2. Madam President, it gives me great
pleasure to congratulate you on your election to this
important office. I feel confident that with your long
experience of the work of this Organization, you will steer
this session through to a successful close.
3. I should also like to express my sorrow at the untimely
death of the President of the twenty-third session of this
Assembly, Mr. Emilio Arenales, whose short term of office
will be long remembered for the courage he displayed.
4. I should like, on behalf of my people, to pay tribute to
the Secretary-General’s work for world peace and his
untiring devotion to the service of humanity.
5. Botswana is within 2 week of celebrating the third
anniversary of its independence. My country is thus a
comparative newcomer to the United Nations, and this is
my first opportunity of addressing this General Assembly.
Botswana is a small country in terms of population if not in
area. As a small and poor country, we set a particularly high
value on our membership of the United Nations and those
of its specialized agencies which our budgetary restrictions
have permitted us to join. I should like to emphasize the
particular importance of the United Nations for States like
Botswana which, because of development priorities, are
obliged to restrict their conventional bilateral contacts and
keep their overseas missions to a bare minimum. Here in
New York we can make contacts which would otherwise be
difficult to achieve. The United Nations offers many
advantages to a State like ours. The United Nations enables
us to keep in touch with international opinion and to put
our views before the world.
6. The United Nations is also regarded by small States as
an institution which protects their special interests. Together
with its specialized agencies, it is of course also a
major source of development finance and technical assistance
from which Botswana benefits greatly. I am conscious
of Botswana’s indebtedness to the United Nations, and I am
honoured to have the privilege of putting some of Botswana’s
problems before the world through the Members of
this Assembly.
7. I am aware that there are many international problems
which will come before this Assembly during its twenty-fourth
session, Botswana shares the general alarm at the
prolonged impasse in the Middle East and the dangerous
military escalation that has marked the last months. We are
looking, like most Member States, with anxious eyes
towards Viet-Nam and praying that this tragic and long-drawn-out
conflict will soon be resolved at the conference table.
8. We are watching the civil conflict in Nigeria with even
greater anxiety, since our own continent is directly
affected. Botswana sympathizes fully with those Member
States both inside and outside Africa which want to see the
fighting and the human suffering it involves brought to an
end, and the work of reconstruction and reconciliation
begun. Yet we believe the foundation for the effective
resolution of this dispute in the best interests of all the
peoples of Nigeria remains the work of the Organization of
African Unity. Our efforts earlier this month at Addis
Ababa may not have been crowned with immediate success,
But there is no magic key that will unlock this complex
problem in which so many conflicting interests, including
interests outside Africa, are involved. If the United Nations
has a contribution to make to the resolution of this conflict
it lies in restraining the external Powers involved from
taking actions and adopting policies which could further
delay a negotiated settlement. Botswana favours any
initiative acceptable to both principal parties involved
which will lead to a peaceful and lasting settlement and
which will not threaten the stability and unity of other
African States.
9. Because Botswana is part of a region which faces the
threat of violent conflict, I want on behalf of my people to
lay particular emphasis on the necessity of finding peaceful
solutions to our problems. Southern Africa lives with the
danger of violent racial conflict. I want this afternoon to
discuss the threat of racialism as it affects southern Africa,
and in particular my own country, Botswana; and, within
southern Africa, I should like in particular to draw this
Assembly’s attention to a problem which I fear some
powerful countries would prefer to forget. I refer to the
problem of Rhodesia, which the people of Botswana are in
no position to forget.
10. May I remind you of our geographical position and
our historical circumstances? Botswana is almost entirely
encircled by minority-ruled territories. We have along and
indefensible border with Rhodesia, and a long border with
Namibia and with South Africa itself. The only railway
running between Rhodesia and South Africa passes through
Botswana. Not only is this railway operated by Rhodesia
Railways, but it is vital to both ‘Rhodesian and South
African interests. It is also vital to Botswana because it
provides our only outlet to the sea and to export markets
overseas. Through this route must come the capital goods
necessary for our development. Unlike some other States in
southern and central Africa we have no practical alternative
outlet.
11. We are for historical reasons part of a customs areas
dominated by the industrial might of the Republic of South
Africa. We share the monetary system of the Republic of
South Africa. Our trade and transport systems are inextricably
interlocked with those of South Africa. So meagre are
our own employment prospects that we have for many
years been obliged to permit some of our young men to go
and work in the mines of South Africa. In the immediately
foreseeable future we can find no way of providing
alternative employment for all these men, nor can we
afford to dispense with their earnings.
