In years gone by, some of the greatest men of our century have stood here to receive this Award, men whose names and deeds have enriched the pages of human history, men whom future generations will regard as having shaped the world of our time. No one could be left unmoved to be plucked from the village of Groutville, a name many of you have never heard before and which does not even feature on many maps-to be plucked from banishment in a rural backwater, to be lifted out of the narrow confines of South Africa's internal politics and be placed here in the shadow of these great figures. It is a great honor to me to stand on this rostrum where many of the great men of our times have stood before.

The Nobel Peace Award that has bought me here has for me threefold significance. On the other hand it is a tribute to my humble contribution to efforts of democrats on both sides of the color line to find a peaceful solution to the race problem........

On the other hand the Award is a democratic declaration of solidarity with those who fight to widen the area of liberty in my part of the world. As such, it is a sort of gesture which gives me, and millions who think as I do, tremendous encouragement.......

From yet another angle, it is a welcome recognition of the role played by the African people during the last fifty years to establish, peacefully, a society in which merit and not race, would fix the position of the individual in the life of the nation...

Though I speak of Africa as a single entity, it is divided in many ways-by race, language, history and custom; by political, economic and ethnic frontiers. By in truth, despite these multiple divisions, Africa has a single common purpose and single goal-the achievement of its own independence. All Africa, both lands which have won their political victories, but have still to overcome the legacy of economic backwardness, and lands like my own whose political battles have still to be waged to their conclusion-all Africa has this single aim; our goal is united Africa in which the standards of life and liberty are constantly expanding; in which the ancient legacy of illiteracy and disease is swept aside, in which the dignity of man is rescued from beneath the heels of colonialism which have trampled it. This goal pursued by millions of our people with revolutionary zeal, by means of books, representations, demonstrations, and in some places armed force provoked by the adamancy of white rule, carries the only real promise of peace in Africa. Whatever means have been used, the efforts have gone to end alien rule and race oppression.

There is a paradox in the fact that Africa qualifies for such an Award in its age of turmoil and revolution. How great is the paradox and how much greater the honor that an Award in support of peace and the brotherhood of man should come to one who is a citizen of a country where the brother hood of man is an illegal doctrine, outlawed, banned, censured, proscribed and prohibited; where to work, talk or campaign for the realization, is deliberate government policy. It is part of the cost of apartheid, exorbitant in terms of human suffering.

"Apartheid has spawned discriminatory education such as Bantu education, education for serfdom, ensuring that the government spends only about one-tenth on a black child per annum for education of what it spends on a white child. It is education that is decidedly separate and unequal. It is to be wantonly wasteful of human resources, because so many of God's children are prevented, by deliberate government policy, from attaining their fullest potential. South Africa is paying a heavy price already for this iniquitous policy, because there is a desperate shortage of skilled manpower, a direct result of the shortsighted schemes of the racist regime. It is a moral universe that we inhabit, and good and right and equity matter in the universe of the God we worship. And so, in this matter, the South African government and its supporters are being properly hoisted with their own petard.

"Apartheid is upheld by a phalanx of iniquitous laws, such as the Population Registration Act, which decrees that all South Africans must be classified ethnically and duly registered according to these race categories. Many times, in the same family one child has been classified white while another with a slightly darker hue has been classified Colored, with all the horrible consequences for the latter of being shut out from membership of a greatly privileged caste. There have, as a result, been several child suicides. This is too high a price to pay for racial purity, for it is doubtful whether any end, however desirable, can justify such a means. There are laws, such as the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, which regard marriages between a white and a person of another race as illegal. Race becomes as impediment to a valid marriage. Two persons who have fallen in love are prevented by race from consummating their love in the marriage bond. Something beautiful is made to be sordid and ugly. The Immorality Act decrees that fornication and adultery are illegal if they happen between a white and one of another race. The police are reduced to the level of Peeping Toms to catch couples red-handed. Many whites have committed suicide rather than face the disastrous consequences that follow in the train of even just being charged under this law. The cost is too great and intolerable.

"Such an evil system, totally indefensible by normally acceptable methods, relies on a whole phalanx of draconian laws such as the security legislation which is almost peculiar to South Africa. There are the laws which permit the indefinite detention of persons whom the Minister or Law and Order has decided are a threat to the security of the state. They are detained at his pleasure, in solitary confinement, without access to their family, their own doctor, or a lawyer. That is severe punishment when the evidence apparently available to the minister has not been tested in an open court-perhaps it could stand up to such rigorous scrutiny, perhaps not; we are never to know. It is a far too convenient device for a repressive regime. The minister would have to be extra special not to succumb to the temptation to circumvent the awkward process of testing his evidence in an open court; and thus he lets his power under the law be open to the abuse where he is both judge and prosecutor. Many, too many, have died mysteriously in detention. All this is too costly in terms of human lives. The minister is able, too, to place people under banning orders without being subjected to the annoyance of the checks and balances of due process. A banned person for three or five years becomes a nonperson who cannot be quoted during the period of her banning order. She cannot attend a gathering, which means more than one other person. Two persons together talking to a banned person are a gathering! She cannot attend the wedding or funeral of even her own child without special permission. She must be at home from 6 p.m. of one day to 6 a.m. of the next, on all public holidays and from 6 p.m. on Fridays until 6 a.m. on Mondays. She cannot go on holiday outside the magisterial area to which she has been confined. She cannot go to the cinema, or to a picnic. That is severe punishment, inflicted without the evidence allegedly justifying it being made available to the banned person, or having it scrutinized in a court of law. It is serious erosion and violation of basic human rights, of which blacks have precious few in the land of their birth. They do not enjoy the rights of freedom of movement and association. They do not enjoy security of tenure, the right to participate in the making of decisions that affect their lives. In short, this land, richly endowed in so many ways, is sadly lacking in justice.

