When our President-Elect took on apartheid: ‘Dammit, our favorites are the people being repressed by that ugly white regime!’

Many of us are feeling joy at yesterday’s news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will take over the White House in January. In that spirit, here is one of Biden’s greatest moments, when the fiery senator, then 43, took on Apartheid South Africa in 1986 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I first heard Biden’s speech yesterday in a BBC recap of Biden’s career, and dug out the transcript.

In demanding tougher sanctions on apartheid from the Reagan administration, Biden justified blacks’ armed resistance. He said that black South Africans had tried “everything” for 20 years from begging to crawling to compromise, and had been crushed, shot, mugged and smothered, and he would be “on the ramparts” if he were a black leader.

“There is overwhelming violence in South Africa today,” he told Reagan’s secretary of state. “If you want to avoid more… let the South African blacks know that we stand with them four square.”

(Here is video, and I’ve copied transcript of the Congressional Record.)

Joe Biden: “I’m amazed Bishop Tutu is as restrained as he was. His people are being mugged, shot, imprisoned killed, smothered. I admire his restraint… I suspect that if you or I were in his position, a black South African leader or otherwise… I don’t doubt that you would be on the ramparts– I know I would be and I think you would be.”

George Shultz, secretary of state: “We all feel frustration.”

Biden: “His people are dying. You feel frustration! They’re dying. They’re being shot. You’re talking about necklaces [execution by immolation of black collaborators]. They’re lined up and they’re shooting children!

“What disturbs me more than the policy that you call a policy is the rationale for the policy… You set out four principles that you adhere to and then… you say on page 14 we must not become part of South Africa’s problem, we must remain part of their solution, we must not aim to impose ourselves, our solutions, our favorites in South Africa…

“Dammit, we have favorites in South Africa. The favorites in South Africa are the people that are being repressed by that ugly white regime. We have favorites!

“Our loyalty is not to South Africa, it’s to South Africans. And the South Africans are majority black. And they are being excoriated!

“It is not to some stupid, puppet government over there. It is not to the Afrikaaners’ regime. We have no loyalty to them. We have no loyalty to South Africa!

“To South Africans!

“I listen to this rationale first of all. ‘It is the leaders of South Africa and their people black and white who have the majority responsibility. They must rise to it.’ Well they are rising to it. They are rising to it with the only thing left available to them with that repulsive repugnant regime of Afrikaaners there. And it’s the only way they have, they’ve tried everything for the last 20 years. They begged! They borrowed! They crawled! And now they’re taking up arms!

“‘The second thing, progress toward peace requires a timetable. Timetable! Elimination of apartheid.’

“What’s our timetable? What are we saying to that repugnant regime? Are we saying you’ve got twenty days, twenty months, twenty years? We asked them to put up a timetable, what’s our timetable? Where do we stand morally?

“‘The choices before black South Africans are equally clear. We call on them to avoid easy descent into violence, terrorism and extremism. To demonstrate by their action the need for compromise.’

“Hell they’ve tried to compromise for twenty years. They’ve tried everything. Everything in their power! And look what’s happened to them. They’re being crushed.

“The fourth principle is that our policies and those of our allies expand political– Maybe it’s because I come from the civil rights movement in this country. We sat there and heard the exact same arguments. We cannot impose from the north a solution on the south. They must work out their problems black and white together. We cannot as a nation expose them to the economic ravages that come. We must anticipate what will happen to them after segregation before we eliminate segregation. My lord!… My God–worry about that when it comes!

“These people are being crushed, and we’re sitting here with the same kind of rhetoric. The same thing we heard. We heard, Go slow! We heard we have to take care of the problem afterward. We can’t impose–“

Shultz: You are totally misconstruing the testimony that I gave. Furthermore let me say that I hate to hear a senator of the United States calling for violence.

Biden: “I’m not calling for violence…. I hate to hear an administration and a secretary of state refusing to act on a morally abhorrent point… I’m ashamed that this country puts out a policy like this that says nothing, nothing. It says: continue the same. We put no timetable on it. We make no specific demands. We don’t set it down.

“I’m ashamed that’s our policy, that’s what I’m ashamed of. I’m ashamed of the lack of moral backbone!”

Shultz: “I resent that deeply because there is tremendous moral backbone in there on a bipartisan basis.”

Biden: “There is no bipartisan basis for this. Obviously the action has caused violence or at least has not stopped the violence. There is overwhelming violence in South Africa today. If you want to avoid more .. let the South African blacks know that we stand with them four square!”

Shultz. “We have let them know.”

Biden. “They don’t believe it, and neither do I.”

Notice that Biden bangs the table. This is consistent with reports that he also banged the table in a fiery confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1982 when he threatened to cut off aid to Israel over Israeli expansion into occupied territories.

In 1986, the Senate passed the Anti-Apartheid Act; and Reagan vetoed it as economic warfare that would lead to more unrest. The veto “was overridden by Congress, and South Africa was sanctioned by the US until the end of apartheid,” the Independent reported, when it published many of Biden’s comments last June, saying the speech had been unearthed by Amaka Anku, who leads Africa coverage for Eurasia Group.

Biden has said that he was detained when he went to South Africa with the Congressional Black Caucus and refused “to go in that door that says Whites Only.” He said that when Nelson Mandela visited Congress, “He thanked me for all the work I did on apartheid.”