Owing to the somewhat special circumstances in which the Republic of Mali was admitted to the United Nations, our delegation was unable at an earlier stage to congratulate Mr. Boland on his election to the presidency of this General Assembly which we regard as the most representative body in the world.
2. Before taking up the important questions which are of concern to us all, I should like to recall the French representative’s sarcastic remark that we were not accustomed to the fair play of the Assembly, the reason for that remark being that we had denounced the Machiavellian schemes to impose on us a sponsorship which would assuredly have undermined our policy of genuine national independence.
3. I shall merely point out that the Government of the Republic of Mali, through the radio and the press, including the French press, has categorically denied ever having solicited the sponsorship of France. To the experienced diplomats among you, certain positions adopted by the newly independent African States may appear somewhat crude or even vulgar, but our conception of diplomacy is based on law, rectitude, justice and truth. It is thus fundamentally opposed to the cunning diplomacy of the old "civilized" States which, while handing out generous servings of flattery, most frequently employ the weapons of duplicity, trickery and intrigue.
4. As a result of fifteen years of revolutionary struggle, we have abandoned such methods and, in Mali, we follow the typically French procedure of calling a spade a spade. After all, if the French colonialists had freed their subject peoples in 1945, after the decisive contribution which those peoples had made to the liberation of France from the Nazi yoke, we might perhaps have acquired a longer experience of the traditions of this august body. Since” we made our statement [876th meeting], there have been attempts to depict Mali as a naughty child, overexcited by its newly-won independence and too impudent to observe the proper conventions. But what these are, we are not told. We are not here to be conformists and to take up positions which run counter to the aspirations of our people and their Government. We are not here to swell automatic majorities in support of any given Power or group of interests. We feel that the essence of neutralism — an active and positive neutralism — does not consist in abandoning the pillars of truth and morality nor, in Jaures’ fine phrase, in bowing down before the law of the triumphant but hollow lie, nor even in adopting a rigid and static attitude towards the history which we, big and small, industrialized and under-developed nations, are writing.
5. We envisage neutralism as the policy adopted by the uncommitted nations in their search for the most effective ways and means of enabling the two great politico-economic systems which divide the world to coexist peacefully, and in their efforts to strengthen continually the cause of peace in the struggle against the warmongers.
6. In this sense alone can the adjective "uncommitted" be applied to us. We are indeed committed — and have been committed for more than twenty years — to the anti-imperialist cause of the peoples who are struggling for their freedom and prosperity; we are committed to fighting colonialism in every form, whether ancient or modem, and to opposing colonial domination with its train of political, economic, cultural and racial oppression.
7. Some officials of the United States and of certain Western countries have, red pencil in hand, discovered "errors" and "omissions" in our inaugural statement. Among other things, they have charged us with opposing our neutralism to communism and capitalism, whereas they regard themselves solely as the proponents of free enterprise. They have charged us with speaking only of imperialists in general, whereas, according to them, we should have spoken merely of French imperialism. For them, it seems, the term "imperialists" on African lips can only mean the United States.
8. These representatives have been particularly disturbed at our failure to criticize the Eastern countries. It must be admitted that such views do them little credit. For our part, we refuse to have anything to do with this shameless paternalism, this undisguised blackmail which seeks to place us younger nations under the Caudine Forks of such and such a bloc. We have said repeatedly that we refuse to barter our dignity as Africans for illusory promises of aid. These imperialist schemers forget that the leaders of our African freedom movements have been trained and have reached maturity, not in ministries, chancelleries or banks, but in the campaign against colonialism. They have studied colonialism and its originating force, imperialism, on the spot, under actual conditions of colonial oppression.
9. I shall not dwell on the different forms of colonial oppression, for distinguished speakers have dealt with them before me. I should like here to pay a special tribute to President Sékou Touré, the Chief of State of Guinea, for his pithy, serious and constructive statement [896th meeting], which can serve as a frame of reference for the problems of African solidarity and can be regarded as an instrument that has expanded, crystallized and brought up to date the views set forth at Bandung and at the various conferences of the newly independent African States.
