Peace will not come to our country and region until the apartheid system is ended. Therefore, we say we still have a struggle on our hands. Our common and noble efforts to abolish the system of white minority domination must continue. We are encouraged and strengthened by the fact of the agreement between ourselves, this Congress, as well as President [George H.W.] Bush and his Administration, that sanctions should remain in place.

apartheid–to which Afrikaners clung for decades as their only hope and salvation from Third World domination–was in fact an impracticable and unworkable system which led directly to the Afrikaners’ demise as a political force in that country.

Apartheid cannot be reformed. It has to be eliminated.

I am also here today as a representative of the millions of people across the globe, the anti-apartheid movement, the governments and organisations that joined with us, not to fight against South Africa as a country or any of its peoples, but to oppose an inhuman system and sue for a speedy end to the apartheid crime against humanity. These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted together in defense of justice and a common human decency.

It goes without saying that apartheid is offensive. It was adopted, however, as the lesser of two evils. The Afrikaners believe that black majority rule has, in almost every case, led to the collapse of the constitutional government which they brought to South Africa, and upon which their freedoms and privileges – and perhaps even their lives – depend. And it did not seem so very bad to deny to blacks a vote which they would, when in power, promptly deny to themselves.

When we were fighting against apartheid, we recognised it wasn’t just a racist state. It was a racist, capitalist and patriarchal state. And we have to understand that. So how do we actually fight against that? How do we change that

Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way. Universal suffrage on a common voters' roll in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony.

It is time to step back from the apartheid brink...

So too I would say we South Africans will survive and prevail only together, black and white bound together by circumstance and history as we strive to claw our way out of the morass that was apartheid racism. Up and out together, black and white together. Neither group on its own could or would make it. God had bound us, manacled us, together. In a way it was to live out what Martin Luther King, Jr., had said, “Unless we learn to live together as brothers [and sisters]

I detest apartheid. I couldn't stand being excluded or discriminated against because of the colour of my own skin. And if you can't stand a colour bar against yourself, you can't stand it against anyone else. Apartheid is wrong and it must go.

If South African police want a fight, they must declare it. We will treat them the same way we treated them in the 80s. We will not only fight them at the picket lines, we will go to their homes and fight them in their own houses, with their own families. [Applause] We are not scared of police. They think this uniform gives them some superior power. We'll see you after you take off the uniform at night at home, when you are about to eat pap. ... Bloody coward. ... We'll come for you one by one at your own comfort zone. We will teach you that no-one can defeat the power of the masses. Not a policeman, not a police state, not a military state, not a dictatorship, once the masses have taken a decision, no-one will defeat them. Racism in South Africa is going to fall – they like it, or they don't like it. It is just a matter of time, we are going to go after racists everywhere, and there will not be a home for racist[s]. They will on their own take a flight or a ship out of South Africa, because they will no longer feel comfortable in South Africa. Let's not make home for racism. Guys, there is no any other way of fighting racism. Racism is violence. It must be responded with violence. That's the only way we are going to stop racist[s] in South Africa.

We speak out to put the world on guard against what is happening in South Africa. The brutal policy of apartheid is applied before the eyes of the nations of the world. The peoples of Africa are compelled to endure the fact that on the African continent the superiority of one race over another remains official policy, and that in the name of this racial superiority murder is committed with impunity. Can the United Nations do nothing to stop this?

Today we are entering a new era for our country and its people. Today we celebrate not the victory of a party, but a victory for all the people of South Africa. Our country has arrived at a decision. Among all the parties that contested the elections, the overwhelming majority of South Africans have mandated the African National Congress to lead our country into the future. The South Africa we have struggled for, in which all our people, be they African, Coloured, Indian or White, regard themselves as citizens of one nation is at hand.

The laws and policies of white South Africa are no doubt inimical to this development. And so I call upon our people in all walks of life ministers of the Gospel of Christ, who died to save human dignity, teachers, professional men, business men; farmers and workers to rally round the congress at this hour to make our voice heard. We may be voteless, but we are not necessarily voiceless; it is our determination more than ever before in the life of our congress, to have our voice not only heard but heeded too. Through gatherings like this in all centres, large and small, we mean to mobilize our people to speak with this one voice and say to white South Africa: We have no designs to elbow anyone out of South Africa, but equally we have no intention whatsoever of abandoning our divine right, of ourselves determining our destiny according to the holy and perfect plan of our Creator. Apartheid can never be such a plan.