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SOLIDARITY

‘Full sanctions on S. Africa,’ delegates deman

Continued from page 1
ernment, the suggestion that tendering aid

‘to the ‘‘front line” states bordering South

Africa was preferable to levying full sanc-
tions against apartheid was being floated at
the conference.

Delegates also faced a consistent lobby
from organizations claiming to be the true
representatives of the liberation and black
trade union movements in South Africa and
Namibia (South West Africa), in opposition
to the ANC, the South West Africa People’s

_Organization (SWAPO), the South African

Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), the
Confederation of South African Trade
Unions (COSATU) and the United Demo-
cratic Front (UDF).

But none of this was reflected in resolu-
tions adopted and set in a communique
handed to reporters at the conclusion of the
conference on Sunday.

The communique — noting that since
the last‘ Commonwealth conference in Nas-
sau, The Bahamas two years ago, South
Africa has increased its repression at home
and its hostile acts against neighbouring
that ‘comprehensive,
mandatory sanctions remain the only
means by which the international commun-
ity can help bring the dismantling of apar-
theid.

“Increased assistance to the front line
states is urgently needed. But this can in no
sense be seen as a substitute for sanctions.
The two go hand in hand. Any attempt to
separate these two elements will only
weaken the front line states and encourage
Pretoria,” it stated.

The conference, the communique report-
ed, granted “special recognition to the ANC
and SWAPO as the legitimate representa-
tives of the South African and Namibian
people.” It called for more assistance to the
organizations. and for the Canadian
government to grant the groups diplomatic
status.

Noting that the issue had been ignored in
recent years, conference organizer Larry
Kuehn of the Anti-Apartheid Network said
the fight for Namibian independence —
the country.has been occupied, despite Uni-
ted Nations disapproval, by South Africa
for more than 70 years — was moved to
“the front of the agenda” by delegates.

The conference, obviously heeding the
words of Assembly of First Nations chief
George Erasmus, in a speech the previous
evening, also called on Ottawa and the pro-
vinces to reopen constitutional negotiations
with Canada’s aboriginal people. “If Cana-
dians are to fight for self-determination and
full human rights in South Africa, surely we
must also do so at home,” it stated.

Kuehn, flanked by Carleton University
professor Linda Freeman and Tim Brod-
head of the Canadian Council on Interna-
tional Co-operation, praised the confer-
ence’s role in “improving contacts” among
the diverse groups in Canada working to
end apartheid.

Brodhead said the organizers were asking
for a meeting with Mulroney “this week” to
communicate the conference’s desire for full

- sanctions against Pretoria.

In an effort to counter the growing call
for sanctions from several of the Common-
wealth’s 49 member countries, the Conser-
vative government of British Prime Minister

_Margaret Thatcher has challenged Cana-

da’s own stated commitment to sanctions.
On Monday, the Thatcher government
tabled figures it claimed showed that, des-
pite the imposition of limited sanctions on
South African imports last year, Canadian
trade with the racist regime had increased.

One month ago British Foreign Minister
Sir Geoffery Howe was in Ottawa trying to
force the government to back down on the
sanctions issue.

While Canadian officials at the confer-
ence have countered with figures purporting
to show that Canada’s trade with South
Africa has decreased by 50 per cent in the
past year, signals prior to the conference

were that Mulroney was prepared to back
down on the sanctions issue in the face of
pressure from Great Britain and the United
States.

But if his government does so, it will the
face the wrath of a renewed anti-apartheid
movement that decided at its parallel con-
ference that Canada should press on with
the sanctions demand, and, if it could not
convince the Commonwealth as whole to
isolate South Africa, to at least impose full
sanctions on its own.

Leading Canadians at a special public
meeting and banquet Saturday night
stressed that point repeatedly in speeches
demanding an all-out effort against apar-
theid.

Immigration lawyer Juanita Westmore-
land-Traore, of Montreal’s black commun-
ity, reminded delegates that Mulroney.had
pledged that if South Africa did not change,
Canada would be prepared to impose full
sanctions and “a total breakoff in rela-
tions.”

Taking issue with a claim made by
Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Rea-
gan, she said: “If sanctions aren’t working,
why is there so much opposition to them
from those affected?”

“To not impose sanctions is to wage vio-
lence against the people of South Africa,”
she asserted.

Canadian Labour Congress vice-presi-
dent Richard Mercier said the CLC is
spending an $800,000 fund assisting South
African trade unionists with legal costs and
bringing trade unionists to Canada to meet
their counterparts.

He said External Affairs Minister Joe
Clark’s call for aid to front line states is
welcome, but not if it merely amounts to
“food aid” for countries such as Mozam-
bique. He said front line states face sabotage
of railways and other vital links through
attacks by South African forces or financed
counter-revolutionaries, and stressed the

Audience stands to sing anthem of South Africa struggle at public address Sur

need for “non-lethal” military aid.