12. Botswana thus faces unusual and onerous handicaps,
but we also face an unusual and a challenging opportunity.
I should like to describe our position because I believe it
will give Member States a useful insight into the problem
the world faces when considering the question of minority
rule in southern Africa. I should like to explain how
Botswana is responding, not only to the challenge of
under-development, but also to the challenge posed by our
powerful neighbours whose way of life is not our way of
life and whose values in most respects are the reverse of our
own.
13. When my Government took office in 1965 we were
faced with a problem of under-development of classic
proportions. Such development programmes as were
initiated under colonialism no more than scratched the
surface of our problems. Most important of all, in contrast
to other British colonies, there had been practically no
attempt to train Botswanans to run their own country. Not
one single secondary school was completed by the colonial
Government during the whole seventy years of British rule.
There was little provision for vocational training even at the
lowest levels. The roads, water supplies, power supplies on
which industrial development is based were totally inadequate.
We were in the humiliating position of not knowing
many of the basic facts about Botswana on which development
plans could be based. We are still learning about the
resources of our own country.
14. But we are now tackling these problems, and if I
appear to boast of the progress we have made, it is to praise
the efforts of my people rather than to vaunt the
achievements of my colleagues in Government and myself.
We have received generous budgetary assistance and development
aid from the British, who have done much to make
up for their earlier neglect, We have received aid from other
Member States and from the agencies of the United Nations
itself. What is more, all this aid has come without political
strings. There has been no attempt to use aid to change our
domestic or external policies. We will reject all donors who
do not show the same forebearance.
15. Nevertheless, we depend on foreign aid for more than
half our revenue. On what then is based our claim to be an
independent State? Can we aspire to help in developing the
prosperity, unity and freedom of our continent and hence
play a constructive role in world affairs? I believe we can.
Because, although we are for the moment dependent on
foreign aid, we are also self-reliant. Because my people are
mobilizing their own resources, human, physical and
financial, we can accept overseas assistance without loss of
pride. Furthermore, we believe that we have succeeded in
attracting the major part of this aid because we are making
great efforts ourselves, and. because it is recognized that we
have something to offer towards a solution of one of the
world’s most pressing problems, the future of minority-ruled
southern Africa.
16. Botswana is now on the threshold of new and major
development. Since independence it has been discovered
that we are blessed with mineral resources, which, if
exploited, offer us a prospect of financial self-sufficiency
during the 1970s and in the long run the hope of healthy
balanced development in all sectors. My Government is in
the midst of negotiating international loan finance for those
developments. It is a matter of the greatest concern for us
that this money is raised from the right source on the right
terms. For despite all the handicaps of geography, climate
and the legacy of colonial neglect, the people of Botswana
have now embarked on the struggle to reduce our dependence
on neighbouring minority-ruled territories. Only in
this way can the people of Botswana reap in full the
benefits of independence. We feel that only in this way can
the fruits of our labours be fully enjoyed. We did not win
our independence from the British to lose it to a new form
of colonialism from any source whatever.
17. We accept that we are part of southern Africa and that
the harsh facts of history and geography cannot be
obliterated overnight. We recognize that in our present
circumstances we must continue to remain members of the
South African customs union and the South African
monetary area. We have noted South Africa’s assurances of
friendly intentions towards Botswana and other independent
States. We have noted South Africa’s offers to assist
other African States in their development. Botswana
together with Lesotho and Swaziland are in the process of
concluding lengthy negotiations with South Africa on a
new customs agreement. In these negotiations we have not
been seeking aid. Our objective has been to secure an
equitable distribution of the revenues of the customs area,
and the opportunity of protecting our infant industries
while retaining access to the South African market. We
welcome private investment in Botswana from any source
which seeks to build in partnership with our people and not
to drain us of our resources with little or no return to the
country. We are confident that we can coexist with the
Republic of South Africa without sacrificing our national
interest or our fundamental principles.
18. We have made no secret of our detestation of
apartheid, Although for obvious reasons we are obliged to
interpret strictly the principle of non-interference in the
affairs of other States, we have not hidden our views. Our
voice has been heard in this Assembly and in other
international forums in favour of universal self-determination,
in support of peace, solutions of international
conflicts throughout the world, and in please for a realistic
appraisal of what can be achieved by this Organization.
19. Living, as we do, face to face with the realities of
apartheid, we have little sympathy for token demonstrations
and empty gestures. Yet we have unequivocally
condemned the theory and practice of apartheid, and we
deplore its intensification and, particularly, the extension
of the full apparatus of apartheid to the international trust
territory of Namibia. Nevertheless, for obvious reasons,
Botswana must maintain diplomatic contacts with South
Africa. For equally obvious reasons, we decline to consider
an exchange of diplomatic representatives until South
Africa can fully guarantee that Botswana’s representatives
will, in all respects, at all times and in all places, be treated
in the same way as diplomats from other countries.
