The New Generation The World Against Apartheid: Have You Heard from Johannesburg?

# Say what's the word

# Tell me, brother, have you heard

# From Johannesburg

# Tell me, what's the word

# Sister woman, have you heard from Johannesburg? #

When I came to Soweto in 1967, to attend school, it was the hippie era

where we all wore bell-bottom pants.

So I also aspired to my own pair of bell-bottoms and platform shoes.

And I looked forward to one day having an Afro.

Entering high school, for me,

was like a whole new world altogether because everybody is now talking, insinuating politics.

And I was reading voraciously. It was just taking our minds to another level.

Youth were being called upon

to take the lead, to move forward, especially in the context of our parents, who were subdued.

In the early 1960s, opposition to apartheid had been all but crushed.

The ANC's leaders had either been banned, jailed or forced into exile by the South African government.

There was a lot of fear among our people. It wasn't easy for people to mention anything political.

Each time you talked politics,

they would say, "Nelson Mandela is in prison for a lifetime."

Our parents did not say anything, do anything.

The police were the law of the land.

I remember one time I was walking to a train station with my father

and there was graffiti on the wall. I was learning to read.

And I read out loud, "Free Mandela!" He must have wondered what I was talking about and he slapped me.

What Mandela's life sentence in jail represented in our parents, it was like,

"You people shut up forever or else you'll go to jail for life."

I think those days made young people say,

"Hey, we're fired up. We can't take this any more."

The young people

have become politicised. Highly politicised.

They've become activists.

But this was the 1960s and revolution was in the air.

Towards the end of the '60s,

there was this new generation and I am part of that generation.

And we were militants.

I came in Amsterdam, I came especially to Amsterdam

because that was the place where everything was happening. There were people in a revolutionary state.

And all the new ideas.

We didn't see ourselves as people from Amsterdam or from Holland.

We were part of the world and everywhere were people fighting for their rights.

Most of us saw the liberation struggle in South Africa

as a continuation of the anti-fascist struggle in the Second World War.

I'm born in '48,

so really in the shadow of the Second World War, and in my youth my parents always talked

about their experiences.

There was a strong message in what they said. It was anti-fascist, anti-racist.

So that was deep inside of me.

To the right in a few moments at number 263, the third house from the corner,

is the Anne Frank House, where she was hidden during the war.

The Anne Frank House, of course, is the symbol of what the Nazis did in Holland.

It's the fascism, the racism, it all comes together in the Anne Frank House.

So we thought this is the best place to actually show that what is going on in South Africa now is linked.

So we talked to the people of the Anne Frank House and they found it interesting.

The Anne Frank House is very popular among foreign visitors, including white South Africans,

descendants from the Dutch.

These were our people. It's not only that the man on the bank notes is Jan van Riebeeck,

a Dutchman, but these were our people.

So they came to this museum they thought to see the history of the Second World War and Anne Frank.

Then they came down this little stair and saw on the wall, "Nazism in South Africa now".

It isn't dead. Nazism isn't dead. It's living in South Africa.

The native is far from developed and he's criminal

and dirty. And I don't want him too close to me.

You couldn't move from one place to the other without the permission of some authority.

There was a gate at the township where anyone that came in had to sign in and ask for permission

and register to say where you were going. Almost run like a compound.

Black people were defined as "non-whites"

in a context where to be white meant to be human, to be decent, to be affirmed.

And so black people were defined negatively. You were not what white people were. You were non-white.

We cannot mix with the lower nations

at the moment. Unless they are cultivated and educated and so on.

They've got no education and it'll take a couple of hundred years. They have only just come down from trees.

They are the lower class. They work under us. It is just right.

For me it was a personal affront.

It was my mum being ill-treated. It's not just any black person. It's my mother.

After a while you get to understand

that the system actually works that way. All black people are treated the same way. That's apartheid.

But the nation that had given birth to the Afrikaner still didn't see the problem.

We had to go everywhere in the country to explain apartheid,

what is the role of Holland, our historical role.

They always wanted to send me to these far-out places

where half of the community had emigrated to South Africa and the other half was in close contact.

