RWA

Allow me, Mr. President, to join all those who have spoken before me from this rostrum in extending to you my sincere congratulations on your brilliant election, which enables us to look forward to fruitful debates during the present session of the General Assembly. I pray the Almighty that the atmosphere of "détente" in which this session has opened will allow us to find solutions in order to terminate the atrocities of colonialism in its death-throes and the ideological disputes of which some countries are still the victims, to induce the rich countries to give more help to the poorer countries whose objective is the raising of their peoples' level of living, and to strengthen peace in the world. The events of great historic significance which have recently, since the last session, taken place enable us to discern, on the horizon, clear gleams of hope. 141. One of the most important events for the African world has been the creation of the Organization of African Unity. This Organization is aimed against nobody; it does not threaten the security of any State and is guided by the sole desire, as its Charter states: "To promote understanding among our peoples and co-operation among our States in response to the aspirations of our peoples for brotherhood and solidarity, in a larger unity transcending ethnic and national differences", and "to harness the natural and human resources of our continent for the total advancement of our peoples in spheres of human endeavour. " 142. In the developed countries, the general trend is towards the formation of increasingly large production units, in both agriculture and industry, in order to avoid costly duplication of effort and to permit a more rational utilization of human and material resources. Similarly, we Africans are trying to pool our resources and co-operate in order to remedy the under-development from which we are suffering after decades and even centuries of colonialism. We seek to help each other; we seek to harmonize, together, the progress of our Africa. 143. It seems undeniable that the world is tending increasingly towards the creation of regional units and organizations aiming at more or less close cooperation. That is why Rwanda deplores the fact that after so many years Germany, Viet-Nam and Korea are still divided. We cannot believe that a situation which runs counter to world trends can be healthy, stable or salutary. We therefore hope that it will soon come to an end. 144. Another event of the first importance was the signing of the Treaty banning nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. The Rwandese Government and people are in full agreement with the African Ministers for Foreign Affairs who, at the Dakar Conference last August, welcomed with satisfaction "the partial agreement of the Moscow Test Ban Treaty as an initial step towards general and complete disarmament", and expressed "the conviction that the differences impeding the agreement banning all tests in all environments can be solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and concessions". 145. In fact, this agreement really does seem to be a first step towards what the peoples of the world so deeply desire —a "détente", and peaceful coexistence. The results of this beginning of a "détente" are already being felt. An agreement banning the placing in orbit of nuclear weapons in outer space, which was referred to here by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union [1208th meeting], would appear imminent. Negotiations on protection against surprise attack, and to prevent the dissemination of nuclear weapons, seem to be well underway. Lastly, we hailed with satisfaction the proposal of the United States [1209th meeting] to explore the moon in co-operation with the Soviet Union, We see there the possibility that the two technically and scientifically most advanced countries may one day combine their efforts in peaceful pursuits, for the greatest good of mankind. But all that would be unthinkable if the first and most difficult step towards a "détente" between the East and the West had still to be taken. 146. Rwanda is a lover of peace. It has always believed, as Fénelon said, that "war is an evil which dishonours the human species". It aims to do its utmost to support the endeavours of all who are working to banish war from society for ever; because, all moral and humane considerations apart, as President Kayibanda has said: "What is certain is that if there should be war the non-aligned countries, the under-developed countries, would be used as if they were mindless tools. What is certain is that if there should be war the under-developed countries would enter not upon stagnation but upon catastrophic retrogression." 147. Rwanda also hopes that, if the Moscow Treaty is respected to the letter, trust will come to reign. The great Powers will then agree to halt their mad arms race and will, perhaps, devote the resources freed in this way to more constructive ends. The United Nations study entitled Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament disclosed that the world's military expenditures far exceed the combined gross investment expenditures of the less developed areas. If the arms race were ended, therefore, the great Powers would be in a position to increase their foreign aid considerably, while still retaining large resources for furthering the welfare of their own peoples. 