Like other modern States, the Republic of South Africa is a country governed by laws. And the laws by which a country chooses to live are normally matters with which the United Nations not only does not concern itself, but which, in fact, it is expressly forbidden from interfering with by its own Charter.

However, a feature that gives to the laws of South Africa the character and dimension which have caused concern throughout the world and which have made them the subject of formal denunciation by the United Nations can be simply stated: while these laws apply to all the people of South Africa—white and nonwhite alike—they are laws of the white man alone, enacted by the white man alone, for the benefit of the white man alone. Neither in the formulation nor in the execution of these "laws" do the Africans, who form 70 per cent of the population, nor the Asians and the Coloured, have any voice or influence.

It is this character which makes many of the "laws" of South Africa, in effect and in reality, instruments of iniquity and oppression.

The following examples are drawn from a study prepared by Professor Leslie Rubin of Howard University. Washington. D.C.. a former Senator in South Africa, representing Africans, for the United Nations Secretariat's Unit on Apartheid, showing how legislation described by the South African Government as being designed to promote "separate development", amounts to a legalized contempt for all human beings of the non-white races.