Thank you for permitting me to raise this matter on the Adjournment. Before I start and with your permission I propose to leave some of my time available to allow Senators Eoin Ryan, McAuliffe and Bulbulia to speak as well on the issue because I think it is an issue which goes well beyond any individual convictions.
On the question of the Dunne's workers, we would want to be perfectly clear, given some of the propaganda that has issued from South Africa recently, why they went. They went to South Africa, before all else, because they were invited by a very prominent and brave black South African, Bishop Tutu. It was interesting that at a time when the South Africa Home Affairs Ministry were issuing what were quite scurrilious statements about their motives, Bishop Tutu was actually involved in a tremendous act of bravery, rescuing somebody from an angry mob because he felt that was not the way to change South Africa's present awful injustices. This is the man who had invited them, this impassioned defender of peaceful change. Yet because of reasons which I hope we can talk about here these people who were invited by such a brave and such a peaceful man were refused admission to South Africa.
They went because he invited them to come to see the conditions under which the people they have been struggling to defend for almost 12 months lived. They went also in the light of the much proclaimed openness of South Africa, the fact that South Africa uses this argument about being open, about inviting people to come and see what it is really like. It uses this argument so loudly and sports people and entertainers go and give comfort to that particular obnoxious regime.
The Dunne's workers went to see for themselves. Because apparently they could not be trusted to come back with the usual whitewash that sports people very often use about South Africa, because they had demonstrated by their actions that they knew what it was to take a stand on an issue of principle, they were not welcome in South Africa.
Being made unwelcome would be bad enough in itself, but it is important to put on the record of this House, as it has to some extent been done on the record of the other House, what precisely is the position. I would like to make one thing fairly clear here because I think the contrast is worthwhile. I was in Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg relatively recently on perfectly legitimate business. I was endeavouring to meet the representatives of the United Democratic Front and, therefore, unfortunately had to enter South Africa to do so since there was no way these people could meet me otherwise. I was travelling on a diplomatic passport and was, therefore, identified as a politician and presumably, given the extent of the South Africa security services, it would not have been unknown to them that Ireland was very hostile to apartheid. Yet, not even a quibble was raised about myself or, indeed, four or five other Irish parliamentarians who also wanted to meet the South Africa opposition. We never had any doubts in our minds about why we were visiting South Africa. It was because we wanted to give comfort, support and solidarity to those who were resisting apartheid. We were not in any way refused permission. We were let through with a quick look at our passport and a stamp and that was it.
Yet ten ordinary citizens of Dublin, ordinary shop workers, were refused admission when they went with an invitation from a senior churchman and, indeed, from the entire South African Council of Churches. When they were refused, it was not simply an innocent refusal saying you must go back. They were treated to the most sinister methods of intimidation of being kept incommunicado, of having people marching around them with guns, these workers who have been passionate in their insistence on non-violence, who were most upset in the entire 12 months of their strike by the idiots who attempted to use violence against Dunnes Stores. That, more than anything else, nearly broke their spirit, that somebody would exploit their stand for violence. The South African authorities insisted on the use of people with guns and all the trappings of racist South Africa and its repression to convey the impression that these people were a threat.
Of course, the South African authorities are right in one way — because the possibility that increasing numbers of people in all of the countries of Western Europe, as is happening, quite evidently, in the United States and North America generally, will begin to say no to dealing with South Africa, to say no to investment in South Africa, to say no to trade with South Africa, and to say no to the whole sorry mess of apartheid, the possibility that the fact that ordinary people are doing this sort of thing is of far more concern to South Africa than all the angry denunciations of all of the political establishment. What the South Africans know is that in spite of all the talk, in spite of all the condemnation, trade between Europe, America and South Africa is increasing and developing at a most alarming rate. EC investment in South Africa is increasing and increasing rapidly in spite of all the talk about the horrible nature of the regime.
Therefore, when ordinary people, who are not part of any political process, who are not involved in the niceties of diplomacy, when ordinary people take a stand, that sort of thing is liable to be highly contagious, to be highly infectious, and to be highly effective. Therefore, you cannot tolerate such people. Even though in my judgment it was foolish and stupid and counterproductive the South Africans responded, as they have always responded to any real threat of organised and consistent action against them. They responded by the effective use of brute force, the refusal of admission and the return to Britain and Ireland on the first plane.
That, more than the strike at this stage, more than anything else, is the significance of the actions of the South African authorities, that ten ordinary citizens of this country, most of them shop workers who did not know, as they will probably tell you themselves, where South Africa was 12 months ago, who did not know anything about the nature of South Africa but who accepted a guideline from their union and over 12 months have come to understand with a deepening intensity the horrible nature of the South African regime, decided to go to visit the place and those people were sent back.
There is a significance in the realism of the South African authorities. In a way, sadly, most of the Irish political establishment, the Minister for Labour, the Labour Court and, indeed, the Minister for Foreign Affairs have all said the right things about these brave people but have stopped decisively short of any fundamental gestures or actions of support and, indeed, the Labour Court in my view tied itself up in a sorry mess getting involved in assessments of what is and what is not immoral, which is an extraordinary role for a Labour Court to get involved in — telling people what is and what is not immoral. All of those people did not understand as clearly as the South African authorities the significance of what these people have done and are doing and the significance is that they know what South Africa is about and they have demonstrated quite clearly what is the one fundamental lever we have for dealing with the regime and that is to end all trade and all investment with South Africa.
In order to leave time for a number of other speakers, I will conclude by simply suggesting that there are a number of specific things we need to do. We need to go — and the Minister is here and I hope he will say this — beyond inquiries with South Africa. We need specific actions. We had them in the past. We had them the last time there was a massacre and the tragedy now is that there are massacres so frequently in South Africa that the amount of mileage that has been given to them in the media is getting smaller and smaller. There were seven or was it ten people killed this week in South African townships, massacred apparently in cold blood by the police, people in a cinema at a funeral meeting being attacked by the police and shot. This, I hope, is the dying kick of a dying regime.
It is time for us not to wait for other people who have vested interests, not to wait for bigger countries who have vested interests to take action. The first thing is, obviously, the ending of the no visas arrangement. It is wrong that people from South Africa, particularly given the present unfair order in South Africa, should have some sort of privileged entry that no other African country has to this country, and that is the right to enter without visas. That should be ended immediately.
If we cannot have international sanctions and if the Government are not prepared to get involved in legally binding sanctions, they ought at least, in the manner of the Health Education Bureau begin publicly to support a campaign to boycott South African produce, even if we do not have a legal ban on all imports. Nothing should be imported from South Africa or exported to it without a licence so that we know who is exporting it and who is importing it.
Finally, and if anything of what I had to say goes out to the media today, I think what this country needs most of all now clearly, categorically and unequivocally, is a complete and utter boycott on Dunnes Stores, on Ben Dunne and on his allies, until these people are recognised, not just a boycott on Henry Street but every branch of Dunnes Stores because they are seen now, whether they wish it or not, to be the allies of South Africa. They are the ones who locked out the strikers, the only other people who locked them out were the racist regime in South Africa. Dunnes Stores should be boycotted by anybody with a conscience.