So I would go from one hostile audience to another with my little projector with 8mm film

and a real tough story because I believed in revolution. But they didn't.

And then there would always be the screaming uncles and aunties.

Those blacks were treated well because Auntie So-and-so from Pretoria had written a letter

that they were treated so wonderfully, part of the family.

It wasn't easy.

A lot of Dutch people felt we should not be cut off from our tribesmen,

from our relatives in South Africa.

Well, we came there in 1652 to South Africa

and in waves Dutch people have migrated to South Africa. The Afrikaners or the Boers.

We felt that so much in South Africa had come about as a result of the Dutch heritage.

Jan van Riebeeck, when he landed here, he didn't take the locals into his house like long-lost brothers.

A lot of things have been written about how the Dutch also kept themselves apart

from the indigenous people.

The role Holland played in the development of the Afrikaner

can not easily be overemphasised.

There is, worldwide, about 40 million people

that have Dutch and Afrikaans as their mother tongue.

And together we are rather a quite considerable group in the world.

This whole idea

that the Afrikaners is a God-elected people

was strongly supported by the Dutch Reformed Church.

We were the ones who had invented apartheid. It's a Dutch word.

Secondly, we gave them their language and, worse, their theology.

The 20% white people in South Africa felt chosen by God

to lead 80% of blacks to a better life.

And a better life meant to be servants to the whites.

That was a legacy from the Netherlands.

There was a cultural treaty between Holland and South Africa which was established in 1951.

We realised very quickly it's the wrong treaty, it's between the wrong parties.

The African people were left out.

The apartheid regime said that black people did not deserve to have an education

that is similar to those of white people because their function in society was menial jobs.

Bantu education was designed

to basically provide an education system that is inferior to that of the white people.

All that Bantu education did was to help develop us

into the type of labour that would be useful for white folks

for jobs they were not ready to do.

So you could see that it didn't matter if they had good brains.

The system wanted to deny you the good education simply because

there is no point in showing a black person the green pastures in which they cannot graze.

It was education for enslavement.

I was very young in the '60s

and everything in the state, the entire state machinery, all the resources in society,

were geared towards making you believe that you were, in fact, inferior.

If you're living in a country that keeps telling you you are of no value, black people are stupid,

black people have no brain capacity, black people are primitive,

then you have to have something that counters that.

Despite the government's efforts, some students won places on the black campuses

of South Africa's predominantly white universities. A new movement began to emerge,

started by a young medical student, Steve Biko.

We believe in our country there shall be no minority or majority. Just the people.

And those people will have the same status before the law

and the same political rights before the law.

Steve Biko's seminal writings on black consciousness, being black in South Africa,

was critical for me in terms of locating myself in my environment,

in terms of thinking of who I was.

Any changes which are to come can only come as a result of a programme worked out

by black people.

And for black people to be able to work out a programme, they need to defeat the one main element

in politics working against them and this is a psychological feeling of inferiority.

He used to say that the biggest oppression black people face in South Africa

is not the oppression by the white man. It's their own mental oppression.

I remember one time he gave an example that when you walk down the street, you meet a white person.

No policeman has to come and tell you to take off your hat.

Automatically, you take that hat off and you squeeze it.

He used to say that is your greatest enemy. Nobody has said to you, "Take off that hat." It is you.

He came to us and said to us, "All this can be changed.

"The system can be challenged."

Steve Biko hoped to bring about change peacefully.

The black man has got no ill intentions for the white man.

The black man is only incensed at the white man to the extent that he wants to entrench himself

in a position of power to exploit the black man.

For me, Stephen Biko is the best gift that God ever gave to South Africa.

He's bigger than Martin Luther King, not because King was not great,

but because he performed almost the same miracles as King performed under worse conditions.

There's not one young person who was not touched by Stephen Biko, one way or the other.

We started forming the South African Students Organisation,

which was firmly based on black consciousness, the essence of which was for the black man

to elevate his own position by positively looking at those value systems

that make him distinctively a man in society.

The black consciousness movement aroused in us the strength that we didn't know we had.

And therefore that strength from a few of us

started spreading and spreading.

