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p Dear Comrades,

p To this great and historic Meeting we bring greetings to our brother Parties from the Communists of South Africa, from all revolutionaries of our country— in the gruesome jails of the fascist Vorster regime; working in perilous underground conditions; or participating in the armed struggle which is now raging in Southern Africa.

p As the draft Main Document before this Meeting points out the struggle for the liberation of our region is one ’of great importance for the future of Africa and the cause of peace’.

p The world is well aware that the racist leaders of the so-called white minority •in South Africa have turned our beautiful and wealthy country into a hell for the great majority of our people, especially for the indigenous Africans who comprise most of the population. Our land has been forcibly usurped; our people turned into a landless, rightless proletariat, the object of fierce and unrestrained exploitation and oppression.

p What is perhaps not so fully realised is that the present day Republic of South Africa is an imperialist state itself. It has seized the former mandate of Namibia (South West Africa) and exploits it as its colony. It is the main partner in the Unholy Alliance with Rhodesia and Portugal, who, together, retain a vast area of our continent as one of the last refuges of open and unashamed colonialism. It openly threatens the sovereignty and independence of Zambia and Tanzania—and, ultimately, of every African state.

p Against these terrorist, racist regimes the masses of people of our countries have learnt, through many years of bitter experience, there is no way to emancipation except that of revolutionary armed struggle. We did not reach this conclusion as a result of any preconceived notions regarding methods of struggle, any so-called universally-valid dogma. Indeed we fully agree that it is for the revolutionaries of every country to evolve their own methods, according to their own circumstances, of attaining our common goal: the conquest of power for the masses of working people. But in our conditions of total suppression of the people’s rights, of constant, daily terror and force exercised against the masses, with tens of thousands of patriots in detention and massacres a 667 commonplace, with the great majority of the people in a state of seething revolt against enslavement and intolerable affronts to their human dignity, there could be no other way forward.

p Indeed, comrades, a war has already begun and is in progress for the liberation of Southern Africa. In Mozambique, in Angola, in Guinea-Bissau, in Namibia and even in the Republic of South Africa itself, fighting has broken out. Brave African guerillas are dealing heavy blows at the fascist and racist regimes. Behind the lines the workers of town and countryside are increasingly defying the fascist terror and raising the banner of resistance. Inevitably the struggle will spread and merge into a single people’s war which can only end in the destruction of white minority rule and the establishment of people’s power. We shall win!

p In Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) since August 1967, numerous armed clashes have taken place between the ’security forces’ of the notorious Smith regime and guerilla units made up of joint forces of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the African National Congress (ANC)—the mass liberation movement of our country, the Republic of South Africa. These two organisations have concluded a military alliance which is an outstanding and inspiring example of true fraternal unity in action.

p It is no secret that the Smith regime relies heavily on massive military and economic aid from the fascist Republic in the South. In fact with the complicity of Britain and its Labour government the Republic of South Africa has sent troops into Rhodesia on a large scale since the outbreak of guerilla activities. Recently the South African Minister of Police, Muller, admitted in the allwhite Parliament that the Republic had sent further reinforcements armed and specially-trained police to fight in Zimbabwe, on the border of free Zambia, It cannot be doubted that, but for this aid, the Smith regime would by now have been overthrown, and that it now stands in the same relation to the fascist Republic as does the puppet regime in South Vietnam to the United States.

p This armed struggle enjoys the fullest support of our Party. I should like here at this great Meeting to inform you that members of your South African brother Party are fighting in the front lines, side by side with our non- Communist comrades. Their courage and devotion have proved worthy of the highest traditions of our movement; some have laid down their lives in the struggle to liberate our country.

p Comrades, we South African revolutionaries are deeply conscious of the international significance of our struggle.

p Behind the vicious and disgraceful regimes of Vorster, Smith and Caetano stand the sinister powers of NATO and Japan, of world imperialism. It is no exaggeration to say that, but for this backing—financial, military, political—our people would long ago have won their freedom.

p To the imperialists, South Africa is a treasure-chest for the accumulation of super-profits from the fruits of our rich mineral and other natural resources and from the merciless exploitation of African labour power.

