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My Reminiscences of Oliver Tambo

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My Reminiscences of Oliver Tambo REMINISCENCES OF OLIVER TAMBO1 By E.S. Reddy Our First Meeting in 1960 I first met Oliver Tambo at the United Nations around October 1960, during the session of the General Assembly. I was a political affairs officer in the Department of Political and Security Council Affairs, primarily engaged in research on Africa and Asia, especially on problems under consideration by the United Nations. I used to go often at lunch time to the Press area - to the office of Donald Grant, correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Despatch and Ms. Mary Hagen, correspondent of the Patriot and Link in New Delhi ± to get the latest news and exchange views. At that time our main interest was in news about the Congo and Patrice Lumumba. One day, when I was there, Oliver Tambo dropped in and I was introduced to him. I had, of course, known of him for many years. Oliver had come to the UN to lobby for sanctions against the South African regime. At that time, there was no precedent for a UN hearing of a petitioner from South Africa. He could only meet delegates to the General Assembly.2 After escaping from South Africa at the end of March 1960, Oliver had met many leaders of the Commonwealth at their meeting in London and had attended the Second Conference of Independent African States in Addis Ababa in June. So he knew and could contact many African delegates and several Asian delegates, including V.K. Krishna Menon, Chairman of the delegation of India to the General Assembly. The Non-aligned Group at the UN set up a small sub-committee on South Africa, chaired by U Thant, ambassador of Burma. Oliver was in contact with the 1 See also: extracts from letters of Oliver Tambo to E. S. Reddy, 1964-1973, at www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/or/or-es.html. 2 A ªSouth African United Frontº in exile ± consisting of ANC, PAC, South African Indian Congress and SWANU ± was set up earlier in the year in London. (It lasted only for a year). Vus Make of PAC came to New York around the same time as Oliver. He was given a job at the Ghana Mission to the UN and stayed on in New York for one or two years. But Oliver stayed only for a few weeks. sub-committee. A year later, after the death of Dag Hammarskjold, U Thant was elected Acting Secretary-General of the UN. U Thant had developed great respect for Oliver. As Secretary-General he did not meet Oliver (except perhaps at some receptions) and Oliver did not seek a formal appointment with him in order not to embarrass him. But they were in communication through Dr. Ralph Bunche, Under-Secretary-General of the UN, and through me when I became Principal Secretary of the UN Special Committee against Apartheid in March 1963. I remember that Oliver was warm and modest. He did not boast about the strength of his organization or resort to radical rhetoric, as many representatives of liberation movements did. He was a thinker and an intellectual with a knowledge of world affairs. He had a very positive attitude towards the United Nations. We discussed the prospects in the UN. The Security Council had passed a resolution on 1 April 1960, after the Sharpeville massacre, calling upon the South African Government ªto initiate measures aimed at bringing about racial harmony based on equality¼ and to abandon its policies of apartheid and racial discrimination; and requesting the Secretary-General, ªin consultation with the Government of the Union of South Africa, to make such arrangements as would adequately help in upholding the purposes and principles of the (United Nations) Charter¼º The Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, went to London during the Commonwealth meeting and met the South African Foreign Minister Eric Louw on 13-14 May. (Prime Minister Verwoerd could not attend). He did not visit South Africa until January 1961 because of his preoccupation with the Congo crisis. I did not know at the time but Robert Resha told me in July 1963 that Oliver requested an appointment to see Hammarskjold in London. He was received by Mr. Weischoff, a director in the UN, who accompanied Hammarskjold to London and later to South Africa. After the meeting, Weischoff warned Oliver not to tell the media that they had met; if he did, Weischoff would deny any meeting. Meetings with Oliver during the General Assembly session in September- December 1963 I met Oliver again several times during the session of the General Assembly in 1963. The Special Committee against Apartheid was established by a resolution of the General Assembly on November 7, 1962, and held its first meeting on April 2, 1963. I was appointed its Principal Secretary, after its membership was decided at the end of February. The Western Powers declined to become members of the Committee, the first Committee they boycotted. It was expected that with the Western boycott and the intransigence of the South African Government, the Special Committee would be totally ineffective. But it proved to be one of the most dynamic committees of the United Nations and gained respect even from Western delegations. The Special Committee set a precedent by hearing petitioners from South Africa. In July 1963, an ANC delegation came to New York and appeared before the Special Committee. It was composed of Duma Nokwe, Robert Resha and Tennyson Makiwane. Robbie stayed on for several days after the meeting. (He was then in charge of Algeria, France, Britain and the United Nations.) We became good friends. The delegation reported to Oliver how helpful we were. The Committee presented two interim reports to the General Assembly and the Security Council, in May and July 1963, and a detailed annual report in September 1963 recommending a series of measures by the United Nations and Member States to exert pressure on the South African Government and to provide assistance to the families of the political prisoners. Diallo Telli of Guinea, the first Chairman of the Special Committee, was a true African patriot. He was chairman of the political committee of the Summit Conference of Independent African States, held in Addis Ababa in May 1963 which established the Organization of African Unity. The Committee, and then the Conference, unanimously adopted a substantive resolution on apartheid, endorsing all the recommendations of the first interim report of the Special Committee. The Conference decided to despatch a delegation of foreign ministers of four countries ± Liberia, Tunisia, Madagascar and Sierra Leone ± ªto inform the Security Council of the explosive situation existing in South Africaº. At the request of these foreign ministers, representing all of Africa, the Security Council met early in August and adopted a resolution recommending an arms embargo against South Africa. The United States voted for this resolution and announced an arms embargo. Britain and France abstained. Oliver came for the General Assembly session which followed. His main concern at the United Nations was to secure effective sanctions against South Africa. But we were also seriously concerned about the enormous repression in South Africa. Thousands of people were arrested in South Africa in 1963 and there were numerous reports of torture of detainees. Leaders of the Umkhonto, the ANC military wing, were arrested in Rivonia in July. A series of trials were taking place. The Special Committee did all it could to publicise the situation. It recommended to the General Assembly and the Security Council to call on South Africa to end all repression, terminate the trials, and release all political prisoners. At my suggestion, it also recommended an appeal to all governments to provide assistance to the families of political prisoners.3 Resolution on the Rivonia Trial Shortly before the General Assembly session, I received a letter from Mary Benson in London that Nelson Mandela and the Rivonia prisoners would soon be brought to trial. I spoke to Diallo Telli and we agreed that an emergency debate should be proposed in the General Assembly when the trial began. In terms of the United Nations Charter, Article 12, when the Security Council is acting on a dispute or a situation, the General Assembly cannot make any recommendations. Since the Security Council had the situation in South Africa on its agenda, I was concerned that the General Assembly might be precluded from adopting any resolutions on the matter. That would have been unfortunate, as we could get little from the Security Council where the five permanent members -including Britain, France and the United States ± had the right of veto. I felt, however, that if the question of political prisoners was taken up in the General Assembly, no delegation would raise the procedural problem. And the South African problem would remain on the agenda of the General Assembly. Perhaps my fears were exaggerated. No delegation had raised the procedural problem earlier though the Security Council had discussed the South African situation after the Sharpeville massacre and kept the matter on its agenda. On October 8, 1963, I heard on the radio at 8 a.m. that Nelson Mandela and others were brought before the court. I telephoned Diallo Telli at the other end of the city and rushed to my office as soon as I could. 3 I had read a report in the British press that Canon Collins had made an urgent appeal for more contributions to the Defence and Aid Fund as its resources were inadequate to provide legal defence for the political prisoners and assistance for their families. Diallo Telli acted immediately. At 10.30 a.m.
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