20. We have expressed our opposition to Portugal’s
unyielding refusal to permit any progress towards
self-determination in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea (Bissau).
We have declined to entertain diplomatic relations with the
Portuguese in the absence of any commitment on the part
of Portugal to allow the indigenous people of their so-called
overseas provinces to proceed to independence. Our criticism
of Portugal’s policies is not based on an argument
about the timing of a programme for progress towards
self-determination but on the point-blank refusal of the
Portuguese Government to concede that those Territories
can ever choose to move towards independence.
21. I should like to draw attention at this point to the
firmly-stated preference, endorsed by all independent
African States in the Lusaka Manifesto on Southern Africa
for the achievement of self-determination through negotiation.
It was thus that Botswana achieved majority rule, and
eventually independence; and that has been the path which
most African States have been fortunate enough to tread. It
is the wish of the Government and people of Botswana that
the indigenous populations of the neighbouring Territories
should eventually share this experience.
22. One consequence of our geographical position is that
Botswana has provided a refuge for many who, for one
reason or another, have found themselves unable to
continue to live in neighbouring minority-ruled Territories.
Botswana recognizes a responsibility to those victims of
political circumstance and we are trying to discharge that
responsibility as well as our resources permit. Refugees
come to Botswana from Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia,
South West Africa and South Africa. At present there are
more than 4,000 recognized refugees in Botswana. In
January 1969 my Government acceded to the 1951
Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and also to
the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees.
23. Botswana grants asylum and assistance to genuine
political refugees who seek our aid. The financial burden of
doing so would have been heavy were it not for the
generous assistance we have received from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food
Programme, the World Council of Churches, and other
international bodies. On our part, we have granted refugees
recognition of their status; we have allowed them to settle
in various parts of our country and find jobs or open their
own businesses; and, where possible, we educate them as
well as our limited educational and training facilities
permit. Equally important, we issue United Nations travel
documents with a return clause to those refugees who wish
to travel to other countries where suitable training
establishments are able to accept them.
24. The majority of refugees in Botswana have come from
Angola. Those people have been settled on a
hundred-square-mile farming scheme. Through training in agriculture
and fishing they will, we hope, like many other refugees,
become integrated with the citizens of Botswana. We have
welcomed them to our country; they can make their home
with us until their own countries achieve Governments
acceptable to them.
25. I have already referred to certain constraints which
Botswana faces when considering its position on southern
African issues. I have also mentioned certain principles
which guide us. Our constant concern is to respect those
constraints while not violating the principles.
26. The future of Rhodesia is of the utmost possible
concern to Botswana. I have referred to our long and
indefensible common frontier. My Government, from the
outset, has condemned the unilateral declaration of
independence. We are committed to support the principle of no
independence before majority rule. For that reason we
joined the majority of Commonwealth countries in rejecting
the Fearless proposals. We condemned, in no uncertain
terms, the illegal régime’s constitutional proposals which
entrench discrimination and separate development and
which definitively block the possibility of a peaceful
transition to majority rule, for which the 1961 Constitution,
at least in theory, provided. We recognize that these
proposals, endorsed by an unrepresentative electorate, end
the prospect of a peaceful transition to majority rule
without some form of external intervention to secure it.
These proposals are now being implemented by the Smith
régime.
27. I warned the white minority in Rhodesia that by
taking this course they were increasing the risk of violent
conflict and endangering the stability of the region.
Botswana is on record as favouring the reassertion of British
rule in Rhodesia. That course is the only one which offers a
hope, however faint, of a peaceful transition to majority
rule. I recognize that the white minority in Rhodesia,
conscious of the injustice it has inflicted, and fearing the
justifiable bitterness of the oppressed African population,
will feel the need for some guarantee that the transition to
democratic non-racial government should be gradual and
peaceful.
28. One way in which Britain could restore its authority is
by the use of force. But I think that we must now accept,
whether we approve of that decision or not, that Britain is
not, under present circumstances, prepared to resort to
force. Botswana feels that it follows that alternatives to
force must be considered. There comes a point when one
policy, having been pushed to its limits, must be accepted
as having failed, and must give way to another. It is
essential that Britain be held to its legal and moral
responsibility to the African majority in Rhodesia. There
must be no absolution.
