We are gathered here in Lisbon, representatives of governments, non-governmental organisations and liberation movements, because there exists a situation in southern Africa which challenges everything that the world forces of democracy and peace are seeking to achieve. We have come here to express our solidarity with the countries who, because of their geographic location and principled stand, are placed in the frontline of the struggle against the inhuman and expansionist apartheid system. We meet also because, in that southern region of Africa, the extent of suffering, death and destruction inflicted on millions of people by the apartheid regime of terror has attained proportions which make it impossible for men and women of conscience to stand aside unconcerned.

Yesterday, Portugal was enmeshed in an unholy alliance with the racist and colonialist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia - ardent adversaries of African independence, peace and social progress. But today she stands among the artisans of liberation and justice in southern Africa - a glowing tribute to the ordinary men and women of this country and to their democratic organisations who, in 1974, having decided on the only honourable path leading to the defeat of fascism and colonialism, took it and followed it with resolution and decisiveness. In taking that path, together with the subjects of Portuguese colonialism, the people of Portugal laid an indestructible basis for the solution of the problem we meet here to confront. For, the victories you scored are irreversible. For that reason we believe this solidarity conference... will take its place as one of the great milestones on the solid road to the destruction of the regime of apartheid and colonialism in southern Africa...

In the early 1960s, African and other countries identified apartheid as a threat to international peace and security and sought United Nations action in terms of the United Nations Charter. In the period since then, the apartheid system has become a gruesome fact of life not only for an oppressed and exploited majority in South Africa, but also for the independent States and people of the whole of southern Africa. No longer does apartheid merely threaten security and peace. It has become the one single cause of insecurity in southern Africa and maintains a state of war covering the whole region.

Beginning with its violent but futile repression of the liberation struggle inside South Africa, the apartheid regime reached out across its borders to become involved in the suppression of the liberation movements fighting for independence in countries which the regime wanted to retain as a buffer zone against the southward march of the forces of African liberation. The independence of Zimbabwe in 1980 signalled the disappearance of the buffer zone, leaving the regime exposed to the full weight of international pressures. Within South Africa, the popular struggle climbed to new levels. On the Namibian front, the SWAPO offensive against the occupying South African racist troops assumed new dimensions and raised severe manpower problems for the colonial regime and weakened its hold on Namibia. Never had the apartheid regime been more isolated internationally, nor in deeper crisis internally.

It was in this context that racist Prime Minister P.W. Botha declared in 1980, "The strategic position of South Africa has changed. We must adapt or die." It was this grim assessment of the prospects for continued colonial domination and racist minority rule which, inter alia, induced the racist regime to agree to the holding of the Geneva Conference on Namibia [which was] expected to result in the signing of a cease-fire between the regime and SWAPO and to the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435, leading to the independence of Namibia.

It was at this critical moment in the struggle against apartheid domination and aggression that President Ronald Reagan won the elections in the United States. The South African regime knowing what to expect, aborted the Geneva talks. UN Security Council Resolution 435 was blocked and remains unimplemented. For the first time, the notorious and isolated regime was embraced, with all its sordid record of crimes against humanity, and publicly proclaimed a friend and ally of the United States administration, to be supported, encouraged, strengthened and protected in the continued perpetration of those crimes. For the first time, racist South African troops invaded the People`s Republic of Mozambique, on a mission of murder and destruction which came to be known as the Matola massacre. For the first time since Mussolini of fascist Italy, an independent African State, the People`s Republic of Angola, was not only invaded, but part of its territory was occupied, and continues to be occupied by the racist troops of fascist Pretoria. For the first time since the colonial war of the 19th century in South Africa, the peace-loving Kingdom of Lesotho was invaded by the South African racist army which perpetrated the notorious Maseru massacre... In an amazing display of reckless bullying and armed blackmail, the Washington-Pretoria alliance demanded the withdrawal of Cuban troops, which are in Angola at the request of the Angolan Government, but insisted on the occupation of Angolan territory by the invading South African Army, which is in Angola to murder, massacre and destroy...

Under the United States policy of "constructive engagement" there has been an increase in United States investments, loans, and the financing of apartheid; new avenues of military and nuclear cooperation with the racist regime have been opened up - as for example, the sale of Helium-3, which is used in the production of thermonuclear weapons and the sale of sophisticated computers and technology directly related to the nuclear research and development programme of the regime.

"Constructive engagement" has destroyed rather than saved life. For the black majority, infant mortality remains the highest in the world while life expectancy is the lowest in the world; unemployment of black workers has now reached the astronomical figure of two and a half million - more than 20 percent of the economically active population; educational spending for blacks continues to be 20 times less than for white South Africans; more than 80 percent of the black people live below the poverty datum line; millions of African people have been denied their birthright and dumped into the bantustans where unemployment, starvation, disease and other deaths await them. All this is happening whilst the Pretoria regime is proclaiming a policy of reform. But it is not a policy of reform: it is a policy of ever more violence and repression. As Newsweek magazine (March 21, 1983) has stated, apartheid has a "harsh new grip". A "harsh new grip" is part of the reality we have come to associate with "constructive engagement"...

Having won their independence and sovereignty after immense sacrifices involving thousands of lives over many years and decades, the frontline and other countries of southern Africa, no less than the entire continent of Africa, cannot surrender that independence to the South African expansionist regime or its allies. And yet, it is the cardinal objective of the apartheid regime to perpetuate itself in South Africa and dominate the rest of the region economically, militarily and politically in what is supposed to be the interests of the West. Our aim at this solidarity conference is to call for a new level of solidarity and support in the struggle to destroy the common enemy of the people of southern Africa, of Africa and of the international community...

The South African racists are accelerating their own nuclear programme. The 1979 explosion, detected by United States and Soviet satellites decidedly pointed to South Africa`s nuclear weapon capability. Equally ominous for the OAU`s declaration of Africa as a nuclear-free zone has been the report that the racist regime has declared its intention to station US Tomahawk missiles in South Africa... The most urgent task of the international community in the field of military and nuclear collaboration with the South African regime is to make the current embargo much more comprehensive and to ensure its implementation through national legislation in each country.

In South Africa today, the masses of our people, the African National Congress and other democratic organisations are involved in a mounting struggle to defeat such enemy manoeuvres as the so-called constitutional proposals, and move over to the overthrow of the apartheid system itself. Around the struggle, there is emerging a united mass democratic movement which is putting forward its own perspective for a new South Africa, on the basis of the Freedom Charter. The struggle that is raging in South Africa and Namibia is part of the same historical process which, in the lifetime of a generation, has resulted in the collapse of the colonial system. It represents the piercing point of the sword of decolonisation and liberation which the people of Africa have held aloft for decades and centuries in the battle to assert their right to national self-determination.

As we leave Lisbon at the end of this historic Conference we take with us a clear, practical programme of action which will enable us to mobilise the fullest support for the heroic people and governments of southern Africa who are making tremendous sacrifices in the cause of peace and justice for all humanity...

We honour the nation States of the frontline of southern Africa who have very recently through struggle emerged from centuries of colonial barbarism, deprivation and dehumanisation for your undaunted steadfastness in the cause of African liberation and the redemption of humanity. The decades of sacrifice and heroism by your peoples have not deterred you in your firm resolve not to succumb to racist blackmail, bribery, terror and aggression.

Bayete!

We salute you.