2. Madam President, Mr. Secretary-General, Gentlemen, I have already
in the past had occasion, on behalf of the Federal Republic
of Cameroon, to address this Assembly, which embodies
mankind’s noblest aspirations and its greatest hopes for a
world in which the cardinal values would be universal peace
and co-operation.
3. I am present here today in quite a different capacity: I
have been chosen by the Assembly of Heads of State and
Government of the Organization of African Unity to
present to the General Assembly of the United Nations a
Manifesto on Southern Africa? and it is on behalf of all the
peoples of Africa, concerned with the fate of their
continent, as with that of all mankind, that I have the
privilege and honour of addressing you today.
4. It is a sign of the times to which one can hardly remain
oblivious that this important mission should be taking place
at the very moment when an African woman is elected to
the high position of President of the General Assembly of
the United Nations. I see in this event an invitation to
mankind to look more intently at the grievous problems of
Africa. I also see in it a living proof of the will of the
African peoples to strive for the betterment of mankind
and of all men without discrimination.
5. I hope you will permit me, therefore, to express to the
President our warmest congratulations on her election as
President of the twenty-fourth session of the General
Assembly of the United Nations, and the pride felt by all
African peoples. Knowing as I do her eminent qualities and
her long experience of the Organization and of international
affairs, I am convinced that, with the co-operation
of all delegations of goodwill and with the assistance of the
Secretary-General, whose courage, lucidity and dedication I
take pleasure in once again acknowledging, she will be able
to guide your work towards the success for which we are all
hoping.
6. The present session of the General Assembly of the
United Nations is being held at a peculiarly significant
period in the history of mankind, one that may even be a
decisive turning-point in its destiny. The age-old ambition
of man to be the master of himself and of the universe is
being fulfilled before our very eyes. Every year — one might
almost say every month — brings new conquests, the opening
up of new frontiers, whether in outer space or in the field
of life itself, where the biological sciences are opening
ever-increasing possibilities.
7. But, if this extraordinary and admirable progress quite
rightly stirs our enthusiasm, it is also disturbing us in some
measure, for mankind may be said to be bewildered today
by its own power. This feeling of bewilderment is not solely
that which we must feel when confronted with the
destructive power of the atom. At a more profound, more
structural, level it is the anguish we feel at a certain
inability to put scientific progress at the service of all
mankind.
8. The space age has begun, yet we cannot avert our eyes
from the harsh realities of this world, for we are tom
between what we are capable of doing and what we are
failing to do. Our planet, whose civilization is helping to
write the history of the cosmos, is still heavy with
contradictions capable of destroying civilization itself. For,
to be fully valid and to ensure its own continuity, our
civilization — even more than those which preceded it — needs
more than just the means, science and technology; it also
needs, and just as basically, an inspiration which can give a
meaning to its tremendous resources and place them truly
at man’s service; it needs constantly to be assured of its
purpose — of its human destiny.
9. In that connexion, the recent manifestations of social
unrest almost everywhere in the world are a warning,
admittedly a brutal and disorderly one and one often
encouraged and exploited by international subversion but,
none the less, a significant warning. These manifestations
reflect the anguish and bewilderment felt by people today,
increasingly assailed by fear that they may be caught up in
a gigantic machinery which threatens their search for
happiness, freedom and independence. For it is these that
are at stake in the present day. We need to ensure the
freedom and independence of all men and, at the same
time, to create conditions in which advances in science and
technology can be used for the full development of all peoples.
10. It is only fair to acknowledge that mankind has always
been aware of the need to safeguard human dignity through
its material progress. This awareness became stronger after
the Second World War, which made clear the single destiny
of mankind throughout the world. It is expressed in the
Charter of our Organization and in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, through which we affirm, in the
most solemn manner, our faith in humanity and our
common belief that men, independently of the accidents of
individual or collective existence, are born free and equal
under the law and that, over and above the reality of the
individual, there is an ideal of the species in a sense
transcending history, whereby all that is truly human
should be directed towards love, justice, truth and beauty.
11. We have, admittedly, gone a long way towards
realizing this supreme ideal; initially, within national
communities, most States recognizing that political democracy
and social justice are indispensable to their equilibrium
and efficiency; and then, at the level of the international
community, which, during the last decade, has been
considerably enlarged and enriched by the accession of
many new States to sovereignty. In this connexion, the
United Nations has played an important role to which
Cameroon, as a former Trust Territory which is about to
celebrate the tenth anniversary of its national independence,
wishes to pay tribute.
