Saths Cooper: 'We can't overcome apartheid alone'
1988 1988-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 15 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 15
Saths Cooper is the former president of the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO) and the current chairman of the National Forum of South Africa. He was a close associate of Steve Biko.
I greet you in the name of our common struggle. The struggle that I come from is not restricted merely to what has become internationally notorious as apartheid. Apartheid is a local phenomenon.
The ongoing struggle in South Africa is a tribute to the remarkable resilience of the human spirit. It's a tribute to a people who, despite the obstacles, despite the repression, despite the exploitation, have persevered.
This people, often alone, often in the bleakest moments of struggle, often ask themselves, "If a Black president, a Nelson Mandela, were sitting in Pretoria, and thousands of white young people were being killed, would the rest of the world stand by and make pious statements about the horror of apartheid but do little else beyond that?" The answer that comes back is a very resounding "No."
Because this peculiar feature of apartheid, this form of racism present in my country, is not a phenomenon restricted there. Racism is alive and well in many parts of the world-and particularly here in the good old USA.
That racism called apartheid in my country is fueled by the national bourgeoisie with capitalist exploitation. It is maintained through the imperialist connections in Bonn, London, Paris, and Washington.
The greatest support that can be given to my people is to engage the imperialist beast where it exists—not merely by doing support work, which is important, but by going beyond. It is necessary to actually engage the imperialists in their own territory.
It is not good enough for us to merely continue being in struggles, to pass good revolutionary, solidarity resolutions, and to do back-up support work. There needs to be an integral involvement in our struggle because apartheid is not something we alone in South Africa have to overcome.
We will only be able to successfully overcome apartheid, its capitalist exploitation, when imperialism has been dealt a death blow. And that is the challenge for all of us who have come to be in struggle wherever we may be.