p It is also a stronghold of reaction and colonialism in Africa and a strategic key-point in the global strategy of the imperialists. It is a hotbed for the 668 breeding of the disgusting theories of racism and neo-nazism. Under the successive Premierships of Verwoerd and Vorster, men who openly espoused the cause and ideas of Hitler during the war, the Republic of South Africa became the refuge of nazi war-criminals and a.haven for their capital which was’ endangered after the collapse of the ’Third Reich". Ever closer relationships, economic and political, are being forged with the neo-nazis of Bonn. West German imperialism is establishing a firm foothold in our country, challenging the well-entrenched interests of British, US and other well-established investors in the race to extract maximum profits, and concluding secret and sinister agreements regarding the production of fissionable uranium, poison gases and other weapons.

p Everywhere the South African racists are seen as among the outstanding supporters of international reaction and imperialism. The Israeli aggression of June 1967 helped the Republic of South Africa by forcing the closure of the Suez Canal, to the great profit of Cape Town and other South African ports. The Republic has reciprocated the favour by rendering important practical support to the Zionist aggressors.

p At the same time we are deeply conscious and appreciative of the powerful support for our people’s struggles from innumerable friends of freedom throughout the world. In one sphere after another of international relations, ranging from trade and diplomacy to culture and sport, the door is correctly being slammed in the face of the ignominious racists of South Africa.

p The independent states of Africa, the Soviet’ Union and other socialist countries, the labour and democratic movements in the capitalist countries, have repeatedly denounced apartheid. They have demanded that South Africa . implement human rights and dignity. They have demanded the release of Mandela, Sisulu, Kathrada, Mbeki, Fischer and innumerable other heroes of our people now serving life imprisonment and other heavy sentences under atrocious conditions in the fascist jails.

p Above all they have rendered and are rendering valuable practical support to our freedom-fighters: money, food, clothing, medicines, assistance in military training and—most precious—arms. We take this opportunity, comrades, in the presence of the leaders of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Mongolia, Cuba and other socialist countries, to say that our people will never forget the warm comradely solidarity they have shown in providing us with the means for our emancipation.

p Many of our brother Parties here represented have carried but many solidarity actions with our people, or taken part in broad anti-apartheid movements in their countries. To all those Parties—those of Britain and other West European and Scandinavian countries, of India and other Asian countries, of North and South America—may we express our deep gratitude; our confidence that they will redouble their efforts in the stormy period now facing our struggle; our hope that all here will follow their example.

p The very nature of our struggle has taught our revolutionaries, Communists and non-Communists alike, the fundamental lessons of internationalism. We know full well from practical experience that our struggle against imperialism is one with that of our brothers fighting the same enemy in every country of the world.

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p We are at one with the righting people of Vietnam. Their implacable and victorious fight against the biggest imperialist power is a shining example, a glorious inspiration, to all the oppressed and exploited of the earth.

p We are at one with the brother Arab peoples to our North, in their determined resistance to imperialist-backed Zionist aggression, for the recovery of their lands and the assertion of their rights to self-determination.

p We rejoice at every advance of our comrades everywhere. We hail the important step towards people’s power in which a big part has been played by the Marxist-Leninist vanguard: the Sudanese Communist Party. We hail every step in the social, economic and ideological progress and cohesion of our class brothers, our close and trusted allies, the leaders and the people of the socialist community.

p Our struggle also is not only for our own liberation. It is at the same time our contribution to the common fight, a fulfilment of our internationalist duty.

p That is exactly why for a number of years we of the South African Communist Party have been consistently and vigorously appealing for unity within the ranks of the international communist movement, vanguard detachment of the world anti-imperialist forces. Unity of our movement is the key to the rallying of all who fight imperialism, war, colonialism and exploitation. Our Party enthusiastically welcomed the convocation of this conference; we have to the best of our ability contributed to its preparation.

p Rarely, if ever, has an international gathering been prepared with such thoroughness, such patience, as this great and historic conference. We should like at this stage to express our very sincere appreciation of the tireless efforts of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party—indeed of all whose labours over the past 15 months have cleared the way to the achievement of this wonderful reunion of nearly all the main contingents of our great movement.