29. This, I have to admit, leaves us with a policy which, as
many Member States have argued in past debates, has been
far from successful. I refer to mandatory sanctions. Yet for
all the frustrations and disappointments to which the tardy
application of sanctions has given rise, it remains essential
that they be in fact maintained and intensified. We feel that
those sanctions serve an important purpose, even if they are
not extended to include South Africa. Just as it is clear that
neither Britain nor any other country will use military force
against the Smith régime, it is clear that an effective
boycott of South Africa, on this or any other issue, cannot
be achieved. The existing sanctions are thus at the present
time all that stand between the rebel régime’s success and
failure. That being the case, rather than dismissing the
sanctions weapon as totally ineffective, it is surely wiser to
try and make them as effective as possible.
30. While it is important not to over-estimate the impact of
sanctions, it should not be too readily accepted that
sanctions have had no effect at all on Rhodesia. From our
position we can see some of the effects of sanctions and I
can assure this Assembly that they are not negligible.
31. To permit them to be eroded at this point would be
unnecessarily to concede defeat. Certain consequences
would follow. The way would be opened to diplomatic
recognition by Powers which are at the moment hanging
back from this step. Rhodesia’s links with Portugal and
South Africa would be enormously strengthened and the
whole minority position in southern Africa would be
consolidated. There are, I am convinced, elements both in
South Africa and Portugal, and in the world at large, which
have serious doubts about the viability of Rhodesia as a
white-ruled State, given its rapidly expanding African
population and its handicapped economy. Lifting sanctions
would liberate the fettered Rhodesia economy and serve to
restore the confidence of such observers in the viability of
continued white supremacy.
32. For this reason Botswana appeals to all Member States
to make what contribution they can to rendering sanctions
more effective; and here I should like to pay tribute to the
work of the United Nations supervisory committee and of
the Sanctions Committee. On their efforts and those of the
Member States of this Organization are pinned the last
hopes of preventing the illegal régime from imposing
permanently its own version of apartheid on the people of
Rhodesia, for whose welfare this Organization has assumed
a certain degree of responsibility. The present international
isolation of the illegal régime and those who support it
must be maintained. Our own difficulties in the matter of
sanctions are obvious but we are attempting to play our
part within the limitations imposed by our frail economy
and our landlocked position. We have prevented Rhodesia
from using its railway to import arms and military supplies.
Botswana's airline has ceased to fly into Rhodesia. We are
preparing to do more. Botswana has committed itself to
diverting long-standing trade with Rhodesia, despite the
very considerable economic and administrative problems
which such a course presents. Contingency planning is well
advanced.
33. Our contribution to this struggle can only be a small
one for we are not a rich and powerful country. But we are
hopeful that it will help to check the erosion of sanctions.
There are other Powers which live less closely with this
problem than ourselves but which can make a greater
contribution towards solving it.
34. May I conclude on a more general point, but one
which also relates to southern Africa? I have referred to
Botswana’s prospects of mineral development and to our
hopes that this will permit us to dispense with budgetary
aid and to develop a balanced and prosperous economy and
a healthy non-racial democracy. We hope this for the sake
of our people, but we also look forward to it with all the
more eager anticipation because we recognize that it will
permit us to make a greater contribution to solving the
problems of our region. By this I do not mean that we will
depart from our principle of non-interference in the affairs
of neighbouring sovereign States. But Botswana as a
thriving majority-ruled State on the borders of South Africa
and Namibia will present an effective and serious challenge
to the credibility of South Africa’s racial policies and in
particular its policy of developing so-called Bantu home-
lands and its stated goal of eventual independence for these
Bantustans. It could force them to abandon the policy or
attempt to make it a more immediate reality and even face
the prospect of surrendering sovereignty to genuinely
independent States. Either reaction would have important
political consequences. A prosperous non-racial democracy
in Botswana immediately adjacent to South Africa and.
Namibia will add to the problems which South Africa is
already facing in reconciling its irrational racial policies
with its desire for economic growth.
35. If Botswana is to sustain this role, which you will
recognize is not an easy one, its independence must be
preserved. This means that we must ensure that we are
insulated from any instability which the policies of neighbouring
white-ruled countries may provoke. It also means
that Botswana needs the support and sympathy of friendly
nations. We recognize that our independence ultimately
depends on the durability of our political institutions and
on our success in achieving economic development. But our
independence is also buttressed by our external relations.
We have friends in all continents. Our membership of the
United Nations is in itself a source of strength. I should like
to appeal to all Member States in their deliberations on the
question of southern Africa to recall not only Botswana’s
particular problems but also our potential contribution to
achieving change by peaceful means.