10. The political oppression inherent in colonial domination is a well-known fact. For us, it ceased only on 28 September 1960, although attempts had been made, in successive stages, to mitigate the virulence of such oppression by making certain concessions to the demand for national independence and by allowing the colonies to become semi-autonomous or to exercise jurisdiction over their domestic affairs amid a profusion of “loi-cadre” — all this as if to suggest that the colonial peoples, smitten with a congenital inferiority, would be overpowered by too sudden a dose of freedom and would be stifled by the full enjoyment of independence.
11. For decades, a certain school of literature has pandered to the colonialists and racialists, supplying arguments which put a brake on any desire for independence. The Anglo-Saxon and German schools of ethnology — not forgetting the French — Joined together in a chorus and discovered scientific arguments to prove the racial inferiority of the colonial peoples. Gobineau, Vacher de Lapouge, Leo Frobenius and Rosenberg were particularly outstanding and, from the terrain of colonialism, arrived at the criminal theories of racialism and anti-Semitism of the Hitler- Fascist era. Lévy-Bruhl, not wanting to be outdone, established as a postulate that “the Negro mentality is primitive and pre-logical”. Various Governments of France, the country of Descartes and the humanists, have neither shuddered nor recoiled before the exploitation of such theories which tended to retard to the utmost the emancipation movement of the French colonial empire.
12. Nevertheless, economic oppression remains the back-cloth of the colonial regime and has been described at length during this Assembly: slave-trade economy, mercantile economy, exploitation of raw materials, exploitation of cheap labour with starvation wages often ten time's lower than the wages of European workers in the colonies, the almost universal system of the single crop or the cultivation of industrial crops at the expense of food crops or crops which might be really profitable to the peasant masses — and all this accompanied by methods of agriculture reminiscent of the Middle Ages. All the moves of the imperialists and all the obstacles they have placed in the way of de-colonization are attributable to this economic exploitation of the colonies. The secession of Katanga and the situation in Algeria — take, for example, Hassi-Messaoud or Edjele — show that the colonialists have no other aim but to channel towards the metropolitan countries the raw materials and energy resources of the dependent territories. In this regard, the colonial administrations have made themselves the zealous lackeys of imperialism by protecting the privileges of the colonial trusts — those agents of the international monopolist trusts — at the cost of savage repression of trade unions and liberation movements.
13. As a result of the exacerbation of racial conflicts between the ethnic groups of the subject territories, tribalism is today one of the most serious threats to the stability of certain of our States. The superiority complex of the colonizer in all facets of colonial life, wage discrimination and separate collective bargaining for whites and blacks, the employment of African officials only in auxiliary posts — auxiliary clerks, auxiliary doctors, auxiliary nurses, etc. — are all phenomena which have produced, within the colonial countries, a regrettable inferiority complex the extirpation of which is one of the thorniest problems of de-colonization. This form of oppression reached its culmination in the Fascist hysteria of the Hitlerites and of the ultra-colonialist governments of South Africa. We shall return to this point later.
14. Among the misdeeds of the colonialists, the most flagrant is the cultural oppression that has led to the catastrophic dearth of an intellectual élite and of trained technicians. The fact that some colonial countries have been more liberal than others in this respect excuses nobody. Illiteracy is king in all our States. In the Republic of Mali (formerly French Sudan), which has a population of 4,5 million, only 7 per cent of the children of school age actually go to school. Ignorance became a powerful ally of colonialism, and obscurantism has caused as many ravages in our country as physical misery; the two, moreover, are always associated.
15. I felt saddened the other day when the Belgian representative tried to make us believe that the school enrolment in the Congo was of the order of 45 to 50 per cent and that Congolese university students would soon be available to assist those who have already graduated. What a fortunate country to have such prolific reserves of intellectual and technical manpower! We believe, however, that they exist only in the fertile imagination of the Belgian representative, who had the sheer audacity to insinuate before Mr. Nehru, the learned Prime Minister of India, that the former Belgian Congo had almost as many trained people as India.