148. No one should think that technical assistance to the under-developed countries is an enterprise of pure charity. The representatives of the African and Asian States in the United Nations have constantly repeated that their countries are quite capable of making their contribution to the World's knowledge. This is not an empty boast. One of the great questions which has been absorbing research workers on cancer for many years is whether certain forms of the disease might not be caused by viruses. Since 1958, Makerere University in Uganda has been taking a close interest in the solution of this problem; and some experts believe that the research is about to yield results. If that happens, could anyone any longer deny that aid to the less developed countries can benefit mankind as a whole? And what better use can be imagined for human and material resources than one which leads to the eradication of the great scourges of mankind? 149. But the new countries do not, for their development, rely solely on co-operation with their neighbours and the assistance with which the more fortunate countries may be able to furnish them. It goes without saying that they rely first and foremost on themselves and on their own efforts. I would not try your patience by here enumerating all the advances which Rwanda has made during the first year of its independence —despite the budgetary deficit, an unfortunate heritage of colonialism. Thanks to its strict austerity regime and the people's keenness to build their nation, thanks to the confidence it inspires in every foreigner who visits it and even in those who simply hear about it, thanks to the support of friendly countries, including Belgium, and thanks to aid and assistance from the United Nations, Rwanda looks toward the future with great optimism. We are proud to see the opening, this year, of Rwanda's first establishment of higher education— the University of Butare. To begin with, it will have four faculties, and we believe that in the more or less near future it will be the meeting place for African university people. 150. The development of a country calls for gigantic efforts from the population. Such efforts can be made only in free countries. As President Kayibanda has said, "at the present juncture of history, colonization, far from reducing under-development, merely consolidates and stratifies a situation which condemns the colonized being to a sub-existence". We who come from recently liberated countries, and have personal experience of colonialism, know how true this judgement is. Even If colonialism could be reproached with nothing more than this sub-existence to which it condemns the indigenous peoples, that would be sufficient reason to put an end to it as rapidly as possible. 151. But in fact the whole world, or virtually the whole of it, is in agreement on the question of decolonization. Every year since the question of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples was placed on the agenda of the fifteenth session of the General Assembly at the request of the Soviet Union, the United Nations has adopted further resolutions on the subject, by overwhelming majorities, in both the General Assembly and the Security Council. 152. The Heads of African States, at the Addis Ababa Conference, declared that "the forcible imposition by the colonial Powers of the settlers to control the Governments and administrations of the dependent territories is a flagrant violation of the inalienable rights of the legitimate inhabitants of the territories concerned." 153. In the encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII expressed the wish "that the day may come when every human being will find [in the United Nations] an effective safeguard for the rights which derive directly from his dignity as a person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable and inalienable rights". And among the universal, inviolable and inalienable rights, is not the right to freedom paramount? 154. I might also quote the words spoken by Mr. Khrushchev to the Communist Party Congress on 17 October 1961: "From the bottom of our hearts we wish success to those who are struggling for their liberty and happiness against imperialism. We believe that it is the inalienable right of peoples to put an end to foreign oppression, and we shall support their just fight." 155. I might also quote Mr. Mennen Williams, Assistant Secretary of State of the United States, who said on 18 March 1963 that, as Americans, he and his fellow-countrymen believed that the basis of a lasting world order was universal recognition of the right of all peoples to determine their own destiny, and that they could not themselves be truly free so long as any people, no matter where, was deprived of its freedom. 156. For his part, the United Kingdom Prime Minister, Mr. Macmillan, said on 3 February 1960 in the South African Parliament: "The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a fact. We must accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it." 157. Still on the same subject, we cannot pass over in silence President de Gaulle’s effective policy of liberation. 158. But if everyone —or almost everyone— is agreed on the need to decolonize, there is no such agreement as to how this is to be done. In this connexion, we would urge the United Kingdom not to let slip, in Southern Rhodesia, its last chance of repairing the errors of the nineteenth century and, since it still retains sovereignty over that supposedly self-governing territory, not to grant it Independence until a new Constitution and Government have been approved by a majority of all its citizens. So far, many Africans have been killed by the police in the name of white supremacy, while not a single European has been killed by the Africans in the name of self-determination. This fact, in itself significant, does all honour to the Africans. 