p We must recognise, comrades, that this has been no easy task. We are all well aware that a number of differences of perspective and interpretation have developed between various Parties. We hope very much that in the course of time, of comradely discussion, and above all, the test of practice, these differences will be resolved. That is a task which still confronts us.

p But, during the arduous preparations for this conference, most of us have come to realise that this long-term process could not and must not impede us in the most urgent and imperative duty which history has placed before us. That task is to concentrate at this stage not upon our temporary differences, but upon the immeasurably greater and more important area of our agreement; upon our pressing need to present a common front to the common enemy.

p We are faced with a ruthless, vicious and dangerous enemy: imperialism. The enemy, as well defined and described in the Main Document placed before us by the Preparatory Committee, is ceaselessly plotting acts of intervention and subversion against socialist and other non-imperialist countries, acts of provocation and outright lawless aggression. Against patriots, revolutionaries, working-class militants everywhere it wreaks savage reprisals and murder. It constantly menaces the world with the horrors of atomic, chemical and bacterial war which only our combined actions and vigilance hold at bay.

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p This enemy will not pause in its onslaught on our forces and our allies while we engage our energies in protracted debates.

p Therefore it became imperatively incumbent upon us to unite our ranks, and to agree on how to rally all anti-imperialist forces. We had to leave aside for the time being those issues where we differ. History demanded of us that we concentrate on the wide area of common agreement; that we restate our common tasks in contemporary terms in a manner capable of mobilising our whole movement and its allies.

p That task has been brilliantly accomplished by our Preparatory Committee and the documents it has placed before this conference.

p .Comrades, our Central Committee fully supports these documents. Our delegation has been entrusted and empowered, on behalf of our Party, to sign these documents and to pledge our Party’s strength and resources to mobilise the working people of South Africa for their translation into reality.

p We warmly express our agreement with those constructive speeches which have elaborated and elucidated these documents—speeches such as those of Comrades Brezhnev, Gomulka and Hall—and we feel that to explain exactly why we concur with the contents of the Main Document, the peace appeal, the documents on the preparation of the Lenin centenary and the demand for the ending of imperialist aggression in Vietnam—would merely be to repeat what others have already said most ably.

p We have listened carefully also to the addresses of those comrades who expressed differences with the documents, particularly the Main Document.

p Frankly, comrades, we find some of their arguments rather difficult to understand. For example, some comrades have gone into lengthy criticisms of the Document, not because of what it says but because of what it does not say. One would logically, perhaps, then expect them to propose some additional material. But surprisingly enough they are recommending that we delete whole sections amounting in some cases to three-quarters of the whole.

p We are also surprised at the type of subject-matter which some of these comrades are saying the Document lacks. More than one delegation here has drawn attention to the events in Czechoslovakia, despite the well-grounded appeal of our Czechoslovakian comrades not to make their country’s problems, at this complex stage, the subject of international debate.

p These comrades must be well aware that their special and rather strange point of view on this question is far from receiving general support in our Communist movement. And this is true of nearly all the other questions which a few Parties insist are so essential to the Document that their omission makes it unacceptable; even though there is nothing actually in the Document which we cannot all subscribe to. But these comrades know that their special view on these questions is one which this conference cannot and will not accept; they have repeatedly enjoyed and they have made full use of the opportunity to advance these views throughout the preparatory stages of this conference. The amendments they proposed which found general support were accepted and are included in the draft. The others were omitted, and propertly so.

p Surely, comrades, that was precisely what we set out to do in preparing this conference and its documents. It was clear to all of us that there were some 671 matters on which we could not all reach agreement now. Therefore we decided to devote ourselves to the priority question of formulating our agreement on the urgent tasks of the present stage of the anti-imperialist fight. This is precisely the measure of our achievement in drawing up this wide-ranging MarxistLeninist Document which is before us; which draws the statement of our immediate tasks out of the analysis of the current situation.