And we went out into the streets like the disciples and we started transforming South Africa.

I was a high school student at the time. We felt that we had to create a change in our communities.

For example, Steve studied as a doctor. And so we did things like go out into rural areas

and help people to build clinics because many communities had none.

And those became community centres and gave people confidence.

As the influence of the black consciousness movement began to grow

in 1973 the South African government launched its offensive.

Steve Biko and seven other leaders were banned.

Under South Africa's notorious anti-terrorism laws, they could not leave their home township,

meet with more than one other person, speak publicly or have their words published.

In Holland, the anti-apartheid campaign was gaining momentum.

This was such an outrage.

This was such a horrible thing taking place in South Africa.

I thought this was a matter of a few years, the world will stand up,

it's a matter of letting people know what's going on and the world will stand up. It was quite naive.

But we were getting more and more people involved.

And then we developed very rapidly.

Our main goal was to bring South Africans, ANC people, to Holland to let them speak,

so that they could talk to Members of Parliament, the trade unions,

so that they'd be seen on television.

I think their determination to fight and sacrifice...

'I remember the moment I met Oliver Tambo very, very well.'

He came especially for the opening of this huge campaign.

We are confident that, whatever the difficulties,

our people in South Africa, supported by you all,

will see their own cause triumph.

It was a wonderful occasion.

He immediately gave me this impression that this was a leader.

I'm not so very much into that sort of thing. I'm far more real Dutch, you know -

better be normal, you know, half-anarchist, we have no leaders.

But Oliver Tambo was a leader.

A long, long friendship started that evening.

Then he would like to go and have a meal and I was so scared going through the traffic

with this man! The future of South Africa was in his hands and I had him on the back of my bicycle!

-#

-We're gonna fight, fight, fight Fight against apartheid...

-#

-Now what can the outside world, what can Holland do?

-Sanctions. Isolation of South Africa.

The failure to employ sanctions

is to feed the escalation of war.

And therefore the West, by not applying sanctions,

they are creating precisely the conditions

in which war must escalate.

Because the idea of sanctions is to weaken South Africa,

to make it impossible to continue resisting our just demands.

The Pretoria regime is the inventor and foremost practitioner of apartheid,

which has been repeatedly condemned by the Assembly as a crime against humanity.

Year in, year out, the United Nations General Assembly was discussing South Africa.

..remain resolutely opposed to the high-handed imposition on them

of an unrepresentative, discriminatory form of government by the fascist white minority.

In 1974, as the African group, we decided enough is enough.

We challenged South Africa and called for the expulsion of them from the General Assembly.

All the Western European countries, United States, Canada,

voted against. Those that voted for were the African countries, Asian and East European countries.

But we had the majority.

What a travesty we have witnessed here today.

What a ploy

to deny a country its rights to address this assembly.

I object strenuously to this shameful action.

There was a lot of drama. Anything happening in the UN

with the South African delegation picking up their stuff and leaving

was dramatic stuff on television.

But was it a disaster for South Africa? I don't think so.

1974 was just the final as far as the General Assembly was concerned.

It didn't cut South Africa off from its activities in the UN.

It still had access to the Security Council.

But now the UN Security Council would vote on the resolution passed by the General Assembly,

making it binding or irrelevant.

Those of you who sit as members of the Council and fail to take action,

gentlemen, history will not absolve you.

The picture presented in this organisation of racial relations in South Africa

is distorted out of all proportion.

Our detractors purposely seek to conceal the goodwill that exists

between black and white in South Africa.

The Prime Minister has frequently and forcibly condemned incidents between black and white

-which involve bad manners or humiliating treatment.

-Mr Botha had the audacity, the audacity

to come and sit here and say the information and documentation which was considered

for resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly was unsubstantiated.

The whole world is now watching.

Waiting to see if the Security Council will respect the principled decision

of the majority members of the United Nations.

The United States, Britain and France joined today for the first triple veto in the Security Council.

They rejected a resolution to expel South Africa from the United Nations because of its racial segregation.

The African nations may have hit a wall at the United Nations,

but as the black consciousness movement got into its stride, events in Soweto would soon change that.

