PRESS CONFERENCE BY SOUTH AFRICA

PRESS CONFERENCE BY SOUTH AFRICA

On 27 April at 10:30 a.m., a meeting in the ECOSOC Chamber would celebrate the role of the United Nations in supporting the freedom struggle in South Africa, which ended 10 years ago this month, Dumisano S. Kumalo told correspondents this morning during a press conference at Headquarters.

The best way to share the joy of the people of South Africa this year was to remember that the United Nations played a very important role in attaining their freedom, he said.  In the 1940s, individual Member States in the Organization began to challenge the policies of discrimination in South Africa.  In 1962, the Special Committee against Apartheid was created, which had been very significant in highlighting and publicizing the issue of apartheid.  In 1974, the General Assembly banned South Africa from participating, giving observer status to liberation movements such as the African National Congress instead.

In 1978, the General Assembly declared apartheid a crime against humanity, he said.  That was a significant event, as the movement against apartheid was a global one, and the United Nations offered people a place where they could rally.

With the situation in Iraq, and criticism of the United Nations, he wanted to remind those people who thought the Organization had no credibility that in South Africa the Untied Nations played an important role, with such United Nations officials as Ibrahim Gambari, then Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheid and currently Under-Secretary-General, and Angela King, former Chief of Mission of the United Nations Observer Mission in South Africa, who recently retired as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, and had worked in South Africa with Lakhdar Brahimi.

During the meeting, chaired by the President of the General Assembly, the Secretary-General would speak.  The President of the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council and representatives of the regional groups had been invited, as well as Mr. Gambari and Ms. King.  Mr. Kumalo would read a message from his President, Thabo Mbeki.

* *** *