of South Africa is Article 27. They say that apartheid is an internal matter and that as such the United Nations is forbidden to interfere under Article 2 (7). Many resolutions have been passed by the Assembly condemning apartheid, setting up committees to go into the matter and report back as to what can be done. These committees have recommended all sorts of commissions and special commissions and groups of experts to go to South Africa to inquire into the wrongs that are being done to the native African people and to report back on what could be done. These groups have been refused admission. They will not be allowed in by the Government of South Africa who say that they are treating the native people fairly and wisely. Nobody believes that. We know that there is a great deal of truth in the most exaggerated accounts that come before the United Nations of the brutalities of the system.

For many years we have had to vote on various resolutions that have been put up. We have always voted to condemn the injustices, to recognise that it was a breach of human rights and a breach of the Charter. However, we have had to abstain on certain sections of various motions that recommended action which we did not think would be effective. I believe the Assembly of the United Nations should confine itself in passing resolutions against instances of injustice throughout the world, to recommending measures that have some chance of being effective or bringing the cause of justice a little bit further. When you see what has happened in the case of South West Africa you see how difficult it is to take effective action directly against South Africa in relation to apartheid within her own Republic. If there ever was a case in which United Nations action should be taken, that it has a legal and moral right to take, it is against South Africa in relation to here seizure and holding of South West Africa. It is one of the few cases of neo-colonialism in our time. It was mandated to Britain by the League of Nations. Britain passed on the mandate to South Africa and gradually South Africa claimed that the United Nations had no right to inquire into what South Africa was doing under the League of Nations mandate. They have gradually assumed sovereignty over it and they will not let anybody interfere. They claim the right to rule it as part of their sovereign territory.

When you ask an Irish Minister to go to the United Nations and do something about apartheid within South Africa remember the situation that exists in the United Nations: that in this clear case where an international court clearly indicated that South Africa had no right over her neighbouring territory we cannot get effective action taken. Proposals were put forward recently in relation to South West Africa that the Assembly should establish a commission and send it to take over from the South African Government the functions of government within the territory of South West Africa. That, in my opinion, has not the slightest chance of success and I argued with all my African colleagues, and with others from Latin America and still others who had voted for it that this was not bringing the cause of human rights any further—that instead it would help to confirm the Government of South Africa in their belief that nothing would ever be done in the UN except the passing of resolutions of condemnation which they could afford to ignore.

While speaking on this subject, I made it clear that the Assembly should recognise its limitations and realise that the Security Council alone had the power to suppress the aggression of South Africa in the territory of South West Africa. However, we got no support for that, in public at any rate. A number of delegations realised that, in fact, this is the only way progress can be made to prize out the territory of South West Africa from the grasp of the Government of South Africa and bring it to independence. I urged that the Security Council should be requested to appoint a representative, on the nomination of the Secretary General, to go to South Africa and to South West Africa, if he could get into it, to open pourparles to see if he could get agreement upon a programme for bringing South West Africa to independence.

I got no hearing for that suggestion, though I feel from private conversations that a large number of nations would have gone along with it were it not for the fact that the Great Powers were against it. I realised that the great majority of Afro Asians and Latin Americans were trying to do the impossible—to draft a resolution that would be acceptable to the Great Powers. My proposal was based on the argument that the Assembly cannot impress their will on the Government of South West Africa. We must realise that the only organ of the UN that in the last analysis can do so effectively is the Security Council. We must realise that is where the power resides, that is where the responsibility belongs. We must realise that in actual practice the power resides in the five permanent members of the Security Council.

I do not think the commission set up under the resolution which was passed eventually will get very far. I should be surprised, indeed delighted, if the commission were allowed into South West Africa by the South African Government but I feel we shall be compelled to have the matter raised again in the coming autumn session when a number of the delegations who voted for that resolution will see that something else should be done—that we should clearly turn on the Security Council and put it up to that body to do the work which they undertook to do when they accepted membership. Clearly, it is their job to assume responsibility for suppressing aggression wherever it may arise. The UN Assembly can only establish a peacekeeping organisation and send it in when the two territories in dispute agree. The Security Council, on the other hand, have the right and the power under the Charter to call on countries to subscribe forces to an international police force for enforcement action.

The two funds mentioned in the motion—the UN Trust for South Africa and the UN Education and Training Programme for South Africa —have come into operation only recently. As the Seanad knows, we subscribe to a great many other UN funds and though 1,000 dollars is not a great amount it is more than our proportionate share of the half million dollars fund. It is more than we would be expected to subscribe. The half million dollars was the sum the committee thought would be necessary for the work, which Senator Stanford outlined. It involves helping the prisoners and so on and the defence of persons charged.

The other fund was established only recently. My information is that only five delegations have indicated their willingness to subscribe. We had the question of this fund before us this time last year, but when we were making our case to go to the Department of Finance for our Estimates we had to postpone it until this year when I am hopeful we shall be able to do something worthwhile in relation to that fund. It is probably the fund through which most could be done for the people of South Africa. I might add that we subscribe to a great number of other UN funds and at the time we were considering our Estimates last year the UN owed us three million dollars as our share of the peace-keeping operation in Cyprus. That was taken into account when we went to the Department of Finance on the matter. However, the United Nations Secretary General has been able to pay us back half that sum and we are in a better position in this present year.

