Former President of neocolonial South Africa Mr. Thabo Mbeki claims apartheid President FW De Klerk didn’t know that there was a UN convention declaring apartheid crime against humanity. This is what Mbeki said about De Klerk:

"What transpires is that he actually did not know that there is a convention declaring apartheid a crime against humanity,” Mbeki said.

I don't believe, as Mbeki claims that De Klerk didn't know there was a UN convention declaring apartheid a crime against humanity. This is a 1966 convention and De Klerk is a lawyer by training. Former apartheid government Foreign Affairs Minister Pik Botha worked under De Klerk; didn't he apprise De Klerk of that convention?

Even if he didn't know there was such a convention or even if that convention wasn't adopted by the UN in 1966, apartheid is a crime against humanity.

De Klerk did not deny that apartheid was crime against humanity. He didn't say there was or there wasn't such a convention. He said apartheid wasn't a crime against humanity. It was also his submission at the toothless Truth and Reconciliation Commission that apartheid was not a crime against humanity. Mbeki must not spin or sanitise what De Klerk said. De Klerk put it as blunt, crude and raw as that, period!

Thabo Mbeki should explain why the ANC government has for the past 25 years not ratified the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid which was opened for signature and ratification on the 30th November 1973. Below is the definition of the convention under discussion.

"On November 30, 1973, the United Nations General Assembly opened for signature and ratification the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. It defined the crime of apartheid as "inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."

Why has the ANC government not signed and ratified that convention? It is because they want to protect apartheid criminals who are their partners in crime. It is this same Mbeki who refused to endorse a class action against US corporations that did business with the apartheid government and made billions on the backs of African people. It is this same Mbeki who during a meeting with members of the Broederbond (a secret society of white people founded in 1918 responsible for apartheid) and captains of industry in 1987 in Dakar, Senegal said, "You can call me a Thatcherite if you like." Today he wants to be regarded as an "African Renaissance" man.

The African people know who the African Renaissance men are – men in the late 1940's who espoused that concept, men such as Cheikh Anta Diop and Robert Sobukwe. They spoke about African Renaissance when they were still students at university. Diop was at the Sorbonne in France and Sobukwe at Fort Hare in South Africa. During that time Mbeki was about 7 or 8 years old. Sycophants and ANC cheerleaders in the South Africa media and elsewhere rode on the bandwagon and attributed the concept of African Renaissance to Thabo Mbeki in the mid to late 1990’s. When they were shown that they were wrong, they said, “But Mbeki popularised it.” They ignored the contributions of Diop and Sobukwe and now say Mbeki popularised the concept of African Renaissance.

The PAC must ride on the crest of the wave of these minor achievements in international politics and at the UN General Assembly because it was the PAC that scored these minor victories at the UN. It was because of the PAC that the International community came to know about the brutality of the apartheid government when Robert Sobukwe and the PAC embarked on the Positive Action Campaign that culminated in the Sharpeville massacre when the people of South Africa marched against the carrying of passes. It was because of the Sharpeville massacre that the UN in 1968 declared March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The Apartheid government also had it tough at the UN and faced expulsion because of the PAC. The UN itself has now become hypocritical and tendentious by honoring Nelson Mandela only but not Sobukwe, the man who shook the citadels of white supremacy in South Africa and the world over to their very foundations and made the UN itself aware of the atrocities of apartheid. The echo of the voice of Sobukwe nevertheless still reverberates today.

The PAC must continue on the revolutionary path laid and traversed by Sobukwe and the PAC and leave day dreamers like Mbeki behind. Sobukwe said we must fight to call our soul our own; yet Mbeki and his ANC comrades have sold their souls to the devil. What an incorrigible lot!

The FW De Klerk Foundation has since apologized.

By Sam Ditshego

sam412d@gmail.com