South Africa, Human Rights and the United Nations

In South Africa's apartheid the United Nations has met with its own antithesis. For, apartheid repudiates almost universally everything that the United Nations stands for. It is not merely a “form of racial discrimination,”1 it is also a system that permanently denies, “through laws, administrative decrees and practices any…role for the 19 million Blacks (in South Africa) and confers on the 4.5 million Whites a monopoly of economic, political and social power,”2 Such a system, as stated by the International Court of Justice on the Namibian issue, “is a violation of a norm, or rule, or standard of the international community.”3 And, as the apartheid regime has over the years grown more aggressive both in its domestic and external policies, the world community has come to increasingly recognize the system to be a crime against humanity which “constitutes a serious threat to international peace and security.”4 The point is that despite its abhorrent “crimes,” South Africa continues to be a member of the. United Nations and, by logic therefore, also a member of the world community. This raises an interesting question: Should the United Nations in order to be consistent to its own Charter and declarations expel South Africa and technically resolve its anti-thesis in the system of apartheid? But would this be a real solution? Whether South Africa remains a member of the United Nations or not, the oppressed population under apartheid would still constitute apart of humanity. Hence, in order to liberate this “part” the world community must act in unison to uproot apartheid from the very face of the earth. This is enjoined as much by the Declaration on all Forms of Racial Discrimination adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1965 to the effect that: “any doctrine of differentiation or superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous, and that there is no justification for racial discrimination in theory or in practice anywhere.” If this declaration has to be given a practical effect, the United Nations must deny South Africa under apartheid all attributes of an independent sovereign state. For human rights, as enshrined by the two covenants of 1948, are indivisible; hence it would depend on lawyers and jurists to provide for such rules in international law as would forfeit the right of a state to exist until it restores social, economic and political rights of its citizens in consonance with the principal ethics of the international community. To combat apartheid, we must isolate its political reality from its territorial base. In other words, the United Nations must declare that South Africa, as a territory, ceases to exist so long as apartheid has not been completely eliminated! As we shall see, this is a distinction which has not been given proper attention in the numerous debates and deliberations of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the means to combat apartheid.