Cameroon, 1969

2. Madam President, Mr. Secretary-General, Gentlemen, I have already

in the past had occasion, on behalf of the Federal Republic

of Cameroon, to address this Assembly, which embodies

mankind’s noblest aspirations and its greatest hopes for a

world in which the cardinal values would be universal peace

and co-operation.

3. I am present here today in quite a different capacity: I

have been chosen by the Assembly of Heads of State and

Government of the Organization of African Unity to

present to the General Assembly of the United Nations a

Manifesto on Southern Africa? and it is on behalf of all the

peoples of Africa, concerned with the fate of their

continent, as with that of all mankind, that I have the

privilege and honour of addressing you today.

4. It is a sign of the times to which one can hardly remain

oblivious that this important mission should be taking place

at the very moment when an African woman is elected to

the high position of President of the General Assembly of

the United Nations. I see in this event an invitation to

mankind to look more intently at the grievous problems of

Africa. I also see in it a living proof of the will of the

African peoples to strive for the betterment of mankind

and of all men without discrimination.

5. I hope you will permit me, therefore, to express to the

President our warmest congratulations on her election as

President of the twenty-fourth session of the General

Assembly of the United Nations, and the pride felt by all

African peoples. Knowing as I do her eminent qualities and

her long experience of the Organization and of international

affairs, I am convinced that, with the co-operation

of all delegations of goodwill and with the assistance of the

Secretary-General, whose courage, lucidity and dedication I

take pleasure in once again acknowledging, she will be able

to guide your work towards the success for which we are all

hoping.

6. The present session of the General Assembly of the

United Nations is being held at a peculiarly significant

period in the history of mankind, one that may even be a

decisive turning-point in its destiny. The age-old ambition

of man to be the master of himself and of the universe is

being fulfilled before our very eyes. Every year — one might

almost say every month — brings new conquests, the opening

up of new frontiers, whether in outer space or in the field

of life itself, where the biological sciences are opening

ever-increasing possibilities.

7. But, if this extraordinary and admirable progress quite

rightly stirs our enthusiasm, it is also disturbing us in some

measure, for mankind may be said to be bewildered today

by its own power. This feeling of bewilderment is not solely

that which we must feel when confronted with the

destructive power of the atom. At a more profound, more

structural, level it is the anguish we feel at a certain

inability to put scientific progress at the service of all

mankind.

8. The space age has begun, yet we cannot avert our eyes

from the harsh realities of this world, for we are tom

between what we are capable of doing and what we are

failing to do. Our planet, whose civilization is helping to

write the history of the cosmos, is still heavy with

contradictions capable of destroying civilization itself. For,

to be fully valid and to ensure its own continuity, our

civilization — even more than those which preceded it — needs

more than just the means, science and technology; it also

needs, and just as basically, an inspiration which can give a

meaning to its tremendous resources and place them truly

at man’s service; it needs constantly to be assured of its

purpose — of its human destiny.

9. In that connexion, the recent manifestations of social

unrest almost everywhere in the world are a warning,

admittedly a brutal and disorderly one and one often

encouraged and exploited by international subversion but,

none the less, a significant warning. These manifestations

reflect the anguish and bewilderment felt by people today,

increasingly assailed by fear that they may be caught up in

a gigantic machinery which threatens their search for

happiness, freedom and independence. For it is these that

are at stake in the present day. We need to ensure the

freedom and independence of all men and, at the same

time, to create conditions in which advances in science and

technology can be used for the full development of all peoples.

10. It is only fair to acknowledge that mankind has always

been aware of the need to safeguard human dignity through

its material progress. This awareness became stronger after

the Second World War, which made clear the single destiny

of mankind throughout the world. It is expressed in the

Charter of our Organization and in the Universal Declaration

of Human Rights, through which we affirm, in the

most solemn manner, our faith in humanity and our

common belief that men, independently of the accidents of

individual or collective existence, are born free and equal

under the law and that, over and above the reality of the

individual, there is an ideal of the species in a sense

transcending history, whereby all that is truly human

should be directed towards love, justice, truth and beauty.

11. We have, admittedly, gone a long way towards

realizing this supreme ideal; initially, within national

communities, most States recognizing that political democracy

and social justice are indispensable to their equilibrium

and efficiency; and then, at the level of the international

community, which, during the last decade, has been

considerably enlarged and enriched by the accession of

many new States to sovereignty. In this connexion, the

United Nations has played an important role to which

Cameroon, as a former Trust Territory which is about to

celebrate the tenth anniversary of its national independence,

wishes to pay tribute.