At the time we were getting reports of what was happening in the Portuguese colonies

of Angola and Mozambique.

The idea of Mozambique having gotten its independence,

of Angola having gotten its own independence,

of the struggle in Zimbabwe being at its height,

the message of freedom had been sold to young people.

Then the South African government gave the movement the perfect opportunity for action.

1974. The government began to compel students to study in Afrikaans.

TEACHER SPEAKS AFRIKAANS

You hated because it was the language of the oppressor.

It's not as easily understood and acceptable as English, for instance.

We thought that it was a deliberate attempt by the government to slow the flow of people to universities

and the junior high students boycotted. It took six months for the high schools.

The objective was that we would go to one of the schools

which was longest on the class boycott on account of the enforcement of Afrikaans.

And we were going to congregate around this school and pledge solidarity with them.

That really was the sum total of what we were about on that day. Nothing more and nothing less.

We asked pupils to keep this to themselves and not to talk to their parents.

I spent the evening preparing my banner. I used a bed sheet that my mother had,

which of course I never mentioned to her that I had taken it without her permission.

Our parents didn't know what was happening.

I said nothing when I left home

simply because politics wasn't spoken about in my family.

We were going to be at school around 7.30 as if we were just going to school like any other day.

But on this day it was quite clear that there was something in the air.

It was a bit tense at school.

It was the first time we ever challenged the system at high school.

As the school starts, we normally go to morning assembly

and we have morning prayer. Morning prayer is the Lord's Prayer,

but we then had decided that to get the show off the road

on this day there was no "Our Father" business. Everyone would sing Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika.

That was the clarion call. We just left our books and hit the road.

It was sort of hesitant at the beginning, but then as soon as people started singing,

the mood was sort of built on.

# Nkosi sikelela

# Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika

# Maluphakanyisw' uphondo lwayo

# Yizwa imithandazo yethu

# Nkosi... #

We went from secondary school to secondary school, collecting students.

And there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students.

On our way back, we met with the police. We said, "Don't provoke them."

If we give them a reason to do anything that's violent, then we'll regret it.

Suddenly, there were more schools

and much greater numbers.

Thus far, things had been peaceful.

One could sense the mood changing.

Then the first shots rang out.

GUNFIRE

GUNFIRE CONTINUES

And from that initial volley, that's when Hector Pieterson was then shot.

He was just a little kid.

He came from a lower primary school and was shot and killed.

Then they released the dogs.

And the dog charged into the crowd.

But that dog was not to emerge from there again.

We stoned them. We just simply stoned them to death, yeah.

At that point, all hell broke loose.

GUNSHOTS

I don't think we actually expected things to turn the way they did.

It was a scary thing.

Along the way, as people moved back home,

any government institution, a bar or offices for administration and things, they all were burnt down.

The very first institution that burnt down, I brought it down. It was the first one to go up.

A white city office.

This is where you paid your electricity fees, where you paid your rent.

Life in Soweto was organised around these offices.

If you had to get a pass book, you had to register for anything,

you had to go to these offices.

When people were raided in the morning for permits,

it is in that office where they'll say, "Go to house so-and-so, there are two people unknown there,"

so they will send the cops.

We made sure that all the records and everything there was destroyed.

SIREN WAILS

When these youngsters started with their protest, they were talkin about Afrikaans, Bantu Education,

but the government responded in a high-handed fashion,

assuming, as always, that they are in a situation of total power.

People have chosen, in this particular instance,

to react in a...faceless way.

They didn't present a distinct leadership to make demands and to negotiate,

but instead, they started burning buildings, stoning police

and creating general chaos.

And this is the only language in their minds that the white man would understand.

June 16 became an apocalypse.

Our fathers and mothers had failed to bring South Africa to the stage

and here was a bunch of young people turning South Africa around.

The government's reaction to this challenge was swift and brutal.

I have to inform you that the police have been instructed

regardless of who is involved,

to protect lives and property

with every means at their disposal.

And the police said,

"This is exactly what we have been waiting to hear,"

and so they went on this carnage.

Everybody was being shot at and killed.

We ended up with 500 people killed in two days.