159. Nevertheless, the situation remains very tense. The former United Kingdom Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Hugh Foot, who should know the situation better than anyone, intimated in an interview granted to the newspaper The Observer that the future prospects for Southern Rhodesia were "terrifying" and that the United Kingdom should Intervene to prevent a "disaster". 160. The Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, one of the most moderate African leaders in Southern Rhodesia, stated in London that if the United Kingdom gave the country its independence while it was still governed by the white minority, the Africans would be obliged to have recourse to the ultimate sanctions. His actual words were: "We shall regard such a step as a declaration of war and shall not hesitate to form immediately a government in exile, and, as a government, to enlist material aid from other Governments inside and outside Africa. If fair constitutional means are denied to us, we shall be prepared to solve the problem with our blood." If such a bloodbath were to take place, not only would world peace be endangered, but the brilliant reputation which the United Kingdom has won by peacefully guiding 600 million coloured people to independence since the end of the war would be forever tarnished. 161. While the United Kingdom has always shown itself willing to liberate the territories still under its authority —a willingness which has not always been translated into action as quickly as we would have wished— Portugal, by contrast, still clings to the fiction that Mozambique, Angola and so-called Portuguese Guinea are Portuguese provinces. That we already knew. But, feeling the need to justify its position before an ever more sceptical world, Portugal has recently made two truly ludicrous discoveries. Despite the existence of some 4 million proofs to the contrary, Mr. Salazar affirmed, in his speech of 12 August 1963, that "there are no Angolans, but only Portuguese of Angola". One thing or the other: either Angola has no indigenous inhabitants, which is patently false, or else Mr. Salazar is claiming to know, better than they, what these indigenous people really are. 162. The second discovery is perhaps even more astounding. It is contained in the letter from Prime Minister Salazar to His Majesty the Emperor of Ethiopia. The text of this letter was published in a Portuguese Press release [No, 10/63] dated 18 July 1963. The letter stated: "Thus, when the United Nations Organization proclaims, as it has done, that lack of preparation in the political, economic, social and educational fields does not justify the least postponement of the independence of any territory, it is merely driving populations to chaos in Africa and laying the foundation for subjecting the continent to neo-colonialism ... "In as far as this concerns us especially, it is the duty of Portugal to thwart this eventuality in the name of all the Portuguese populations of Africa." 163. In other words, we have here a cat which explains that it has a duty to eat the mouse in order to save it from being caught in a mousetrap. It is fortunate for Mr. Salazar that ridicule does not kill. 164. Another problem, which is not strictly speaking a problem of colonialism but is akin to it in certain respects, is that of "apartheid". Let no one object that this is an internal affair which concerns only South Africa. The great United States President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, expressed our feelings perfectly when he said: "If our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed. If they hunger, we hunger. If their freedom is taken away, our freedom is not secure." Apartheid is not a domestic affair; on the contrary, it concerns the whole of mankind. 165. I do not intend to abuse your patience by once again stating the case against apartheid. That has already, since 1952, been done too often. Instead, I should like to read out the impartial and considered judgement of a world-famed woman historian and economist, Barbara Ward, who in 1959 wrote the following passage, as true today as it was then: "It still remains true that no human community in our day can be founded upon a total contradiction and this, surely, is the present basis of South African policy. "In the Union today, the processes of economic growth are going forward at breakneck speed. With an annual investment of over 20 per cent of national income. South Africa has been expanding and diversifying its economy in every direction ... "But all this wealth depends upon the labour of millions of Africans. The 300,000-odd migrant labourers in the gold mines are not the only essential sector of the working force. All the bounding growth of the secondary industry depends upon African labour and upon increasingly skilled African labour, too. Yet the political basis of the society is to deny the African any responsible part in a community wholly dependent upon his labours. I do not think that any system based upon so profound a contradiction can endure. Nor, clearly, can there be any hope of reconciliation or co-operation between the various communities. What seems to lie ahead today is not a synthesis, but explosion." 