12. If the Organization of African Unity has nevertheless

deemed it useful to draw up the Manifesto which you have

before you and with which it a8Ks you to associate

yourselves, it is because it firmly believes that a faith which

is not total is a faith which is false unto itself. How

otherwise can we interpret the persistence of colonialism

and racial discrimination in Africa, and especially in

Southern Africa?

13. It is nine years now since the adoption of the United

Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to

Colonial Countries and Peoples [resolution 1514 (XV)]. We

are justified in beginning to question whether there is a

genuine desire on the part of the international community

to work effectively for the success of the struggle of the

peoples of Africa, and particularly those of the southern

part of our continent, to achieve their lawful rights to

freedom and independence.

14. In Namibia and in the Territories under Portuguese

rule, in Zimbabwe and in South Africa, we see the same

insolent scorn for pertinent resolutions of the United

Nations. It is now evident that this defiant attitude to

world opinion would not be possible without the support

of certain powerful international interests and, indeed, of

some Governments, which are thus betraying their obligations

towards mankind and the international community.

15. It is also clear that this attitude constitutes a decided

threat to international peace and security. Through its

Manifesto on Southern Africa, the Organization of African

Unity once again solemnly appeals to international opinion,

the pressure of which can, it believes, play a decisive role.

This appeal will be further underlined by the celebration in

1971 of the International Year for Action to Combat

Racism and Racial Discrimination, and it would be only

fitting if that year were to end with the organization in

Africa itself of an international seminar on the evils of

racial domination, designed further to arouse world public opinion.

16. For the problem with which we are confronted is one

that affects the whole of mankind. It would be senseless to

give racist overtones to our campaign when it is precisely

racism that we are fighting; racism, that prejudice which

aims to divide humanity into superior and inferior races and

to justify the domination of one race by another. Consequently,

our campaign implies the condemnation of all

racism and not the establishment of another, reverse,

racism. It is based on our unshakable belief that to deny the

human value of a single man is to imperil the dignity of all men.

17. By thus appealing to the universal conscience, we wish

not only to demonstrate our attachment to peace and to

the ideal of human brotherhood and our willingness to help

through dialogue and negotiation in solving the world’s

great problems, but also to revive our faith in man and our

attachment to his dignity, to foster the search, in these

troubled times, for the highest human values, and the

orientation of history towards the recognition of man by man.

18. We do not, of course, preach violence, but rather an

end to all violence, and more particularly an end to the

violence done to human dignity by the oppressors of

Africa. In Southern Africa, however, we are faced with the

most systematic violence ever seen in human history since

the days of nazism. It goes without saying that, should our

appeals still go unheeded, we shall have no option but to

continue to give the African peoples still under domination

all the support of which we are capable in their struggle for

freedom and independence. The United Nations itself will

be unable to continue evading the need to use all means,

including force, to safeguard both the human dignity of

those peoples and international peace and security.

19. How, indeed, in a world which turns a deaf ear to

what is happening, can the violence of oppression not call

forth the violence of revolt? And how can our ambition to

substitute the force of law for the law of force ever be

realized when the worst form of oppression triumphs at our

gates, with complicity more or less openly avowed?

Mankind is thus presented with the painful contradiction of

an ideal of peace and brotherhood which is constantly

affirmed but is tarnished in practice by bloody conflicts.

That contradiction already exists, in fact, not only in

Africa, where resistance to oppression is being organized

and is developing day by day, but in every part of the world

in which force is used to resolve differences between

nations and where it is essential—in the Middle East as in

South-East Asia—rapidly to find peaceful and just solutions.

20. We believe it is becoming a matter of urgency to take

measures that will enable the United Nations to play a

greater and more effective role in the elimination of

colonialism and racial discrimination in Africa and in the

maintenance of world peace and security. To achieve this,

all Member States must show greater loyalty to the

Organization by respecting its decisions and the machinery

it has set up, and they must understand that their

co-operation and concerted efforts are necessary, nay vital,

if United Nations decisions are to be translated into action

and the noble objectives of the Charter are to be achieved.

21. The great Powers must be reminded that their special

responsibility within the international community and

towards all mankind requires them to give more effective

support to United Nations efforts to promote respect for

human rights, the self-determination of peoples and world peace.

