Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-12

MR MINTY: Thank you, Chair.  As a South African I would like to take this opportunity to say what a privilege and honour it was for me and for many others of over almost three decades to work with people like Lord Hughes all over the world and I think when this hearing is taking place today, a tribute has been paid to people here for making the remarkable testimony that we just heard in the earlier session.
 We should also remember the millions of people all over the world who played a major part in the democratic transformation of South Africa.
 Chair and friends, although a South African, I speak on the bases of my direct experience in exile in the period since June 1958 when we formed a boycott movement, renamed the Anti-Apartheid Movement immediately after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 and in that capacity I served the movement until 1994.
 Our movement was formed in direct response to the appeal by Chief Lituli, President General of the ANC, Allan Paton and many other Democratic leaders, who then in June '59 called for a boycott of Apartheid South Africa.
 I want to emphasize that we campaigned for the isolation of the Apartheid system and not of South Africa or South Africans as such.  It was a peaceful form of moral pressure, not in isolation from the struggle of the majority population, because the sanctions campaign was part of that liberation struggle taking place in South and Southern Africa at that time.
 Although we campaigned effectively for the sports, cultural and other boycotts, our central objective was to exert decisive pressure through economic sanctions and as the Apartheid state began to be militarised in preparation for war against its own people, as well as against newly independent African states in the '60's, we also organised successful campaigns for an arms embargo.
 We should remember that in 1960, '61 with the banning of the liberation movements, South Africa is in history the only country in the world that prepared for armed struggle long before that armed struggle took place and so began a massive one-sided arms race in Africa with terrible destructive consequences for the rest of Africa and the people of Southern Africa.
 Within weeks of the establishment of our movement in London, corporate South Africa responded promptly by setting out the South African foundation in London to counteract our so-called false anti-apartheid information.  
 It voluntarily decided to act as a respectable face of Apartheid South Africa, pedalling its propaganda and even tried to penetrate the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
What was considered to be false information carried out by the Anti-Apartheid Movements, the hearings of the TRC have demonstrated that we were in fact very far from the truth and were by no means exaggerating.
 There should be no mistake about the vital role of corporate South Africa in sustaining and nurturing the Apartheid system and remaining largely silent in the face of growing repression, intimidation and terror that took place over three decades.
 Important sections of big business can sometimes now be heard to say, when pressed, that perhaps they should with hind sight have been more pro-active against Apartheid.
 This can be considered as an important statement, but we must recognise the context in timing and note that it only refers to aspects of petty Apartheid or perhaps the quest to liberalise certain features of Apartheid in order to make the system more respectable and acceptable to the international community.
 It had nothing whatsoever to do with dismantling the major Apartheid structure in favour of a one person one vote democracy.  Indeed the closest that certain enlightened business sectors came to, was in supporting democracy or as to speak of power sharing in a qualified franchise, since they were primarily concerned with protecting the White minority power and privilege structure.
 This was to be - there was of course to be no qualified franchise as it effected Whites.  From the Sharpeville crisis of 1960 and virtually until the democratic transformation of our country, the business sector collaborated with the Apartheid regime, participated directly in developing and expanding its war-machine.
 Apartheid South Africa was thus able to militarise a society, moving systematically from the police state of the '60's to the virtual garrison state of the 1970's and '80's until the very high price of this process plus the decisive role of the internal struggle and external pressure resulted in bringing to an end its error of exclusive power.
 Apartheid reached a cul-de-sac.  Throughout this process - period the corporate sector played a central role in the military and nuclear build up and engaged the elaborate smuggling and other operations to undermine the international arms embargo.
 It secured and developed vital repressive and other technology and as evidence admitted to the TRC confirms, the private business sector was a contractual partner of the state for thousands of defence projects.
 Of course this was not all, since the business sector also served the regime in securing international financial (indistinct) and military related technology.
 How then can corporate South Africa dare to claim that it did not act as an ally and sustainer over the Apartheid system.  It is better to come clean to disclose its full role in supporting and defending the White power system and by making a decisive break with the past and that will start the process of national reconciliation which is so vital a pre-requisite for building a new nation that it can at last live in peace with itself and concentrate on the immense task of reconstruction and development.
 It is a matter of great regret that the corporate sector and the captains of industry, could not even master the minimum of human compassion and social responsibility by protesting at the enormous crimes of Apartheid committed against the majority African population, both within the borders of South Africa and beyond.
 They could also have provided humanitarian assistance and legal defense to those who were victimised by the Apartheid and machine and this too they were reluctant to provide, including for trials such as the massive treason trials.
 Over the three decades, since the early '60's, we in the Anti-Apartheid Movement called for an end to torture and solitary confinement, to the end of banning and banishment, to ending detention without trial, to stop the mass removals of millions of people, for the release of political leaders, for an end to the (indistinct) labour system, for an end to the pass laws, for the repeal of the group ares act, for an end to the labour scandals that were taking place on the farms.
 When the world called for these essentially humanitarian actions, there was always a deadly silence from the corporate sector.  I'm not saying that some of them never took up the cause, but it is part of our tragic history that always there were very few and always they were very late.
 What is the use of being so late, having missed so many opportunities and how often were these actions motivated more by the need to win respectability abroad and to avert further sanctions than real caring and genuine concern for the victims and the real concern to see that the wrongs were addressed.
 Business leaders claim that they supported gradualism, you know move away from the political system rather than supporting rapid change and I have looked at the long sets of resolutions and discussions that they referred this Commission to.  So at best they wanted a new Apartheid political structure and not a non-racial society.
 The concept of non-Whites, negative non-human persons, was prevalent in the business sector as elsewhere and hence even in the final stages the corporate sector spoke of power sharing and qualified franchise, whereby we as non-Whites should have certain financial or property resources before we could be trusted with a vote.
 This criteria was not to apply to Whites as I have said.  So, gradually in their eyes we would be allowed to become a little more human, gradually, depending on our financial resources, but that too had to be tempered with a turning political stability.
 So-called anti-apartheid resolutions of the corporate sector called for reforms taking place and said that these reforms of the Apartheid regime we should congratulate the Apartheid regime rather then criticize it.
 They accompanied all those statements by demand that the Government should, even in that reformed process, maintain political stability and in one resolution I'm amazed to see even concern for health in certain sectors should reform danger health presumable of the White population.
 So it was essentially concerned to protect the White power structure and keep control and power in the hands of White South Africans.  It called for greater credit to be given to the regime for its efforts rather than it calls for sanctions should be increased.
 It ignored the great destruction unleashed against newly independent African states and never seemed to protest about it.
 South Africa, Chair and friends, we must remember was at that time over three decades to be terrorist regime number one, internally and globally in the eyes of the united nations and of global society.
 So we were not just dealing with an abberation or an abnormal society.  We were dealing with a system that was a crime against humanity and that in terms of protecting its power structure behaved, as I say, as terrorist regime number one in the global community.
 The corporate sector, in conclusion, has disclosed very little about its collaboration and complicity.  For example, with those who as contractors, these thousands of contractors that we are told about, will not one stand up and say today how they assisted South Africa's war machine at a critical point, how they provided the repressive capacity to monitor and to control the entire Black population, how they developed and secured technology which enabled South Africa to build nuclear weapons.
 This deadly silence on the part of corporation is in itself very loud today.
 I thank you, Chair.