Desmond Tutu

“ America is a great country, with great traditions of freedom and equality. I hope this great country will be true to its history and its traditions, and will unequivocally and clearly take its stand on the side of right and justice in South Africa, for what the United States decides and does has a crucial bearing on what happens in other lands. Many lives will be saved, many blacks will be won for democracy in South Africa if the United States is true to her real self.
I said 4 years ago that to protest constructive engagement I would not see any representatives of the Reagan administration. ”

“ The tragedy of current American policies is that whatever their intentions may have been, their effect has been to make the American Government an apparent accomplice to the brutality and repression of South Africa’s apartheid system. That is why we in the Congress must continue to press the administration to rethink its approach to South Africa, and why we must—in this session of Congress—finally enact the package of economic sanctions that passed the full House last year. ”

“ You cannot be neutral. Apartheid is evil, is immoral, is un-Christian, without remainder. It uses evil, immoral, and unchristian methods. If you have supported the Nazis against the Jews, you would have been accused of adopting an immoral position. Apartheid is an evil as immoral and un-Christian in my view as Naziism, and in my view, the Reagan administration’s support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil and totally un-Christian, without remainder.
In court you are guilty as an accessory before or after the fact. Constructive engagement is saying blacks are dispensable. ”

“ But when the American Government uses its veto power in the United Nations to block resolutions condemning South African aggression, or when our Government remains conspicuously silent in the face of South African Government atrocities, or when high level administration officials publicly defend the recent constitutional changes in South Africa as evidence of forward movement, the real message that is conveyed to South African authorities is that they now have a much freer hand to do what they will. ”

“ Under the policy of constructive engagement, the Afrikaaner regime knows, in advance, that there will not be any real cost imposed on the South African-American relationship, no matter how many black trade union leaders are imprisoned, no matter how many black communities are terrorized by massive army search and seizure operations, and no matter how many people are killed by South African police. ”

“ There was not a squeak of protest from the Government of this country. When a priest in Poland went missing, and then his body was found, there was an outrage in this country and the media quite rightly gave it all extensive coverage. When 12 black South Africans are killed by the South African police, and 6,000 people are sacked, you are lucky if you get that much coverage. There was no expression of outrage and concern. That is part of constructive engagement.
I believe we are being told that this administration is not being soft on apartheid. Heaven help us when they do decide to be soft. ”

“ The crucial question before us today is whether or not our Government and the international community will continue to tolerate South Africa’s political violence against its own people without bringing appropriate pressures to bear against that government. ”

“ Chairman, our people are peace loving to a fault. They have sought to change South Africa's racist policies by peaceful means since 1912 at the very least, using conventional peaceful methods of demonstrations, petitions, delegations, and even a passive resistance campaign. As a tribute to this commitment of our people to peaceful change, the only two South Africans to have won Nobel Peace Prizes are both of them black. ”

“ I know that there is within this Congress a bipartisan commitment to work with the administration, to seek together the modification of policies that are in place right now so that we will at one and the same time develop initiatives that are truly consistent with American principles and values on the one hand, and that will also be equally consistent with American national interests in being identified with the cause of social justice within South Africa. ”

“ I have said that blacks deplore communism as being atheistic and materialistic. But they would regard the Russians as their saviors, were they to come to South Africa, because anything in their view would be better than apartheid for the enemy of my enemy is my friend. When you were in a dungeon, and a hand is put out to unlock the door and get you out, you don't ask for the credentials of the owner of the hand. ”

“ It is certainly my hope that your presence in the United States these past few days, your testimony before our committee today, will advance that understanding.
I think I would make one other plea and that is to the administration. There is no question that the vast, vast majority of Americans, across party lines, across ideological differences, oppose apartheid.
There needs to be an understanding, however, that policies that are being pursued, some of them I think well intended, are not having the effect of advancing the cause of the elimination of apartheid. ”

“ Finally, a word about foreign corporations in South Africa. Multinational corporations are not yet involved in the business of helping to destroy apartheid. They have done some good things for their employees, but all within the framework of apartheid, and really no more than what a good employer should have been doing. Ultimately, their efforts are improvement, and not changes. They are making apartheid more comfortable rather than dismantling it. The international community must make up its mind whether it wants to see a peaceful resolution of the South Africa crisis. ”

“ Constructive engagement goes on. Namibia we were told 4 years ago would be independent because of constructive engagement. Namibia, 4 years later, is not independent. The United States has provided a recalcitrant South Africa with a further reason for dragging its feet by linking Namibian independence with the withdrawal of Cuban troops from a sovereign state, Angola, and in the meantime people are dying, people are suffering needlessly. Constructive engagement has worsened our situation under apartheid. Four years ago I said this policy was an unmitigated disaster for us blacks. ”

“ The Nobel Peace Prize is a global indication of the South African Council of Churches and those associated with it that the world recognizes that we are true agents of justice, of peace, of reconciliation, and that we in the South African Council of Churches stand between South Africa and disaster. ”

“ Sadly, it appears—from the reports in this morning's papers—that the administration still fails to understand that its policy of constructive engagement with South Africa, whatever the intentions of that policy may have been, has only served to give a sense legitimacy to apartheid and to invite greater repression by South African authorities. The administration claims its policies seek to prevent violence and to encourage evolutionary change in South Africa. ”

“ It is confusing to me as a Member of Congress to hear the different viewpoints of the black community in South Africa. Many of those voices are demanding different things than you are demanding here. They seem to think that in spite of the immediate crisis that is taking place, there are different approaches to the problems. ”

“ In the parliamentary committees the composition is in the ratio of four whites to two coloreds to one Indian, and even if your arithmetic is bad, you know that two plus one can never equal let alone be more than four. Thus white minority rule is perpetuated and entrenched in this constitution. Coloreds and Indians are being co-opted to perpetuate the oppression of the vast majority of South Africa's population. ”

“ The South African Government has uprooted over 3 million blacks and dumped them as if they were rubbish in Bantustan homelands and not even an uncustomary protest by the State Department could stop them from uprooting 300 families from Mogopa. Just now a community, the people of Kwangena in the eastern Transvaal, faces the threat of being uprooted. ”

“ Unrest, in the schools and on the labor front, is endemic in our country and will continue to be so until political power-sharing becomes a reality. More and more blacks are becoming disillusioned as those of us calling for change by peaceful means have our credibility eroded by the authorities’ often brutal and excessive action. Calls for peaceful change are being answered by tear gas, police dogs, bullets, detention without trial, and banning orders. ”

“ Now in the most serious protest against apartheid, nearly 200 of our people have been killed, most by the authorities who are using the army, as I have said, against a peaceful civilian population, and the West does not appear to care. ”

“ Chairman, we are being turned into aliens in our fatherland, because an alien cannot claim any rights, least of all political rights. They don't know that I am a South African, for I travel on a travel document that describes my nationality as undeterminable at present. ”

“ The vast majority of blacks who do not operate within the system are quite clear about their attitude toward the U.S. policy of constructive engagement. The people that you have quoted—Alan Boesak, you could not put in a category that says constructive engagement is good. ”

“ Chairman, are two too many-the high cost of apartheid.
The new constitution is an instrument of the politics of exclusion I referred to earlier. Seventy-three percent of South Africa's population, the blacks, have no part in this constitution, which mentions them quite incredibly only once. ”