Author: Non-European Unity Movement
WHO CONSTITUTES THE NATION OF SOUTH AFRICA?
Who constitutes the South African nation? The answer to this question is as simple as it would be in any other country. The nation consists of the people who were born in South Africa and who have no other country but South Africa as their mother-land. They may have been born with a black skin or with a brown one, a yellow one or a white one; they may be male or female; they may be young, middle-aged or of an advanced age; they may be short or tall, fat or lean; they may be long-headed or round-headed, straight-haired or curly haired; they may have long noses or broad noses; they may speak Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, English or Afrikaans, Hindi, Urdu or Swahili, Arabic or Jewish; they may be Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, or of any other faith. So long as they are born of a mother and belong to the human species, so long as they are not lunatics or incurable criminals, they all have an equal title to be citizens of South Africa, members of the nation, with the same rights, privileges and duties. In a nation it is not necessary that the people forming it should have a common language or a common culture, common customs and traditions.
There are many nations where the people speak different languages, consist of different nationalities with different cultures. The United States of America,
And have not the Non-Europeans of South Africa sufficient community of. interests? Are we not all crushed by the same Nazi-like racial creed? Are we not all persecuted and humiliated by the South African brand of Nuremberg laws under the hall-mark blazoning all over South Africa: "For Europeans Only"? Do we not live in constant fear of every official and policeman because, from the moment of our birth, we are branded as criminals by the colour of our skin? The prisons and cemeteries, or, as official language prefers it, the statistics of crime and death, are eloquent testimony of our community of interests.
Indeed, to-day we are brutally deprived of a stake in the development,of the riches and beauty of our country, a stake in its progress or in its citizenship.
But we are imbued with the hope that our claim to them all will be realised in full during the present generation. And it is through no fault of ours that we have to bear before the rest of the world the shame that is now inseparable from the name of South Africa. Here, too, we are confident that the shame and blot will be erased in our generation.
But this universal concept of a nation is not shared by the criminal minds of Hitler and his Nazi followers; it is not shared by the South African Herrenvolk, who have usurped to themselves all political, economic and judicial rights, who have wielded the gun and grabbed the land in order to proclaim themselves the sole citizens of the country, the sole rulers, owners, law-makers, to proclaim themselves THE nation. It is against these usurpers who have robbed the whole nation of its rights and reduced its people to the position of outcasts thrust into reserves, locations, bazaars and sub-economic or sub-human townships and tolerated only as servants and unskilled labourers-it is against these that the nation has to unite in the struggle for its land, rights and liberty. It is therefore to all those who are against Nazism and Herrenvolkism that this Declaration of the Non-European Unity Movement is addressed. If it is primarily addressed to all Non-Europeans, it does not exclude any European who accepts unconditionally our right to full and equal citizenship and our definition of a nation.
From: “A Declaration to the People of South Africa”… Non-European Unity Movement (April 1951)