The news stunned and shocked us.

To massacre children...

..on the scale of June the 16th and after...

..was something utterly incredible.

Totally inhuman.

It was bad news for Soweto.

It became bad news for other townships everywhere in the country.

That day decided the history of South Africa.

The message of the Soweto uprising spread like wildfire.

Within a few weeks, the message is brought across the country

that here were young people that wer not ready to take it any more.

Steve Biko's hopes for a peaceful resolution to South Africa's problems had vanished.

The line that the BPC adopts

is to explore as much as possible...

..non-violent means within the country and that is why we exist

But there are people, and there are many people,

who have despaired of the efficacy of non-violence as a method.

I'm of the view that conflict could only be avoidable

if the Nationalist Government were prepared to avoid it.

Those who are at the seeking end, that is those who want justice, who want an egalitarian society

can only pursue their aspirations according to the resistance offered by the opposition.

If the opposition is prepared to fight with their backs to the wall, conflict can't be avoidable.

'There were more riots and at least 40 deaths today in Soweto...'

'What began as a black protest against being taught in Afrikaans

'is now a manifestation of urban black frustration.'

'A Dutch Reformed Church was burnt down.'

'Police fired indiscriminately and wantonly on peacefully marching students.'

Needless to say, the international community was horrified.

Now the fires are burning in Alexandra, close to some of the rich white suburbs.

'Heute im Ghetto der Schwarzen in Soweto vor den Toren von Johannesbur

'ist ein neuer Hohepunkt der standigen Konfrontation zwischen Schwarz und Weiss.'

'Des manifestations ont proteste contre la politique d'apartheid

'apres la repression severe des emeutes de Soweto.'

Hundreds of police arrived and fired into the crowd. One policeman said,

"We fired into them. It's no good firing over their heads."

COMMENTARY IN DUTCH

More and more people were standing up, lots of people,

to put pressure on the Dutch government to take a strong stand against apartheid.

A lot of Dutch people felt we should cut off the cultural treaty between Holland and South Africa.

You must learn not only to work in the street and to demonstrate,

but also to single out issues which you might win in parliament

and this turned out to be a winner.

SPEAKS IN DUTCH

Parliament cut the link.

With Holland so viciously leading international condemnation

of the political system in South Africa,

I personally became very anti-Dutch.

I felt betrayed by people of my own blood.

After all, they started the whole thing here.

We're their descendants. We're supposed to be not so stupid that we do everything wrong.

Instead of taking a positive attitude, it was just condemnation all the way

If you look to the changes in politics in the Netherlands,

our government took steps after the eruptions in South Africa.

In fact, it took Soweto.

Worldwide, the Anti-Apartheid Movement stepped up its demand for a mandatory arms embargo.

What has happened in Soweto and other African townships

over the last few days has indicated quite clearly

that because South Africa has a paramilitary police force,

many of the armaments sent from this country for police purpose

are being used for military purposes and suppression.

We want to make certain Britain take a much more effective stance

with regard to the supply of armaments.

Here it was, Britain, for commercial reasons...

..selling arms that would kill black South Africans.

Of course, African countries in particular,

Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, had been saying for years

that Britain was acting in complicity with the apartheid regime.

And when a nation decides to arm the South Africans,

you know the kind of feeling you have.

This is the nearest thing you have to the Jew-German problem.

With all that was going on in South Africa, getting worse and worse, Soweto,

it allowed the issue to be a natural for action at the United Nations.

CHOIR SINGS

So when we met in Nigeria,

the African leaders, the liberation leaders, accused countries

of selling arms to South Africa.

But the United States and the Britis representatives are all saying,

"We are not supplying arms to South Africa. It's not true."

So the anti-apartheid groups met immediately at lunchtime

and said, "These governments are not telling the truth.

"We will walk out of this conference if you don't allow us to speak."

So then I was allowed to speak to the whole conference.

What I said was, "The United States says they do not supply planes.

"The Merlin aircraft - where do they come from?

"The German government tells us that they do not supply arms to South Africa.

"The command and control centre in Silvermine has German components.

"Where do they come from?"

When I mentioned facts like that, I didn't say, "You're doing it."

