GC25 South Africa (1972S512)

WHEREAS South Africa continues to exercise stringent apartheid measures and supports racist policies in Rhodesia, Namibia and the Portuguese African Territories:

BE IT RESOLVED that this General Council through the appropriate Departments of Divisions:

1. INITIATE an educational program directed specifically at the congregational level to acquaint the membership of the inhumanity of apartheid and its threat to world peace; and to suggest appropriate avenues of response for committed Christians;

2. EXAMINE its own investment portfolios to determine whether United Church capital is giving tacit support to South African apartheid or undermining our church’s credibility in Southern Africa;

3. PRESS the Canadian government to contribute regularly and in more substantial amounts to the UN Trust Fund for South Africa, established in 1965 to provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of apartheid;

4. REMIND the Canadian government of its support of UN resolution 2775DD (XXVI) whereby it decided, “to uphold the Olympic principle of non-discrimination on the grounds of race, religion or political affiliation…and to request national and international sports organizations and the public to deny any form of recognition to any sports activity from which persons are debarred or subjected to any discrimination on the basis of race, religion or political affiliation.”

5. URGE the Canadian government to abrogate the Commonwealth preferences extended in South Africa, and to remove the anomaly that this favoured status creates in the light of (a) our initiative in 1961 whereby South Africa was denied membership in the Commonwealth; and (b) our condemnation of this same country’s rule of South West Africa;

6. URGE the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to identify as areas of concentration for aid those countries (e.g. Zambia, Tanzania and Botswana) of Southern African which suffer through refusal to become client states of South Africa.

GC25 1972 ROP, pp. 49, 261-262