16. Such assertions by the representative of a country which has practised the most execrable form of colonialism whose consequences now threaten the peace of the world are absolutely scandalous and must be denounced by all honest people.
17. The country of Gandhi, which has a culture dating back to several millennia and has produced men of outstanding intellect, including Nobel prize-winners, may still have some distance to go in overcoming its economic backwardness, but it certainly has nothing in common with the frightful tragedy in the Congo compounded of the anarchy and crimes perpetrated by the Belgian colonialists in an effort to retain their privileges.
18. If we have felt called upon to paint the portrait of colonialism with all its horrors, it is because we felt it proper to refresh the memory of those who are guilty of crimes against the colonial peoples and who, in the din of the applause occasioned by our entry into the great family of nations, are trying simply to wipe the slate clean and to overwhelm us with the positive aspects of colonialism. They have spoken to us of the bridges, schools, clinics, clubs, metalled roads and so on that were built, but they never tell us about the privileges that were acquired, of the monstrous profits that were extracted from the agricultural and mineral wealth of the oppressed countries, of the enslaved manpower or of the cannon fodder which they have used in all the colonialist and imperialist wars.
19. We are not aware that slavery has any positive aspects, and we challenge free peoples and free men to show us that they are willing to undergo those so-called positive aspects of oppression.
20. We have not spoken with acrimony about colonialism for the simple pleasure of vituperation. We do not adopt a rigid attitude based on a past full of suffering and humiliation. As one representative so aptly put it, no people can build its future unless it remembers its past. On the other hand, a people cannot live only by dwelling on its past, but must direct all its energy and all its skills towards the future.
21. While our national aspirations and our development programmes will certainly not be achieved by indulging in jeremiads, it is right that the past should enlighten the present, and this is what we have tried to do.
22. As has already been said by many speakers here, we had placed high hopes in the United Nations, and we were admittedly impatient to come to take our seats here together with our fifteen brother States of Africa. We still await others who will occupy their legitimate place in this body when colonialism in Africa and elsewhere has been finally liquidated. We have come here with the enthusiasm which is characteristic of youth and which reflects the disciplined enthusiasm of our peoples. We have come with our burning faith in the destiny of man and peoples and with a sincere desire to co-operate unreservedly with all peoples in order to win the battle for peace and strengthen fraternal relations among peoples.
23. However, we must confess that certain surprising developments in this Assembly, in which we had such complete confidence, have pained and disturbed us.
24. In the first place, the other day, after an interminable procedural debate, a vote was taken on a draft resolution [A/L.317] recommending the renewal of contacts between East and West. This draft resolution, which was submitted by eminent members of the African-Asian group, reflected the official positions taken up at this rostrum by all nations, great and small, which declared themselves, if not champions, at least fervent advocates of peace and the relaxation of international tension and resolute adversaries of the cold war.
25. As a result of cunning procedural manoeuvres, this draft resolution was rejected, and this is what a great Parisian newspaper wrote about it: "By 41 votes to 37, with 17 abstentions, it [the General Assembly] rejected the Argentine amendment. However, President Boland announced that the words 'President of' and 'Chairman of the Council of Ministers of’, not having been adopted by the requisite two-thirds majority, should be deleted from the draft resolution submitted by the neutral Powers."
26. Far be it from me to criticize the President's interpretation of the vote, which was approved by the Assembly, but I think that it is part of the numerous manoeuvres which resulted, as the same newspaper stated, "in a useful victory over the uncommitted States and the thwarting of a distressing tendency on the part of the young States to rule the United Nations”. The same newspaper went on: "The West now runs the risk of appearing as the sole opponent of a conciliation at the summit."
27. After such a vote, who can seriously think that a relaxation of tension is genuinely desired? This is really the crux of our disappointment, because a relaxation of tension more than anything else is necessary for our development and our national construction, the success of our plans and, in a word, an improved level of living for our peoples. The cold war kills us twice over, one speaker has said. The cold war is the source of miseries which grind us down relentlessly before the advent of war itself.