I just said, "Where does it come from?"

While delegates debated at the UN,

South Africa continued rounding up suspected organisers.

The government said that there were people who were a threat to national security,

so they needed to be taken away.

My parents went through a lot of harassment during those times.

My mother was picked up I don't know how many times. Even my dad.

Just before I got detained, they picked up my grandfather.

They took all my cousins, everybody.

But what happens is that my group, particularly me,

we got beaten up very viciously.

What does it mean to you that he is in this situation?

A very difficult question.

It's pretty bad.

It's awful, but...

one has to have courage, determination

and expect the best out of it.

Usually, when you have children,

your hopes are based on their future

that they'll grow up and be... well, not involved in such cases.

As a parent, I'm very, very sorry that he's in it.

In August, the police picked up Steve Biko.

He had left his home area to meet with the ANC underground.

He was arrested for violating his banning order,

shackled hand and foot and moved from jail to jail.

It was actually a very deep, personal thing

because I worked with Steve,

so we were sitting in his house when the news of his detention came through.

And the anxiety with his family.

And his children were quite young.

These were such vicious, petty little racists.

And they, of course, decided to interrogate Steve.

And they beat him up, cracked his skull

and he became unconscious.

They threw him in that state in the back of a police van, naked,

and drove off with him.

And so he died.

We were in Central Prison.

We're all thinking about the possibility of being hanged

because these guys were definitely planning to hang us

and here was Steve dead,

you know, right next to our doorstep.

You know, it was all a shock.

There was anger, there was frustration.

It was very painful.

My newspaper editor burst in, you know, just like "boom"

and said, "Duma, I want you to write a story. Steven Biko has just been killed in Pretoria."

And I just burst into tears. For the first time in my life, I cried out loud.

I remember when the body finally was released to the family.

It's one of those images that I will take to my grave.

Then the police wouldn't allow us to bury Steve and they just kept on arresting everybody.

It was just unbelievable.

Even in his death, how much they feared Steve Biko!

Then eventually, me, a 19-year-old, I was a kid,

I ended up in King William's having to organise the funeral.

Thousands and thousands of people were being turned back.

If you were going to Biko's funeral, you were turned back.

The government set up road blocks all over the country.

But there were more than 30,000 people at the funeral.

You can imagine if there were no road blocks...

THEY SING PROTEST SONG

I want to be very careful

and I want to choose my words

and say boldly before you all and before the whole world

that we accuse this government of the death of Biko.

# Biko... #

Steve Biko's death marked a turning point in South Africa's affairs.

# Here comes Steven Biko

# Walking down the water

# Hey, hey, what you gonna do with Biko?

# Biko

# Biko

# Biko

# Biko

# Biko... #

-Do you think the West should keep the door open to dialogue with South Africa?

-No, I think not.

-Why not?

Well, we believe that it is necessary to talk to South Africa in harsh terms,

otherwise we are all playing for tim

and we are only enabling the South African regime to make the system permanent,

to build defences for it,

and then to perpetrate all the massacres

which have now become the order of the day in that country.

We deplore very deeply the recent bloodshed in South Africa.

We can take the lead in establishing and promoting basic global standards for human rights.

Here was a President who was very sympathetic to the problems of Africa,

who was very understanding and a lot of people expected a lot from him.

Jimmy Carter's election brought a new, more liberal voice to the debate at the United Nations.

He sent his US Ambassador, Andrew Young, a veteran of the American Civil Rights Movement.

If South Africa is going to be a part of the civilised community of nations,

then the civilised, humane, intelligent people

are going to have to make national policy.

Right now, the Vorster government is not humane, not civilised, nor is it intelligent.

I was happy to learn of the strong reaction of the US government

to the murder of Steve Biko.

We've hardly heard from any other western countries.

We must confront all of them in the Security Council.

In the interest of encouraging South Africa's leaders to embark on a new course,

President Carter has now authorised me to state

that the United States will join with other members of this Council

in proposing a mandatory arms embarg under Chapter 7 of the Charter.

I went to see the British Foreign Secretary before the vote

and he said, "We will not support this."

