ANC Calls on OAU (Organisation of African Unity) to Increase Our Striking Power

ANC Calls on OAU (Organisation of African Unity) to Increase Our Striking Power

Extracts of the Statement at the Ninth Extraordinary Session of the Council of Ministers of the Organisation of African Unity, Dar Es Salaam by O. R. Tambo, 7 – 10 April 1975

At the outset of our discussion on South Africa, let us endeavour to establish a common understanding of what the true nature of apartheid is and hence, what the real issues before this meeting are.

Apartheid has often been equated with racialism. We need however, to understand that racialism cannot be separated from the political oppression and economic exploitation of the black people. It serves both and is in turn sustained by both. It is an integral part of a socio-economic system peculiar to South Africa, but one which has all except the geographic features of colonialism.

The difference between South Africa and other systems of colonialism is, therefore, that in South Africa, coloniser and colonised live side by side within the same country. Colour and race are used as a dividing line between the resident white army of occupation and their subject population – the black people. The extreme exploitation of labour is the raison d’etre of this system. A vast apparatus of restrictive laws and practices, coupled with the dispossession of Africans from their land ensures the availability of cheap and forced labour.

Above all, as a fundamental condition of its survival, the apartheid regime maintains a complete monopoly of State power and seeks by terrorist methods to make the people acquiesce in their own servitude.

African nations, Mr. Chairman, are not unfamiliar with this colonialist pattern, for in their own countries there have been played many variations of the exploitation of the African peoples under colonial rule. In South Africa the methods have been more intensely applied and the repression more severe because of the relatively large concentration of the oppressor within the country aided and abetted by powerful international financial interests.

Therefore the problem that Africa has to face in South Africa is essentially a colonial problem and like colonialism elsewhere it has to be removed root and branch. Attempts to bring about reform within the existing system can never provide a satisfactory solution and can never be a substitute for resolute anti-colonialist struggle for national liberation.

Let us consider then the context in which we have to work for the removal of this colonialist system from our continent. The issue before us, Mr. Chairman, is not how to reform apartheid. The changes we seek in South Africa are not encompassed by being able to share a park bench with a white man, or to be allowed to enter an all-white theatre. We demand a fundamental transformation whereby, in our country, we shall have the same right of self-determination which free Africa has won for itself, which peoples fighting colonialism have won elsewhere in the world. That right is not negotiable.

We, therefore, call upon this august assembly to reaffirm the correct stand of the OAU and the United Nations of recognising the liberation movement as the authentic representative of the struggling people in our country and spokesman of the South African people as a whole.

The OAU should reaffirm its condemnation and total rejection of the bantustan policy and puppet figureheads imposed upon the people by the Pretoria regime. In particular, the OAU should refuse to recognise the projected pseudo-independence of the bantustans.

Africa must reaffirm its adherence to the diplomatic, political, military, economic and cultural isolation of white South Africa and call upon all member States to refrain from establishing any such contacts. In particular, Africa must continue to work for the immediate expulsion of the Pretoria regime from the United Nations Organisation.

Finally, and above all, the OAU must call upon all the member States and the world TO SPARE NO EFFORT IN HELPING INCREASE THE STRIKING POWER OF OUR LIBERATION MOVEMENT IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SEIZURE OF POWER IN SOUTH AFRICA, but also the striking powers of the ANC of Zimbabwe as well as the striking power of SWAPO and the people of Namibia in the struggle against domination by the fascist regime in South Africa.

Source:
O. R. Tambo, “ANC Calls on OAU to Increase Our Striking Power”, Sechaba, Vol. 9 No’s 6/7, June/July 1975.

Castro Khwela
Good morning fellow Compatriots!