“T’ve heard there’s an argument against’

economic sanctions, that they do not
work,” said George Erasmus, chief of the
Assembly of First Nations of Canada.

“The federal government went out of its
way to destroy us. They know about eco-
nomic sanctions, we know about them,” he
said.

Erasmus called on the government to
recognize SWAPO as the legitimate repre-
sentative of the people of Namibia.

Canadian Anglican Archbishop Ted
Scott, a member of the Eminent Persons
group sent to South Africa after the Nassau
Commonwealth conference, said there was
“one option” left if no economic pressure
was placed on South Africa.

“That is one of ever-increasing violence,”
he said.

“It is not that such measures compel
change. It is that their absence does not
compel change,” Scott asserted.

In calling for external pressure o
“demonic” system of apartheid
increased aid to front line states, he
that aid be extended not only to the
monwealth members among. the:
Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe -
to the former Portuguese coloni
Angola and Mozambique as well.

Scott also urged a new commitment
Ottawa to educate Canadians on thee
apartheid, in the face of a propaganda
paign waged by South Africa wit
assistance of some Canadians, to fost
notion that apartheid “is not as bad
say it is.”

Any such attempts, he said, a1
“attempt to turn our attention away
the inherent violence of apartheid.”

The week’s activities will conclude \
march and rally Saturday, beginning a

tory Square in Vancouver at 12 noo:
moving to the steps of the Vancouve

Gallery.

“Commonwealth must act:’ Kaundeé

“Under the pains of apartheid, these
noble men of ANC, these noble men of
SWAPO are saying, ‘We intend to build a
better society than (South African Prime
Minister) Botha’s in South Africa and
Botha’s in Namibia.”

_ Applause from several hundred attend-
ing the opening of the provincial parallel

conference on Southern Africa Sunday ~

night greeted the words of praise for the
African National Congress and the South
West Africa People’s Organization, uttered
by the region’s elder statesman — Kenneth
Kaunda, president of Zambia.

Kaunda, in Vancouver for the Com-
monwealth Heads of State conference
where he was to argue strongly for total
sanctions against South Africa’s racist
government, stirred an audience who
packed the ballroom of the Holiday Inn
Harbourside to hear the president and
representatives of the African National
Congress, the government of Mozambique
and several other groups.

In his speech the Zambian president took
aim at those who oppose sanctions against
South Africa on the grounds that these
would hurt blacks in the country and in the
front line states. .

“At 63, I want to believe I’m adult
enough to think for myself,” Kaunda said.

Zambia, along with other “front line”
States bordering on South Africa, is where
the ANC has its headquarters and the con-
gress and SWAPO maintain base camps.
The landlocked southern African country
pays a price for its solidarity, being the
target of frequent attacks by South Africa’s
military.

“Six days before I left (to come to the
Commonwealth conference) we were bomb-
ed by the racist regime,” Kaunda told the
audience.

MOCUBI

TRAORE

Kaunda, noting the hypocrisy of western
governments in launching boycotts against
the Soviet Union and Poland in the recent
past while rejecting the same action against
South Africa, called for “strengthened”
sanctions against Pretoria.

“We cannot change our geographical

~location and we will not change our opposi-

tion to an inhumane system,” declared Dr.
Pasqual Mocumbi, foreign affairs minister
of Mozambique.

The former colony of Portugal would be
prosperous today were it not for the attacks
launched by counter-revolutionaries funded
by Pretoria. The backing of the terrorists,
condemned world-wide for atrocities against
Mozambique’s civilians, runs counter to a
non-aggression treaty the country has with
South Africa.

Such crippling attacks mean that South
Africa “‘is already imposing sanctions on its
neighbours,” said Mocumbi.

Amdimba Toivo Ja Toivo, a SWAPO
representative who was jailed for 16 years
by the apartheid regime and who spent
some prison time on Robben Island with
jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela, said life
in Namibia is ‘‘a horror” because of South
Africa’s “reign of terror.”

He called on Canada to back a United

MAKATINI

KAUNDA

Nations demand for free elections i
illegally held country, to impose mand:
sanctions against South Africa, to inc
“political and moral support to SWA
and to support the front line states.

ANC representative Dr. John:
Makatini said Britain, with its
sanctions stance, was “trying to mak
august body (the Commonwealth) pz
the problem, instead of the solutior
apartheid.

British Prime Minister Margaret That
he said, is the kind of person who w
have opposed the abolition of slavery
the grounds that it would have dep
some lads the privilege of becoming h
niggers.”

Makatini said that in struggling f
“non-racial society” in South Africa
congress had for 50 years taken the
violent path, along the lines of Mohz
Ghandi. But it was Ghandi himself
said, “If I must choose between slavery
violence, I’ll chose violence,” Makatini

He said support for the front line s
“is integral to the expressions of solid
given to the region.

“The army of liberation is invin<
Nothing is going to stop it,” he declarex

Standing ovation.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 14, 1987