Gilad Isaacs, an NYU student who grew up in South Africa, spoke at NYU two weeks ago at an Israeli Apartheid Week event. Lately he posted a version of his speech. In these excerpts, he recovers some interesting history:
On the 3rd of February 1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech in the South African parliament referring to the Winds of Change – the anti-colonial independence movement – that was sweeping through Africa. He urged the white minority government of South African to recognize this change, saying:
The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.
Then South African President Hendrik Verwoed, often called "the architect of apartheid", replied:
And the white man came to Africa, perhaps to trade, in some cases, perhaps to bring the gospel; has remained to stay. And particularly we in this southern most portion of Africa, have such a stake here that this is our only motherland, we have no where else to go. We set up a country bare, and the Bantu came in this country and settled certain portions for themselves, and it is in line with the thinking of Africa, to grant those fullest rights which we also with you admit all people should have and believe providing those rights for those people in the fullest degree in that part of southern Africa which their forefathers found for themselves and settled in. But similarly, we believe in balance, we believe in allowing exactly those same full opportunities to remain within the grasp of the white man who has made all this possible….
Martin Luther King Jr… and then African National Congress President Albert Luthuli, in 1962 issued a call, a section of which read:
The apartheid republic is a reality today only because the peoples and governments of the world have been unwilling to place her in quarantine.
Translate public opinion into public action
We, therefore, ask all men of goodwill to take action against apartheid in the following manner:
Hold meetings and demonstrations on December 10, Human Rights Day:
Urge your church, union, lodge, or club to observe this day as one of protest;
Urge your Government to support economic sanctions;
Write to your mission to the United Nations urging adoption of a resolution calling for international isolation of South Africa;
Don`t buy South Africa`s products;
Don`t trade or invest in South Africa;
Translate public opinion into public action by explaining facts to all peoples, to groups to which you belong, and to countries of which you are citizens until AN EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL QUARANTINE OF APARTHEID IS ESTABLISHED.