12. If the Organization of African Unity has nevertheless
deemed it useful to draw up the Manifesto which you have
before you and with which it a8Ks you to associate
yourselves, it is because it firmly believes that a faith which
is not total is a faith which is false unto itself. How
otherwise can we interpret the persistence of colonialism
and racial discrimination in Africa, and especially in
Southern Africa?
13. It is nine years now since the adoption of the United
Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to
Colonial Countries and Peoples [resolution 1514 (XV)]. We
are justified in beginning to question whether there is a
genuine desire on the part of the international community
to work effectively for the success of the struggle of the
peoples of Africa, and particularly those of the southern
part of our continent, to achieve their lawful rights to
freedom and independence.
14. In Namibia and in the Territories under Portuguese
rule, in Zimbabwe and in South Africa, we see the same
insolent scorn for pertinent resolutions of the United
Nations. It is now evident that this defiant attitude to
world opinion would not be possible without the support
of certain powerful international interests and, indeed, of
some Governments, which are thus betraying their obligations
towards mankind and the international community.
15. It is also clear that this attitude constitutes a decided
threat to international peace and security. Through its
Manifesto on Southern Africa, the Organization of African
Unity once again solemnly appeals to international opinion,
the pressure of which can, it believes, play a decisive role.
This appeal will be further underlined by the celebration in
1971 of the International Year for Action to Combat
Racism and Racial Discrimination, and it would be only
fitting if that year were to end with the organization in
Africa itself of an international seminar on the evils of
racial domination, designed further to arouse world public opinion.
16. For the problem with which we are confronted is one
that affects the whole of mankind. It would be senseless to
give racist overtones to our campaign when it is precisely
racism that we are fighting; racism, that prejudice which
aims to divide humanity into superior and inferior races and
to justify the domination of one race by another. Consequently,
our campaign implies the condemnation of all
racism and not the establishment of another, reverse,
racism. It is based on our unshakable belief that to deny the
human value of a single man is to imperil the dignity of all men.
17. By thus appealing to the universal conscience, we wish
not only to demonstrate our attachment to peace and to
the ideal of human brotherhood and our willingness to help
through dialogue and negotiation in solving the world’s
great problems, but also to revive our faith in man and our
attachment to his dignity, to foster the search, in these
troubled times, for the highest human values, and the
orientation of history towards the recognition of man by man.
18. We do not, of course, preach violence, but rather an
end to all violence, and more particularly an end to the
violence done to human dignity by the oppressors of
Africa. In Southern Africa, however, we are faced with the
most systematic violence ever seen in human history since
the days of nazism. It goes without saying that, should our
appeals still go unheeded, we shall have no option but to
continue to give the African peoples still under domination
all the support of which we are capable in their struggle for
freedom and independence. The United Nations itself will
be unable to continue evading the need to use all means,
including force, to safeguard both the human dignity of
those peoples and international peace and security.
19. How, indeed, in a world which turns a deaf ear to
what is happening, can the violence of oppression not call
forth the violence of revolt? And how can our ambition to
substitute the force of law for the law of force ever be
realized when the worst form of oppression triumphs at our
gates, with complicity more or less openly avowed?
Mankind is thus presented with the painful contradiction of
an ideal of peace and brotherhood which is constantly
affirmed but is tarnished in practice by bloody conflicts.
That contradiction already exists, in fact, not only in
Africa, where resistance to oppression is being organized
and is developing day by day, but in every part of the world
in which force is used to resolve differences between
nations and where it is essential—in the Middle East as in
South-East Asia—rapidly to find peaceful and just solutions.
20. We believe it is becoming a matter of urgency to take
measures that will enable the United Nations to play a
greater and more effective role in the elimination of
colonialism and racial discrimination in Africa and in the
maintenance of world peace and security. To achieve this,
all Member States must show greater loyalty to the
Organization by respecting its decisions and the machinery
it has set up, and they must understand that their
co-operation and concerted efforts are necessary, nay vital,
if United Nations decisions are to be translated into action
and the noble objectives of the Charter are to be achieved.
21. The great Powers must be reminded that their special
responsibility within the international community and
towards all mankind requires them to give more effective
support to United Nations efforts to promote respect for
human rights, the self-determination of peoples and world peace.
