AHG/Decl. 1 (XX) 17. It is in this context that the independent states of Southern Africa, both individually and collectively, have done and continue to do their utmost to uphold and promote the liberation objectives of the Organization of African Unity. Through co- operation among the Frontline States, and through SADCC, they are working at great cost to themselves to defend their independence and to reduce their economic dependence on the Apartheid State. The contacts which their circumstances force them to maintain with South Africa cannot and should not be used by others as an excuse for establishing or expanding economic or political contact with the forces of racism in South Africa. 18. It is also this context that Africa is committed to resisting, and ultimately defeating, the efforts to force our countries into any relations with racist South Africa. We shall resist the economic, political and military pressures which are being used by South Africa and its friends to terrorise, intimidate, and blackmail individual African countries and to reduce still further their freedom of action. 19. Africa will be satisfied with nothing less than majority rule in an independent and united Namibia, and majority rule in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa. The whole experience of Africa’s history, and of world history, confirms that only self-determination for the people of Namibia and South Africa can create for Southern Africa an opportunity for peace and stability or remove the threat to international peace and security which now emanates from this area. 20. The Organization of African Unity as a whole, and all our individual States, therefore, recognize a special responsibility to give the maximum possible support to the Independent States of Southern Africa as they struggle to defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of South African aggression, destabilization and subversion. We recognize that any reverses suffered in this part of Africa, as in any other, are reverses suffered by all of us, for they are used by the enemies of Africa’s freedom and dignity as new bridgeheads for compromising the independence of our Continent as a whole. 21. In their struggle to free their countries and their peoples from colonialism and racism, the Liberation Movements of Namibia and South Africa are leading the freedom struggles of the peoples of those countries and also working for the freedom