28. Another subject of bitterness for us is the refusal to discuss the question of admitting the People's Republic of China. This refusal by the General Assembly to admit 650 million Chinese, who cannot be validly represented by the spokesmen for a few islands occupied by the followers of Chiang Kai-shek, constitutes a scandal and an aberration of historic scope which the Assembly, for the sake of its prestige, should never have sanctioned. Genuine and positive neutralism implies the defence of truth and justice and the steering of a middle course between the disputes of the two blocs. Countries of less than 400,000 inhabitants which have an economic and social structure infinitely less developed than that of the People's Republic of China are represented in this body. A representative from one of these small countries stressed that numbers are not a valid criterion for representation and spoke of human values. Would he have the audacity to insinuate that a national of his country was more worthy than a Chinese from the land of Confucius having behind him a civilization of several thousand years which he has been able to transcend by the contribution of a new humanism based on more than thirty years of revolutionary struggle?
29. The one true sense in which all nations can be said to be equal is in respect of the inalienable rights inherent in their national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The absence of the People's Republic of China would seem to justify those who in growing numbers speak of the "disunited" nations. Furthermore, if the Assembly, for partisan ideological reasons, does not respect the rightful aspirations of a great country, it is useless to talk of disarmament and peace.
30. By a flagrant paradox, the same Assembly which rejected the inclusion of the Chinese question in its agenda decided the day before yesterday that it would take up the question of Tibet, which is part of the People's Republic of China, as though a decision of the Assembly on Tibet could not be binding on the People's Republic of China, which is not a Member of the United Nations, unless, of course, the idea is to ask the followers of Chiang Kai-shek, the people of Taiwan, Quemoy and Matsu to liberate the country of the Dalai Lama.
31. What is the height of irony, or perhaps I should say tragi-comedy, is the inclusion of the Hungarian question, when there are present in this Assembly the representatives of the Government in office, the legal Government of the Hungarian People's Republic. During the two years when I attended the meetings of the International Labour Organisation, I heard the same variations of the same theme. Here again, the partisans of positive neutralism are sorely tried by the attempts to involve them against their will in the ideological struggle. And here again, we shall likely incur the wrath of the sanctimonious knaves by asserting boldly in the name of law and justice that the domestic affairs of States and the regimes of Member States are the business of the people of those countries and their business alone.
32. If the Members of the Assembly wish, however, to discuss the domestic regime of every country, would they like me to suggest, in the name of what is right and just, to expel from the Assembly the representatives here present of all the countries which have a Fascist regime, which strangle political and trade union freedoms, which have set up racism as a way of life or a method of government, and all countries whose governments were established as the result of a bloody revolution or armed revolt? The United Nations would then be so reduced, if not completely disrupted, that I think there is no risk of such a suggestion being made.
33. While ill-disposed persons will no doubt accuse us, on the basis of our voting record, of being presumptuous in taking a clear stand on such vexed and burning questions a few days after our admission to the United Nations, it is precisely in connexion with such matters that national sovereignty and the equality between great and small nations should be stressed. The representatives of the Republic of Mali will always vote according to right and justice and in the considered interests of the people of Mali and of Africa.
34. The same earnest desire to defend justice and the rights of peoples will guide us in our approach to the problem of the Congo on which the attention of the African States is focused. This distressing problem is familiar to us for two reasons. In the first place, we responded to the appeal of the United Nations by sending our best troops to the Congo, because the newly-won national independence and territorial integrity of an African State had to be defended against the worst type of colonialism. From that point of view, Mali, which was threatened with a Katanga of its own, is well acquainted with the colonial stratagems of secession and reconquest which leave the colonial Power in possession of what it considers to be the choicest morsel so that it can perpetuate its domination and retain the privilege of shamelessly exploiting the resources derived from the territory before its accession to national sovereignty.