22. Contemporary civilization is not only faced with
contradictions between an increasing mastery of nature and
relative impotence to guarantee man’s freedom and between
the ideal of peace and human brotherhood and
continuing efforts to secure power and domination. Over
and above these there is another, greater, contradiction, in a
world of increasing interdependence, between our present
possibilities of transforming the human condition and the
persistent inequality of the conditions in which men live.
23. This inequality, due to historical causes, of which
colonialism and racial discrimination are not the least, is
daily becoming more pronounced with the constant deterioration
in the terms of trade which, by depriving the
developing countries of major resources in their struggle for
progress, is helping to widen the gulf separating the
prosperous from the under-privileged peoples.
24. While we can congratulate ourselves on the international
community’s increasing awareness of the importance
of this problem for the future of mankind, the fact
remains that the efforts so far made to solve it have not
yielded the expected results, either at the level of bilateral
co-operation or at the multilateral level. National interests
and egoism continue to act as powerful brakes on expansion
of the flow of aid, although there is general agreement
that what is needed is a concerted global strategy inspired
by a real determination to achieve realistically predetermined
objectives.
25. The Charter of Algiers made an invaluable contribution
towards the determination of the objectives and
methods that should be adopted to solve the problem in all
its manifold economic and political aspects. It was rapidly
to become clear, however, after the second session of the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development at
New Delhi, that the developed countries were not yet
prepared to accept the vast programme of action formulated
in that Charter by the Group of developing countries.
The disappointment caused by the results of the Conference
has been deepened by what is already considered to be
the failure of the first United Nations Development Decade,
the results of which fell short of the initial expectations.
26. It is to be hoped that the Second Decade, being better
prepared, will see an improved co-ordination of the
possibilities for action by the international community in
this crucial sphere, so that more effective support may be
given to the efforts being made to secure the advancement
of the developing countries, This is indeed to be hoped, for
it is clear that postponement of solution of the problem of
giving the under-privileged peoples access to the benefits of
modem civilization will only complicate and worsen relations
between the developing countries and the advanced
States, to the detriment of the peace and unity of the human race.
27. In this connexion, we cannot but applaud the idea of a
Disarmament Decade in so far as it would serve to
consolidate throughout the world the climate of détente
essential for the protection of human rights and the release
of the additional resources needed for the great task of
development which — it should be added — also requires
mutual understanding, agreement and perseverance.
28. It is, indeed, absurd that huge sums should continue to
be swallowed up by the arms race while the bulk of
mankind lives in tragic and unjust penury. Tragic, not only
because it robs man of his basic dignity, but also because
there seems to be no prospect of immediate improvement,
even though the world’s means of overcoming poverty are
steadily increasing. Unjust because, in the world of today,
one of the common tasks of mankind is to achieve progress
the benefits of which must be shared fairly among all. If it
is accepted — and it is desirable, even necessary that it should
be accepted — that this material solidarity must be reinforced
by a moral solidarity, the absurdity of the arms race
becomes still more manifest. It is obvious that the
destructive power now available condemns all men either to
die together or to live together, and this leaves us, in fact,
no option but to build a lasting and equitable peace that
will offer all men the possibility of a fully human existence.
29. There is no doubt that mankind finds itself today at a
decisive turning-point in its history. This places upon us a
very heavy responsibility towards future generations. Our
scientific progress may well have little meaning for them if
we do not succeed in mastering the human problems with
which our societies are confronted, if we fail to bequeath to
those generations a world respectful of human dignity,
conscious of its unity, and building its destiny in a
brotherly dialogue, in peace and in justice, a world which
they can possess in peaceful and prosperous security.
30. Plainly, we cannot run the risk of ruining the very
foundations of our civilization. Man’s destiny is determined
not only by his intellectual and material powers; it is also
guided by great moral inspirations. We must therefore
remain faithful to the humanistic inspiration of our
civilization, for, in the last analysis, man is and must remain
the supreme end of all civilization.
31. The unity of man’s destiny is today more concrete and
more evident than ever before. For the first time in history,
mankind is consciously becoming a unified whole. For the
first time, man has at his disposal the means of shaping his
own destiny, allaying poverty and triumphing over violence.
32. Is it Utopian to ask the United Nations, which, we
repeat embodies our hopes for a better world, to deploy all
its resources so as to ensure that our era, which sees a
universal civilization taking shape, is the beginning of a
reign of genuine brotherhood in the world? How can we
forget the words of George Bernard Shaw: “Some people
see things as they are, and ask, why? I dream of things that
never were and I ask, why not?” Yes, nothing great will
ever come to pass without a little dreaming.