22. Contemporary civilization is not only faced with

contradictions between an increasing mastery of nature and

relative impotence to guarantee man’s freedom and between

the ideal of peace and human brotherhood and

continuing efforts to secure power and domination. Over

and above these there is another, greater, contradiction, in a

world of increasing interdependence, between our present

possibilities of transforming the human condition and the

persistent inequality of the conditions in which men live.

23. This inequality, due to historical causes, of which

colonialism and racial discrimination are not the least, is

daily becoming more pronounced with the constant deterioration

in the terms of trade which, by depriving the

developing countries of major resources in their struggle for

progress, is helping to widen the gulf separating the

prosperous from the under-privileged peoples.

24. While we can congratulate ourselves on the international

community’s increasing awareness of the importance

of this problem for the future of mankind, the fact

remains that the efforts so far made to solve it have not

yielded the expected results, either at the level of bilateral

co-operation or at the multilateral level. National interests

and egoism continue to act as powerful brakes on expansion

of the flow of aid, although there is general agreement

that what is needed is a concerted global strategy inspired

by a real determination to achieve realistically predetermined

objectives.

25. The Charter of Algiers made an invaluable contribution

towards the determination of the objectives and

methods that should be adopted to solve the problem in all

its manifold economic and political aspects. It was rapidly

to become clear, however, after the second session of the

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development at

New Delhi, that the developed countries were not yet

prepared to accept the vast programme of action formulated

in that Charter by the Group of developing countries.

The disappointment caused by the results of the Conference

has been deepened by what is already considered to be

the failure of the first United Nations Development Decade,

the results of which fell short of the initial expectations.

26. It is to be hoped that the Second Decade, being better

prepared, will see an improved co-ordination of the

possibilities for action by the international community in

this crucial sphere, so that more effective support may be

given to the efforts being made to secure the advancement

of the developing countries, This is indeed to be hoped, for

it is clear that postponement of solution of the problem of

giving the under-privileged peoples access to the benefits of

modem civilization will only complicate and worsen relations

between the developing countries and the advanced

States, to the detriment of the peace and unity of the human race.

27. In this connexion, we cannot but applaud the idea of a

Disarmament Decade in so far as it would serve to

consolidate throughout the world the climate of détente

essential for the protection of human rights and the release

of the additional resources needed for the great task of

development which — it should be added — also requires

mutual understanding, agreement and perseverance.

28. It is, indeed, absurd that huge sums should continue to

be swallowed up by the arms race while the bulk of

mankind lives in tragic and unjust penury. Tragic, not only

because it robs man of his basic dignity, but also because

there seems to be no prospect of immediate improvement,

even though the world’s means of overcoming poverty are

steadily increasing. Unjust because, in the world of today,

one of the common tasks of mankind is to achieve progress

the benefits of which must be shared fairly among all. If it

is accepted — and it is desirable, even necessary that it should

be accepted — that this material solidarity must be reinforced

by a moral solidarity, the absurdity of the arms race

becomes still more manifest. It is obvious that the

destructive power now available condemns all men either to

die together or to live together, and this leaves us, in fact,

no option but to build a lasting and equitable peace that

will offer all men the possibility of a fully human existence.

29. There is no doubt that mankind finds itself today at a

decisive turning-point in its history. This places upon us a

very heavy responsibility towards future generations. Our

scientific progress may well have little meaning for them if

we do not succeed in mastering the human problems with

which our societies are confronted, if we fail to bequeath to

those generations a world respectful of human dignity,

conscious of its unity, and building its destiny in a

brotherly dialogue, in peace and in justice, a world which

they can possess in peaceful and prosperous security.

30. Plainly, we cannot run the risk of ruining the very

foundations of our civilization. Man’s destiny is determined

not only by his intellectual and material powers; it is also

guided by great moral inspirations. We must therefore

remain faithful to the humanistic inspiration of our

civilization, for, in the last analysis, man is and must remain

the supreme end of all civilization.

31. The unity of man’s destiny is today more concrete and

more evident than ever before. For the first time in history,

mankind is consciously becoming a unified whole. For the

first time, man has at his disposal the means of shaping his

own destiny, allaying poverty and triumphing over violence.

32. Is it Utopian to ask the United Nations, which, we

repeat embodies our hopes for a better world, to deploy all

its resources so as to ensure that our era, which sees a

universal civilization taking shape, is the beginning of a

reign of genuine brotherhood in the world? How can we

forget the words of George Bernard Shaw: “Some people

see things as they are, and ask, why? I dream of things that

never were and I ask, why not?” Yes, nothing great will

ever come to pass without a little dreaming.