"Once a Zambian and a South African, it is said, were talking. The Zambian boasted about their Minister of Naval Affairs. The South African asked, 'But you have no navy, no access to the sea. How then can you have a Minister of Naval Affairs?' The Zambian retorted: 'Well, in South Africa you have a Minister of Justice, don't you?'

"It is against this system that our people have sought to protest peacefully since 1912 at least, with the founding of the African National Congress. They have used the conventional methods of peaceful protest-petitions, demonstrations, deputations, and even a passive resistance campaign. A tribute to our people's commitment to peaceful change is the fact that the only South Africans to win the Nobel Peace Prize are both black. [The other South African Peace Laureate had been Chief Albert Luthuli, President General of the African National Congress, in 1960.] Our people are peace-loving to a fault. The response of the authorities has been an escalating intransigence and violence, the violence of police dogs, tear gas, detention without trial, exile, and even death. Our people protested peacefully against the pass laws in 1960 and 69 of them were killed on March 21, 1960, at Sharpeville, many shot in the back running away. our children protested against inferior education, singing songs and displaying placards and marching peacefully. Many in 1976, on June 16 and subsequent times, were killed or imprisoned. Over 500 people died in that uprising. many children went into exile. The whereabouts of many are unknown to their parents. At present, to protest that selfsame discriminatory education and the exclusion of blacks from the new constitutional dispensation, the sham local black government, rising unemployment, increased rents and General Sales Tax, our people have boycotted and demonstrated. They have staged a successful two-day stay-away. Over 150 people have been killed. It is far too high a price to pay. There has been little revulsion or outrage in the West at this wanton destruction of human life.

"In parenthesis, can somebody please explain to me something that has puzzled me? When a priest goes missing and is subsequently found dead, the media in the West carry his story in very extensive coverage. [A reference to the abduction and murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko by the Polish secret police in October 1984.] I am glad that the death of one person can cause so much concern. But in the selfsame week when this priest is found dead, the South African police kill 24 blacks who had been participating in a protest, 6,000 blacks are sacked for being similarly involved, and you are lucky to get that much coverage. Are we being told something I do not want to believe, that we blacks are expendable and that blood is thicker than water, that when it comes to the crunch, you cannot trust whites, that they will club together against us? I don't want to believe that this is the message being conveyed to us.

"Be that as it may, we see before us a land bereft of much justice, and therefore without peace and security. Unrest is endemic and will remain an unchanging feature of the South African scene until apartheid, the root cause of it all, is finally dismantled. At this time the army is being quartered on the civilian population. There is a civil war being waged. South Africans are on either side. When the ANC and the PAC were banned in 1960, they declared that they had no option but to carry out the armed struggle. We in the SACC have said that we are opposed to all forms of violence-that of a repressive and unjust system and that of those who seek to overthrow that system. However, we have added that we understand those who say that they have had to adopt what is a last resort for them. Violence is not being introduced into the South African situation de novo from outside by those who are called terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on whether you are oppressed or an oppressor. The South African situation is violent already and the primary violence is that of apartheid, the violence of forced population removals, of inferior education, of detention without trial, of the migratory labor system, etc.

"There is a war on the border of our country. South African faces fellow South African. South African soldiers are fighting against Namibians who oppose the illegal occupation of their country by South Africa, which has sought to extend its repressive systems of apartheid, unjust and exploitative.

"There is no peace in Southern Africa. There is no peace because there is no justice. There can be no real peace and security until there be first justice enjoyed by all the inhabitants of that beautiful land. The Bible knows nothing about peace without justice, for that would be crying, "Peace, peace, where there is no peace." God's shalom peace, involves inevitably righteousness, justice, wholeness, fullness of life, participation in decision making, goodness, laughter, joy, compassion, sharing and reconciliation.

"I have spoken extensively about South Africa, first because it is the land I know best, but because it is also a microcosm of the world and an example of what is to be found in other lands in differing degree-when there is injustice, invariably peace becomes a casualty. In El Salvador, in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Latin America, there have been repressive regimes