35. Judgement has already been passed on Belgian colonialism, and a proven and incontestable verdict of guilt has been pronounced by all peace-loving and freedom-loving Governments and peoples. Speakers hers have proved beyond all doubt the nature of the campaign of colonial reconquest undertaken by the Belgians a week after the proclamation of the independence of the Congo. The pseudo-argument that Belgium could not grant independence to the Congo and then dispute it does not stand up to analysis and the evidence of facts. We are accustomed to seeing the colonialists give with one hand what they take away with the other. Everyone knows, moreover, how idle is Belgium’s boast that it could have maintained its hold over the Congo rather than indulge in a pretence of granting independence. Independence is never granted by a country secure in its domination; it is the result of a struggle by the people, whether that be a peaceful struggle using parliamentary methods, the organized action of political parties with mass support and of trade union organizations, or the armed insurrection of a people united behind an organized vanguard. It was under the pressure of growing revolutionary action by the people that King Baudouin made the gesture of granting independence, one which does him all honour, but in no circumstances could any imperialist force or coalition have resisted the popular will of the Congo.
36. You cannot give and at the same time withhold, By having recourse to secessionism in Katanga, to the Tshombés, Mobutus, Kasa-Vubus or any other puppets or paid agents of colonialism, the Belgians can only slow down the organization of the new State. No form of aggression can restore the former privileges of the colonial trusts of Belgium and her allies who pounced on Katanga, the richest province of the Congo. I shall not expatiate on the circumstances of the arrival of the "blue helmets”, or even on the use or the attempted use of the United Nations troops. What is certain is that an attempt was made to liquidate the Central Government and its chief, Lumumba, the only person in whom the. powers of the Republic were vested. Previous speakers have shown that the "loi fundamentale”, which is based on Belgian practice, does not confer any power on the Chief of State.
37. We shall not therefore waste time expounding and discussing the matter with those who, in the teeth of right, law and justice, are prepared to use the United Nations Force for the settlement of their own scores with the Central Government, which they prefer to be in the hands of a puppet chief whom they will have no difficulty in bending to their imperialistic designs. Hence, without further ceremony, all of us here, representing as we do the free nations of the world, must at once take the only decision that can give a favourable turn to the Congolese conflict, namely, to re-establish the authority of the Central Government democratically elected by the Parliament, to assist it in strengthening its administrative structure, to place at its disposal — in adequate amounts and in a co-ordinated manner — the resources that it needs, and to help it build up the economy of the country by restoring the unity jeopardized by the old colonial method of "divide and rule”.
38. We fully support the proposal by the President of Guinea [A/L.319] for the provisional seating in the Assembly, in accordance with the rules of procedure, of the legally accredited representatives of the Central Government of the Congo.
39. We pointed out in our inaugural speech that a similar attempt had been made against the former Federation of Mali by the French colonialists — a kind of "katanganization" which would have eliminated and isolated the former Republic of Sudan, which is today the Republic of Mali, whose revolutionary attitude towards de-colonization, the Algerian question and African regroup was not viewed with favour by the French.
40. The plot, in the traditional colonialist pattern, used the pretext of an imaginary ”coup d’état” by President Modibo Keita. However, it deceived no one except its authors in Paris, for it was the French newspaper Aux Ecoutes which stated in black and white that a non-Mali African chief had announced to one of its editors, fifteen days before the plot, the collapse of the Federation of Mali — a prediction which actually came true within the stated time.
41. Thanks to the maturity of the Malian political leaders, the colonialists did not have their second "Operation Congo". The frontier incidents and reprisals against the nationals of the Republic of Mali who were deprived of their property and sent destitute to the Sudan frontier are known facts which were reported to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, but no such provocations will induce the brave and peace-loving people of Mali to engage in a fratricidal struggle with the people of Senegal, who are as anxious as we are to defend African values of progress. The colonialists will soon find that they have taken all these pains for nothing. They will learn to their cost that the colonial system has collapsed forever and that they cannot swim against the tide of history in the Congo, in the former Federation of Mali or elsewhere.