Senator Sheehy Skeffington raised a question about the Brazil convention on apartheid. It was convened at a time of year when we just did not have anybody available to send and I did not think that either the convention or ourselves lost anything by our not attending. We hear in the General Assembly several hundred speeches on this question of apartheid year after year after year. There is the fourth committee which deals with this thing, and year after year half the time of this committee, or more than half the time, is taken up on apartheid. I feel that what we should be doing is thinking out something that we can do which would prove effective to get rid of the system, and I feel that the best way to get rid of it in South Africa and in Rhodesia is to get South Africans prized out of South West Africa. That would change the whole picture in that part of the world.

However, that is not to say that there should not be condemnation expressed. That is part of the work, and one very valuable contribution to the condemnation of apartheid was made this time last year when all the Catholic bishops in South Africa came out for the first time in a formal document condemning the system. They had condemned it individually, and a number of them had tried to do all they could to ignore the system, but that was the first formal condemnation. The day following the publication of this document 35 Protestant prelates came out and supported every word of the pastoral that had been issued by the Catholic bishops.

So there is a stir within South Africa itself. While I believe that the Government of South Africa and its friends who are like minded may be able to hold on to apartheid in South Africa itself for a certain time, they would not get the same support in resisting the United Nations, or the Security Council, in bringing the people of South West African territory to freedom and giving them the right to rule themselves in the way they thought best. So even though no progress at all has been made in abolishing apartheid in South Africa in the twenty-one years of existence of the United Nations, notwithstanding the terms of the Charter and the terms of the Declaration of Human Rights, there is some movement. We have had more than sixty nations brought to independence though fifty years ago people would have said that you were mad to think that they would ever come to independence or could ever get freedom. That much at least has been accomplished.

There are a few very hard nuts to crack left. One of them is Rhodesia, the other is South Africa and associated with it the problem of South West Africa. That is not to say that the evils that are being practised in that area are confined to that area of the world. There are analogous injustices in other parts. However, we are not dealing with those, and I feel that if we can get the United Nations General Assembly in the coming September to put this problem of the freedom of South West Africa where it belongs, on the shoulders of the five permanent members of the Security Council, we will have a good chance of bringing pressure to bear on any recalcitrant member of the permanent five members and get them to line up and take whatever action is appropriate and necessary to bring the people of South West Africa to freedom. And if that is done I think that we will have gone some way, and indeed a long way, towards the elimination of apartheid in that part of the world.

Professor Stanford

Personally I thank the Minister very heartily for his full and informative and in many ways hopeful statement. We have had a good debate. We have had a reasonably well attended House for a motion at this hour of the evening. The motion has been supported by leading members of the three Parties and by a leading Independent. I should like to emphasise that in no sense, as several Senators have said, was this intended as a criticism of Government policy. Senator Sheehy Skeffington very rightly emphasised that the country has every reason to be proud of our representative at the United Nations. In no sense, then, was it a criticism.

I think that we can recognise from what the Minister said that two-thirds of the motion is virtually conceded. In fact, one part has already been met within the last couple of months. He has stated that the Government has made a contribution to the United Nations Trust for South Africa. From what the Minister said we may hope that fairly soon the Government will make a contribution to the United Nations Education and Training Programme for South Africans. This leaves one third of the motion. I will take it from what the Minister said that it probably would not be opportune or judicious to press something of this kind at the moment. He understands the necessary strategy of the United Nations Assembly very fully, much more than any Member of this House, needless to say.

But in the light of the fact that virtually two-thirds of the motion has been met, and in the light of the fact that no criticism whatever is intended of Government policy at the United Nations now or in the past, I appeal to the House to accept this motion unanimously. It would be clearly understood by us all that it is very much in the Minister's hands to implement this remaining third at the time he thinks fit if that time arrives. Perhaps some Members of the House may think that the right thing to do —in some ways it is the usual thing— would be to withdraw the motion at this stage. In the light of what has been said I should normally be very happy to do that, but I am quite certain that it would be misunderstood and misrepresented elsewhere.

In fact, I know that even in our own country when a motion of this kind which has received a very favourable reception by the House has been withdrawn people say: "They backed down. They would not press the resolution." Therefore, I should like to see a nod of the head from the Leader of the House that if this motion were pressed it would be supported by all Members of the House on the clear understanding that it is not a criticism of the Government. Indeed it might possibly strengthen the Minister's hand if an opportunity arose to present this commission to say that he had the unanimous resolution by Seanad Éireann to support it. I know it would strengthen the resolution of the people of South Africa in their present experience. I am happy to see, as the House has seen, that fateful nod has been given by the Leader of the House, so I propose the motion to the Seanad. I hope it will be accepted in that spirit.

Question put and agreed to.

The Seanad adjourned at 9.25 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 14th June, 1967.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht - Wednesday, 7 Jun 1967

Conditions in South Africa: Motion.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 7 Jun 1967