p Of course, each Party makes its own assessment of events at home and abroad. We could never hope to draw up a single document which would succeed in combining all the viewpoints of all the Parties, From our point of view, for example, we feel that a rather disproportionately large amount of attention has been devoted to the problems of Europe. We and other people actually engaged in anti-colonialist struggles would surely consider it overoptimistic to imagine the Social Democrats as partners in an anti-imperialist fighting front; we have fresh memories of the betrayal of the French Socialist Party over Algeria; the abject sell-out of the British Labour Party over Zimbabwe; the role of the West German Social Democrats as part of the Bonn imperialist policy of alliance with fascist South Africa.

p But we realise that this is a collective document of the movement as a whole, and we fully accept it and support it as such. We are totally opposed to any procedure of allegedly “improving” it by means of amputating its members or mutilating it.

p Comrades, our delegation would like here to say a word about the so-called principle of unanimity. It is true that unanimity is a goal towards which we must ever strive. But it would be absurd to elevate this into an absolute principle. We may not like to talk of ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ in a gathering such as this. But we are not lawyers and we are not a debating society; we are a gathering of practical revolutionaries engaged in a life-and-death struggle whose outcome will decide the future of mankind. We dare not allow ourselves to be placed in a position where a few Parties, or even a single Party can be given a power of veto which would in effect condemn our movement to paralysis. We appeal to all our comrades here, to their Central Committees, to participate in endorsing this unity-building Document. If they will not do it now, immediately, we trust that they will consider their position soon after we have concluded our deliberations and associate themselves. But if nearly all our Parties want to sign this Document now they must be free to do so.

p Dear comrades, we are well aware that we have not come here to engage in polemics with the rather puerile “ideological” propositions advanced by the Maoist group. We have no intention of doing so. But when it comes to the external activities of the Chinese government which impinge on our struggle against imperialism, which so far from advancing that struggle positively impede it and are in practice aiding and abetting the enemy, this is something we cannot afford to ignore. Our Party vigorously condemns the border provocations committed against the Soviet Union, the citadel of socialism and mainstay of the anti-imperialist forces everywhere. We were deeply impressed by the speech of the West German Communist Party delegate, when he gave such striking evidence of collusion between the Maoists and the Bonn imperialists.

p For a number of years we have seen the sidetracking and disruption of 672 various international solidarity organisations by Chinese delegations who persisted in dragging into gatherings of non-Communists their alleged ‘ideological’ campaign against the CPSU and the world communist movement. At one time the People’s Republic of China rendered valuable assistance to the African National Congress, the fighting national liberation movement of our country. But for several years, and without reason or explanation, this aid has been withdrawn; instead we find the Maoists subsidising and actually preserving from complete collapse a group of Right-wing renegades from our struggle whom documentary evidence now proves to have been started at the instance, and with the support, of the CIA.

p Our movement has not, and should not, shut the door to any Communist: Party. We have invited the Communist Party of China to every meeting at every stage of the convocation and preparation of this conference. They have refused even to accept our invitations; they have accused the Communists of all the world of being ‘revisionists’ and ‘renegades’. The world may judge to whom those descriptions more fittingly apply.

p Comrades, it is fitting indeed that our notable Meeting takes place on the eve of the centenary of the birth of that great genius of our movement, founder of the Soviet State and leader of the oppressed arid working people the world over—Lenin the Liberator. We must congratulate the initiators and the drafters of the fine address on this occasion which has been placed before us.

p We believe that our Meeting has been worthy of this momentous occasion, that it will go down as a turning point from which we shall go forward in greater unity than ever to rally our own forces and all fighters against imperialism, for fresh advances, fresh victories for the cause of human liberation.

Comrades, we are a part of the great army of Communists; the greatest army of freedom this earth has ever known. We uphold a glorious and noble cause whose ultimate, world-wide victory is assured. Not one of our Parties here represented is without its heroes and martyrs of the working class struggle. In the name of these honoured dead, comrades, of all we have fought so hard and so long to attain, here in this city whose very name is an inspiration to every revolutionary, let us rededicate ourselves now to our historic mission—the downfall of imperialism, war, oppression and the exploitation of man by man; the triumph of peace, national freedom, democracy and socialism, all over the world!