42. I should now like to say something about the. Algerian question. However urgent may be the problem of the Congo, the colonialist war in Algeria, which for seven years, has been a cancer in the French body politic, is the predominating concern of anticolonialists everywhere. It is the only war at present being waged in the world, and the hypocrisy of pacification deceives no one. The Algerian peopled struggle for liberation from the Colonial yoke must be brought to an end. The peace-loving and freedom- loving peoples and Governments in Africa, Asia, America and Europe must no longer be content with saying "this must stop", as they invoke negotiations, self-determination, "Algeria for the Algerians" and all the other Gaullist verbiage based on the vain hope that a series of postponements and delays may lead to the collapse of the aptly-styled "dirty war" and to a Pyrrhic victory after seven years of heroic struggle on the part of the Algerian combatants whose weapons and fighting experience are daily increasing.
43. Peace-loving and freedom-loving people can and must demand an immediate cease-fire and the holding of a referendum under United Nations supervision. The Organization can and must play its part and at once take the necessary decisions. It is the forum of the nations, including France, and it can no longer be defied by General de Gaulle, in the light of the fact that hundreds of young Algerian and French soldiers are dying each day. A wilful act of genocide is being committed if, with clearly defined ways and means of ending the conflict, the principle of self-determination is denied, that is to say, negotiation on the conditions for a cease-fire with the true and only possible spokesmen, with those who are fighting, after which the Algerian people will be allowed to express their wishes. The hypocritical and outdated theme of a "French Algeria" is now supported only by the Fascist elements. There can be no question of a French Algeria any more than of a French Sudan, of a French, Portuguese or Spanish Guinea, of a Belgian or French Congo. The terms used to label the colonies were invented to Suit the power complex of the colonizers. The existence of the French minority in Algeria does not mean that the part can replace the whole. When, after their liberation, the Algerians have become masters of their country and their destiny, they will find a democratic solution to this problem, as has been done by various other free nations.
44. The delegation of the Republic of Mali will therefore vote in favour of any proposal for ending the colonialist war in Algeria, for holding a referendum under United Nations supervision and for establishing a time-table for those operations.
45. By the very fact that we support this as the only effective solution, we deprecate the isolated mediation efforts of some African leaders who have not been particularly outstanding for their action and assistance to the Algerian people in their struggle against colonial despotism. Why should the mediation of Africans from the south of the Sahara — a formula dear to colonialism when attempting to create division or diversion — be preferred to the much more logical mediation of King Mohammed V and President Bourguiba who, as leaders of the Maghreb, represent countries whose destinies are closely linked with that of Algeria?
46. In our opinion, the historic fate of African solidarity is and will be decided in the United Nations. The touchstone of our solidarity and of our African dignity is the Algerian problem. I am convinced that African dignity will be secure in the future, as it has been in the past and is today.
47. lii an attempt to discredit Mali for its stand in support of the Algerian people, strategists in the French Ministry for Defence have invented, or simply imagined, a Conakry-Bamako-Sahara axis by means of which Guinea and Mali are supposed to be helping the National Liberation Front. The fantastic legend of the "Sahara fringe” is nothing more than a pretext for intervention along the Sahara frontier of my country — some 1,500 kilometres long — and exists only in the imagination of French activists who must know that Guinea and Mali, under-developed countries where colonialism has left nothing or almost nothing, cannot possibly solve the problems of organization, equipment and transport, particularly air transport, that would be involved in crossing the thousands of kilometres Of the Sahara in its most arid region, the Tanezrouft. If such resources had ever existed in the Republic of Mali and in Guinea, the colonialist war of extermination in Algeria would have been ended years ago.
