The peace movement
In an address broadcast live on national radio and television on March 25, President F.W. de Klerk told startled MPs that South Africa developed, between 1974 and 1990, six nuclear fission devices of the capacity of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
This demonstrates the close military cooperation between Israel and South Africa and is evidence of the flow of nuclear technology from presently equipped countries to other regimes intent on getting it. It underscores the urgency of eliminating nuclear arms.
Similarly, the present volatile situation in Russia is evidence that history is far from over. Serious conflicts continue both nationally and internationally, and this will not change so long as huge economic and social disparities exist within individual countries and between countries.
So, while the Cold War may officially be over, reality still requires the existence of a strong peace movement.
As Palm Sunday comes around again, marches and publicly visible events continue to deliver a very important message and to vocalise a very widespread sentiment. The eradication of all nuclear weapons is as important in the current political climate as at any other time.
International security is not enhanced but permanently imperilled by the existence of nuclear weapons. While these weapons remain in the hands of any government, there is pressure for every government to obtain them, and the danger of nuclear war will persist. Only the elimination of all nuclear arsenals can remove that threat.
Nor should the urgent need to rid the world of nuclear weapons blind us to the horrors of "conventional" war. On a local level, modern conventional weapons can be as destructive as nuclear weapons.
Defenders of militarism in the West used to tell us that massive armaments were necessary because of the "Communist threat". But with that "threat" gone, governments continue stockpiling weapons while trying to find a new justification before the demand for disarmament gets too powerful to resist.
Ironically, militarism can create its own "justification". By wasting resources, it helps to ensure the continuation of poverty and inequality and hence the continuation of international conflicts.
The state of the planet and its people today demands that every available resource be channelled into eliminating poverty and into protection of our exponentially deteriorating environment.
The eradication of the threat of war requires the eradication of social and economic inequality. The biggest block to achieving this is clearly the huge divide between the First and Third Worlds. Yet, a rmous resources presently wasted on military activities could provide the means to rapidly end the chronic poverty, hunger and disease that afflict billions of people in the Third World.
The Palm Sunday peace marches should be a reminder of the need to continue the struggle for peace and for the social justice without which peace is impossible.