166. That is the policy of apartheid as seen through the eyes of an impartial and impersonal observer. Let us now see how it feels to have to live it all the days of one's life. I quote from the book by Peter Abrahams, entitled Tell Freedom —Memories of Africa: "All my life had been dominated by a sign, often Invisible but no less real for that, which said: 'Reserved for Europeans only'. "Because of that sign I had been born into the filth and squalor of the slums and had spent nearly all my childhood and youth there; because of it a whole generation, many generations, had been born, had grown up and died amid the filth and squalor of the slums. I had the mark of rickets on my body; but I was only one of many, not unique. I had had to go to work before I went to school. Many had never gone to school. Free compulsory education was 'Reserved for Europeans only'. All that was finest and best in life was 'Reserved for Europeans only'. The world, today, belonged to the 'Europeans', "And in my contacts with them the Europeans tea made it clear that they were the overlords, that the earth and all its wealth belonged to them. They had spoke in the language of physical strength, the language of force. And I had submitted to their superior strength. But submission can be a subtle thing. A man can submit today in order to resist tomorrow. My submission had been such. And because I had not been free to show my real feeling, to voice my true thoughts, my submission had bred bitterness and anger. And there were nearly ten million others who had submitted with equal anger and bitterness. One day the Whites would have to reckon with these people. " 167. Can we be surprised, in these circumstances, if violence is mounting in South Africa, if the situation is becoming more and more explosive? 168. What might appear surprising Is the fact that the South African Government Is the only one not to understand the dangers which it is itself creating; but Mr. Verwoerd provided the explanation when, on 15 October 1960, he said to a correspondent of The Observer: "I never have the nagging doubt of wondering whether perhaps I am wrong". Evidently, believing himself infallible, he is equally incapable of conceiving that he could be mistaken as to the aims pursued by the Africans. He is convinced that they want to massacre all the Whites, or at least to push them into the sea. The idea that the Africans can be infinitely more realistic, more humane, more tolerant and more generous is evidently beyond his understanding. Yet their leaders like Chief Luthuli, and their intellectuals like Mr. Ngubane, have repeatedly stated that all they are claiming is a multiracial State and the same rights for all. This is how Mr. Ngubane put it: "Blood links need not forever remain the only bonds of unity among men. The most powerful nations in the world today, are mixed communities whose peoples are knit together, not by race or colour, but by the values of life they cherish together. South Africa is ripe for a non-racial type of unity. In the social order envisaged above, the African will net see in threats to Afrikaner survival the guarantee of his own security. Where citizenship has a non-racial meaning, the various groups will see in threats to any one of them a danger to themselves ... The African, the Afrikaner, the Asian, the coloured, the British and the Jew will then march arm in arm to defend together those things they value most and that have the same meaning in their lives —their country, their freedom and their independence." Is this aim not infinitely more noble, more generous and also more realistic than the constricting and inhuman abomination of apartheid? 169. Rwanda is opposed to all racial discrimination, in South Africa as elsewhere and whether its victim: are white or black. That is why it has enthusiastically greeted the decision to put an end to it in the United States, a decision which was so clearly apparent is the address delivered by President Kennedy from this very rostrum [1209th meeting]. 170. I would not like to leave the problems of Africa without saying a word about the Congo —this country which is our neighbour, whose inhabitants are our brothers and are bound to us by a common history and common interests. The United Nations— first under the guidance of Mr. Hammarskjold, to whose memory we all pay grateful tribute, and then under that of our present Secretary-General, U Thant, whose wisdom, skill and perspicacity compel our admiration and are the pride of our Organization —has done magnificent work in the Congo. But the work is not yet finished, as the Congolese are the first to realize. Must we really, out of our concern for economy, risk the collapse of everything which has thus far been built up? Surely not. That is why the delegation of Rwanda associates itself with so many others in suggesting that the Organization leave a few thousand United Nations troops in the Congo until June 1964, as the Prime Minister, Mr. Adoula, has himself requested. 171. In conclusion, Rwanda too would express the hope that the number of seats on the great Councils of the Organization will be increased so as to enable all parts of the world to be more equitably represented. In all the countries of the world, constitutions and institutions are periodically adapted, by amendment, to the new exigencies of the times. The United Nations does not yet seem convinced of the need for this, and it is Africa which suffers thereby. When the number of seats —particularly in the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council— was originally determined, there was no more than a handful of independent African States. Today, when the number of such States has tripled, Africa is inadequately represented; and the position will be even more unsatisfactory when additional African countries enter our Organization. In this context I should like to say how gladly and impatiently the delegation of Rwanda looks forward to being able, soon, to greet our brothers from Kenya in this hall. 172. Certain events proceed slowly, far too slowly for our liking. But the day is now in sight when the United Nations will become what it has always set out to be —a genuinely universal organization. It will then have passed successfully through one of the most difficult stages of its existence, and the world will breathe more freely as a result.