48. I have wanted to speak of South Africa and the question of "apartheid". Racial discrimination in South Africa is one of the plague-spots of .our continent and resembles the Algerian war in that the many racist and Fascist Governments of the country, that of Smuts, that of Malan, and in fact all of them, have continued to defy and arrogantly ignore the feelings of the civilized peoples of the free nations of the world. The black world, and all coloured people, must be saved from the racial peril in South Africa. "Apartheid” as others have said before me, is the great outrage of the century. Here too, the Assembly should concider all practicable solutions and establish a time-table for the liberation of the coloured people of the Union of South Africa, so that barbarity may cease in that region of Africa. United Nations forces should be sent to South Africa if it persists in its present policy despite economic retaliation and international ostracism.
49. I shall now speak of the end of colonialism. The fifteenth session of the General Assembly, which has been called the "session of Africa", should indeed take practical measures for the complete abolition of the colonial system. Mali will accordingly vote in favour of any draft resolution establishing a time-table for the end of colonialism in the regions of the world still under its yoke. The country of Jomo Kenyatta, the country of Tom Mboya and all the countries of western, central and eastern Africa must, as soon as possible, become independent of all foreign control. The people of the territories under Portuguese domination must see their chains broken; the hypocrisy of the sham assimilation of the "Portuguese" of the colonies must not be allowed to impede the work of liberation by the United Nations.
50. Another great problem which has been much discussed is that of assistance to the under-developed countries. This is the great hypocrisy, if not of the century, at least of the post-war period. This striking example of the brotherhood of man could strengthen the stability and the chances of peace by freeing the "third world" from hunger if the industrially developed countries did not make such assistance seem like charity and an outlet for surpluses of the over-production crisis, or rather the under-consumption crisis, which is the lot of the majority of highly developed countries. Surpluses may provisionally, and therefore deceptively, eliminate the hunger of the "third world", but do not place at its disposal an instrument of economic development which could help it to transform colonial structures and promote a real improvement in the level of living. In such a form, this assistance is nothing more than charity, which undermines the dignity of the receiver.
51. Assistance should likewise not be used as an instrument of blackmail to influence the attitude of the uncommitted countries and ensure that they will automatically vote in favour of any particular country or bloc. Unless assistance is a decisive factor in true economic development, it is harmful. Recent examples should convince developing nations of the need for caution if assistance is not to lead to economic slavery, which is nothing less than naked, unqualified slavery.
52. I should like, in conclusion to speak of disarmament, because it is the basic question of our time. The Republic of Mali, as a small under-developed country emerging from the darkness of colonialism, needs peace in order to build itself up as a nation, to forge the instruments of a planned economy, to consolidate its independence at home and abroad and to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Mali is therefore a staunch supporter of general and Complete disarmament and of the inspection of all armaments, even including sling Shots if that will satisfy the extreme pacifists. The dangers of the armaments race and the cold war and the undoubted harm they cause to the economies of the developing countries are well known, Mali, as an advocate of peace and of peaceful coexistence between all economic and political systems, will accordingly support every effort to induce the great Powers to carry out general and complete disarmament under control, for it regards this as a decisive factor in the relaxation of tension and the establishment of peace.
53. I stated on 21 June 1960 at the International Labour Conference held in Geneva: “Independence is only a means — a major means, but still a means — to achieve a policy that is worthy of the name, which consists in raising the standard of living and culture of the people. Our policy will be based on fraternity and solidarity of all peoples .... But this solidarity will apply equally to all States of the African Continent. The foreign policy of Mali will be based on respect of sovereignty of the national integrity of each and all, of international co-operation and of peace. In Mali we do not belong to those who, whilst turning their backs to international co-operation, proclaim such international co-operation from every roof-top." I added: "The Mali, it is said, has been born from its ashes. Our primary object is to build up a large Negro-African nation,... of which the Federation of Mali is the kernel." The words I spoke then are even more true today after the entry of so many of our States into the international arena and in the light of the encouraging prospects of de-colonization and of the end of colonialism throughout the world.
54. I shall conclude by saying that our most ardent hope is that the independence of Africa, and the unity and solidarity of Africa, may be achieved in dignity on a basis of mutual respect between peoples and nations and that it will redound to the service of man. That will be the price of Africa’s contribution to world civilization.