Text of the letter from Bishop Desmond Tutu, General Secretary, South African Council of Churches, to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, protesting against South African Prime Minister PW Botha’s invitation to the United Kingdom, May 25 1984

THE SOUTH AFRICAN COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

May 25, 1984

Mrs. M. Thatcher 10 Downing Street

London , SW 7, England

Dear Mrs. Thatcher :

On be h al f of the South African Council of Churches, I hope that you and yours had a pleasant and happy Easter.

I am writing to express our sense of shock t hat you and your government should have seen fit to invite Mr . P.W. Botha, the South African Prime Minister to come to England as an official guest of your government. It is, in our view, an affront to those such as many in our member churches who are striving to work for fundamental change in South Africa by peaceful means. It is like a slap in the face of millions of black South Africans who are the daily victims of one of the most vicious policies in the world.

Recently a delegation of church leaders visited England as part of their tour to various countries of the Western world to publicize the appearance of a report on the South African government's Forced Population Removal Policy . This report is a joint effort between the South African Council of Churches and the Catholic Bishop's Conference designed to highlight the most vicious aspect of apartheid . The report shows that at this point the South African government has uprooted over three and one-half million black people.

The South African government wants to project an image of a regime that is embarking on a reform policy. It has produced a new constitution and has signed a peace pact with Mozambique and is disengaging from Angola. So, its supporters would argue, it should be given a chance. But is it really involved in real change or reform? The constitution excludes totally from its provisions 70% of the population . How can that be construed as even remotely democratic or as being a step in the right direction? It provides f or three chambers: one for whites, one for coloured , and one for Indians.

Clearly, far from moving from racism, this constitution actually entrenches and sanctions it. The ratio of white: coloureds: Indian in the parliamentary committees is to be 4:2:1. This means that the whites can never be out-voted at all .  Thus, the constitution perpetuates the rule of small white oligarchy. So, it is a monumental hoax to hoodwink the international community into believing that the South African government is reforming .

With regard to the peace accord with Mozambique, I want to state categorically that all Christians are happy whenever there is a cessation of hostilities anywhere in the world and so we welcome the peace accord for this reason.

But we must then hasten to add a few points. First, that Mozambique has had a long war of liberation that played havoc with her economy. She had a devastating drought. South Africa has tacitly admitted destabalizing her through the support she gave to MNR dissident groups and pounded Mozambique in South Africa's hot pursuit policy against alleged ANC bases.

Consequently, it was not surprising that Mozambique succumbed to South Africa's bludgeoning. President Masire of Botswana was right when he said that Mozambique had been bullied into submission. More than this, without being cynical, we have wondered why all this diplomatic flurry should happen in a year when there is to be a presidential election in the United States of America.

It is a strange coincidence. The South African government has recognized that President Reagan with his constructive engagement pol icy is the best thing to have happened to them in a long time. They would do anything to get their friend re-elected.

The South African government wants the international corrmunity to ease off any pressure it may have wanted to exert on it to change apartheid. In the meantime it has not abated one bit of its evil policy to uproot blacks and dump them in arid poverty- stricken Banstustan homelands and to strip blacks of their South African citizenship turning them into aliens in the land of their birth.

The pass laws are applied as viciously as they ever were: influx control of blacks is as rigid as always. Arbitrary banning and detentions without tri al are still the order of the day. Our children still receive an inferior education. I am a Bishop in the Church of God. I am 52 years of age. I am reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote .A child of 18 years of age because he or she has a white skin can vote. We still live in ghetto areas such as Soweto. It is not the perpetrators of apartheid who can tell you that apartheid is changing. Surely, it is the victims who should be asked what they think.

It is good for Mr. P.W. Botha to be concerned about detente with South Africa's neighbors. But the threat to peace in the sub-continent and indeed in the world is apartheid. This is South Africa's internal policy and that will not be changed by external detente. Mr. Forster's failure of the past has proved that. The crisis of our country will be solved when the government sits down with the authentic leaders of all sections of our society to talk about dismantling apartheid. This is what most of our member churches have been calling for without avail. Mr. Botha has recently refused to meet with us church leaders inside South Africa, but he has met with Marxist leaders outside the country.