UN General Assembly
1977

50. Southern Africa remains a dangerous tinderbox which threatens peace in that region and in the world because apartheid is violence, both moral and physical, and because apartheid represents a total contempt for our Organization and its Charter. Upper Volta, whose philosophy is based on respect for man, whatever his civilization or culture, denounces and condemns once again the anachronistic and ignoble scourge of apartheid which stops at nothing to repress and massacre innumerable Africans, whose only crime is that they have a black skin. From this rostrum I wish to pay a tribute to the memory of Steven Biko and to all the martyrs of southern Africa who courageously fell before bullets or were crushed by torture, and to all those who, while we are meeting here, are paying dearly in the horrors of the gaols of Vorster and Ian Smith for their rejection of apartheid and for their ardent quest for dignity, justice and independence.