Restoring our faith in the values that shaped our Foreign Policy 
by Jaimal Anand

29 May 2025

1955 was a fundamentally special year, a transformative year for both the international community, the global South and South Africa. In April 1955, the Bandung Conference convened in Indonesia. While we often reflect on the conference as a critical moment in world history, in 1955 South Africa also adopted the Freedom Charter whose fundamental tenets were premised on justice, humanity, friendship, equality, peace and solidarity. Values and ideals that are now well entrenched in South Africa’s constitution and foreign policy.

Both these events happened under the watch of the African National Congress (ANC) President at the time, Nkosi Albert Luthuli. I believe that this article is also timely given the inquest on his death is currently underway.

In January 1955, only months before both the Bandung Conference and the Congress of the People, Nkosi Albert Luthuli, described the circumstances that confronted the liberation movement in South Africa during an interview with Drum Magazine. He spoke extensively on the ANC’s campaigns at the time and its internationalism. There is one quote that stands out as an indication, that maybe the ANC was contemplating its internationalism in the Cold War and preparing to join a world of post-liberation states. He said, “I personally have a lot of friends in the West, and at present I have no friends in the East. But that does not mean that Congress is inclined to the West.”

It was also in this interview that he said, "I believe Congress, in general, follows the foreign policy of Nehru; we wish to be neither East nor West, but neutral and we welcome cooperation from those on either side who will help to further our aspirations for freedom in a democratic set-up.”

In many respects this point succinctly describes the reality of that era, the reality that colonial hegemony was entrenched, despite the liberation of a handful of states, including India, Indonesia, Egypt, Libya, Gold Coast, represented by Kwame Nkrumah’s close ally Kojo Botsio, to name a few. 

In June 1954, on the margins of an international conference to discuss the Korean crises and Indo-China held in Geneva, Chinese premier Chou En-Lai accepted the invitation to visit India by V K Krishna Menon, India's representative at the conference. 

Indonesia’s commitment to Africa-Asia solidarity, and the South in general, was demonstrated later in 1954 when Prime Minister Nehru invited the then Indonesian Prime Minister Dr Ali Sastroamidjojo to Delhi to discuss preparations for a proposed conference among African and Asian states.  In a joint statement issued on 25 September 1954, Nehru and Sastroamidjojo emphasised that the “purpose of the Asian-African conference was to promote unity and peace. “The preparatory meeting for the Bandung Conference took place in December 1954 at Bogor, Indonesia. 

Nehru's suggestions to invite about 30 countries to attend the conference, to exclude controversial issues, and to place on the agenda broad issues along the lines of the five principles of peaceful coexistence that India and China had both agreed to earlier, were adopted as the guiding principles upon which the conference was to deliberate. These principles were (i) Mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, (ii) Mutual non-aggression, (iii) Non-interference in each other’s internal Affairs, (iv) Equality and mutual benefit and (v) Peaceful coexistence.  

Based on these principles, the convenors of the Bandung conference- the organisers- Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and India with Ruslan Abdulgani, then secretary general of the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the coordinator. The team refused to consider inviting the then South African Government to the conference, instead a warm invitation was extended to the liberation movement in South Africa. 

The leaders of the one-and-a-half billion people (at that time), constituting more than half the human race, included giants of the worlds anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggles for the right to self-determination and independence.

Among these giants, South Africa’s liberation movement was represented by Moses Kotane and Maulvi Cachalia. Learning of their intentions, the Apartheid Government refused to issue them travel documents. They, however, managed to reach London, where the Indian High Commission issued them with travel documents which enabled them to visit not only Indonesia, but also Egypt, India, Poland and China.

Moses Kotane reported on the Conference from Indonesia, and what he wrote was to capture the imagination of freedom loving South Africans. Kotane wrote, “Although the conference has been in close session for a week, the interest of the local population in it is unflagging. Every day crowds collect in front of the hotels and houses where the delegates are staying. They stand there from six o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock at night. There is great excitement whenever ministers or heads of delegations come and go. Then the crowds surge forward and have to be driven back by the military police who are in charge of security.

 “However, there is nothing violent or hostile in the relationship and attitude of the military police to the population. Everything is peaceful and friendly. There are many unofficial observers here and hundreds of pressmen.”

I’m sure that Nkosi Albert Luthuli, who only months earlier lamented a lack of interaction with the East, would have been very excited by what he would have read.

In solidarity, leaders chose to extend heartfelt greetings and messages of support to the Conference. The African National Congress (ANC), through its then Acting Secretary General, Oliver Tambo sent a message of solidarity to the Bandung Conference: "The significance of this Conference, therefore, lies in the fact that the sponsors and the people who are meeting have themselves been for centuries the subjects of exploitation and foreign domination by Western colonial powers, and have now decided to take the destiny of their people and their countries unto themselves...They want to see the permanent independence of their newly-founded democracies and the freeing of those who are still under the yoke of foreign domination and racial oppression.”

It was only fitting that the conference took a firm moral position on colonialism, imperialism, racism and Apartheid by resolving as follows
“deploring the policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination, which form the basis of government and human relations in large regions of Africa and in other parts of the world. Such conduct is not only a gross violation of human rights, but also a denial of the dignity of man.”

President Albert Luthuli, and Nobel Laureate sent a message to the Bandung Conference and part of it read, “We are living in a much-troubled world which someone has aptly called a 'mad house'. My prayer and wish is that this Conference might help to contribute in bringing sanity to this mad world of ours which is suffering from a paralysing sickness engendered by fear and jealousy among nations.”

Our contemporary realities are far from ideal. We live in extremely dangerous times, the lines between conflict, social and economic strife have been blurred beyond existence. There are certain values and principles that we set out to entrench 70 years ago, and while we have these values on paper, we also have the Sudan, the DRC, Gaza, Ukraine, the Sahel and many, many other geographies where humanity is held hostage and people victims of the worst that human existence has to offer.

Yet, in spite of these shameful horrors, 1955 was somewhat serendipitous, the Bandung Conference and the Congress of the People occurring barely a few months of each other, both having an impact that has come to change the course of history for millions around the world.

Given what we, as humanity confront, we must recall 1955 as one of the torchbearers that lights up our way and maybe, just maybe, our children will be shielded from the worst-case scenarios of our times. Surely this is our generational duty.