The United States then intervened with Britain.

The United Nations Security Council today approved an immediate, binding arms embargo against South Africa.

It is the most severe action the UN has ever taken against the white-ruled country

and the first such embargo against a UN member.

We considered it to be an important breakthrough.

An arms embargo was a beginning and really it was an indictment against the regime,

so it was a sense, not so much of elation, but a sense of great satisfaction.

I do feel that it is proper for us to deplore

not only in South Africa, but in other nations as well,

blatant deprivation of basic human rights.

I don't see that as an interference in the affairs of another country.

We've always sided with the United States and been friendly to you.

We understand you as a nation

because of the composition of our own people and the similarities in our histories.

We've sided with you in the United Nations 100% and now you push aside this hand of friendship.

We don't understand this at all.

There are those in the world outside

who believe that with this mandatory arms boycott,

they can bring South Africa to its knees.

I tell them tonight they have another guess coming.

They've been working for this arms embargo for more than a decade,

but naturally, ladies and gentlemen, we saw it coming.

Therefore, we made provision for just such an occurrence.

'Surrounded by enemies and threatened with extinction,

'Israel and South Africa have made a marriage of convenience.

'The so-called Pariahs' Alliance was publicly displayed

'when South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster visited Jerusalem in 1976.

'Behind the diplomatic courtesies la a hard military bargain -

'South African finance in exchange for Israeli arms.

'To demonstrate his commitment to the deal, Vorster, a wartime Nazi sympathiser, laid a wreath

'at the memorial to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.'

At home, South Africa stepped up its arms production.

They soon found other UN members willing to turn a blind eye

to violations of the mandatory arms embargo.

Black African diplomats at the United Nations are complainin

that a US-backed arms embargo against South Africa is too weak. They want stronger sanctions.

Said one ambassador, "Once again the mountain has laboured mightily and brought forth a mouse."

We were conscious of the fact that it wouldn't change much of the situation.

What would change the situation was comprehensive economic sanctions.

My decision has been

to support strong sanctions against the sale of weapons to South Africa,

but we are not deciding at this poin on any sort of general trade embargo or investment embargo.

But how come? Here is a regime which everybody says has defied the international community,

which does things which are completely inhuman and people aren't prepared to do something.

'South Africa continues diplomatic and trade relations with the US.

'Last year, they bought 1.33 billio worth of goods from us.

'If total sanctions were imposed against South Africa,

'Britain would lose a billion dollar per year in exports.'

The US and its western partners reportedly will block any attempt

to impose the economic sanctions that the Africans want.

Will those in favour please raise their hands?

Those against?

The draft resolution has not been adopted,

owing to the negative vote of a permanent member.

By blocking measures against South Africa,

what we are saying to the freedom fighters is the only other option left is that of armed resistance.

Biko's generation answered the call.

The young people came out in their hundreds, if not thousands.

We said, "What do we do with them?"

The numbers were so big and they kept on coming.

And when the young people came,

they are saying, "People have been here for 20 years. We're not going to be here for 20 years."

They wanted to be trained, they wanted to go into battle.

There is going to be an obvious escalation of conflict.

This is the only thing that can happen. I can see nothing else.

We are hoping that in the next few years, international pressures will become increasingly effective.

We need to mobilise the masses of the people in each country,

the ordinary person who is challenging the positions of his government,

the worker who is challenging the practices of his employer.

We are not going to accept "one man, one vote". It means our destruction.

We will not accept it now, not tomorrow, never, ever.

When Biko died, after we buried him, it was like "freedom in our lifetime".

For you, if for nothing else, we will get this freedom.

# Well, you can blow out a candle

# But you can't blow out a fire

# When the flame begins to catch

# The wind will blow it higher

# Oh, Biko

# Biko, because Biko...

# Yihla Moja

# Yihla Moja

# The man is dead...

# Oh, the eyes

# Yes, the eyes of the world are watching you

# Oh, the eyes

# Yes, the eyes of the world are watching you...

# Biko

# Oh, the eyes

# Oh, the eyes of the world are watching you

# Oh, the eyes

# Yes, the eyes of the world are watching you... #