Mandela Vows S. Africa Democracy to Congress : Prolonged Applause Greets ANC Leader Before His Speech

Nelson Mandela pledged before a joint meeting of Congress today that South Africa’s future government would be a U.S.-style democracy but said that in the meantime his people have the right to use “the weapons of war” to defend their inalienable human rights.

“We must contend still with the reality that South Africa is a country in the grip of the apartheid crime against humanity,” said Mandela, the deputy president of the African National Congress who was released from prison Feb. 11 after 27 years as a prisoner of the government he took up arms against.

“We have yet to arrive at the point when we can say that South Africa is set on an irreversible course leading to its transformation into a united, democratic and non-racial country,” he said.

“Our people continue to die to this day, victims of armed agents of the state who are still determined to turn their guns against the very idea of a racial democracy,” Mandela told a rapt audience of lawmakers, diplomats and Cabinet officers in the House chamber.

Mandela thanked Congress for the sanctions against the government of South Africa imposed after the lawmakers overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto in 1986, and he repeated his call for direct economic aid to the ANC.

Mandela was greeted with prolonged applause as he made his way into the chamber. He beamed a wide smile as he mounted the podium and began a speech that was punctuated by applause.

In seeking more help, Mandela presented his vision of the South Africa of the future--a non-racial society with a democratic constitution, a bill of rights, an independent judiciary and a multi-party political system.

While defending the right of government to intervene in the economy to help the poor, he said the ANC “holds no ideological positions which dictate that it must adopt a policy of nationalization” and promised that foreign businessmen could have confidence in the security of their investments.

But Mandela, who has drawn criticism from members of Congress for his support of violence as well as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Libya’s Moammar Kadafi and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat, said such a democratic society could not be built until violence by the white South African government ends.

“(South Africa) thirsts for the situation where those who are entitled by law to carry arms, as the forces of national security and law and order, will not turn their weapons against the citizens simply because the citizens assert that equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental human rights which are not only inalienable but must, if necessary, be defended with the weapons of war,” he said in a 35-minute speech.

Mandela became the third former political prisoner to address a joint meeting of Congress in the last eight months, after Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa on Nov. 15 and Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel on Feb. 21.

Mandela was only the third private citizen ever to address a joint meeting, with the others being Walesa and Marquis de Lafayette in 1824.