The Spirit of Bandung: O.R. Tambo’s Reflections on the Bandung Conference

The Spirit of Bandung: O.R. Tambo’s Reflections on the Bandung Conference

Extracts from the Speech of the then African National Congress (ANC) President O.R. Tambo on the Bandung Conference, which was a meeting of Asian and African states, which took place on 18–24 April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. The speech was presented at the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO) International Conference in Lusaka, Zambia, on 10 – 13 April 1979, focusing on solidarity with the liberation movements in Southern Africa and the Frontline States.

Introduction

The twenty-nine countries that participated in the Bandung Conference represented a total population of 1.5 billion people, 54% of the world’s population. The conference was organised by Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Pakistan. It was coordinated by Ruslan Abdulgani, the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia.

The aims of the conference were stated to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation as well as to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by any nation. The core principles of the Bandung Conference were political self-determination, mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, and equality. These issues were of central importance to all participants in the conference, most of which had recently emerged from colonial rule.

At the close of the Bandung Conference attendees signed a communique that included a range of concrete objectives. These included the protection of human rights and the principle of self-determination, a call for an end to racial discrimination wherever it occurred, and a reiteration of the importance of peaceful coexistence. The leaders hoped to focus on the potential for collaboration among the nations of the third world, promoting efforts to reduce their reliance on Europe and North America.

Interestingly, the conference became a platform towards the eventual creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Leaders of developing countries banded together to avoid being forced to take sides in the Cold War contest. The initial motivation for the movement was the promotion of peace. In the 1970s it grew increasingly radical in its condemnation of the policies of the Cold War super powers. Nonetheless, Bandung gave a voice to emerging nations and demonstrated that they could be a force in future world politics, inside or outside the Cold War framework.

OR Tambo and the Spirit of Bandung

The Afro-Asian solidarity movement has traversed a long and complicated but glorious path since the days, 25 (now 70) years ago, when a delegation of the African National Congress travelled from Johannesburg to Bandung in Indonesia to join hands with representatives of the peoples of the rest of Africa and of Asia to bring into being what has proved itself as a steadfast friend of all peoples fighting for national and social emancipation, the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation.

The African National Congress is proud that over all these years it has marched among the ranks of the peoples represented by this Organisation, participating in the great struggles that have seen the wiping out of colonialism from the African and Asian continents and the re-emergence of hundreds of millions of people in world politics as free and active participants in the collective construction of a better human destiny.

We are moved to recall the words of our late President Chief Albert Luthuli when he opened the 42nd Annual Conference of the ANC in 1953. To this day we repeat after him: “Our interest in freedom is not confined to ourselves only. We are interested in the liberation of all oppressed people in the whole of Africa and in the world as a whole …Our active interest in the extension of freedom to all people denied it makes us ally ourselves with freedom forces in the world.”

The struggles of this alliance of “freedom forces in the world” has brought us to the threshold of the realisation of the goals set out at Bandung. Beyond that threshold lie two great Asian and African questions of contemporary international politics, viz. the liberation of the people of Palestine and the restoration of their national rights and the liberation of the peoples of Southern Africa and the restoration of their national rights.

… The question whether Southern Africa would ever be liberated was answered many years ago, and practically, by the victories of the African forces of national liberation over British, French and Belgium colonialism. These victories both prove that colonialism had outlived its time, and gave birth to a vast rear base which made possible the raising of the level of confrontation in those countries which were as yet in bondage.

The second question, whether the African liberation movements could in fact succeed in their struggles despite the stubborn armed resistance of the colonial powers was answered also in the affirmative, in the first instance by the victory of the people of Algeria under the leadership of the FLN (National Liberation Front of Algeria).

The victories of FRELIMO (Mozambique), the PAIGC (Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde) and the MPLA (Angola) and no less that of the Vietnamese people over US (United States) imperialism, brought the lesson to the very doorstep of extreme and entrenched imperialist domination in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The answer was simply this that – yes, the liberation movements will win regardless of what the enemy does to deny us our victory.

The third question, what kind of liberation this would be, has for us in Southern Africa, been answered again practically by the realisation of popular power in Angola and Mozambique and the process of social transformation which that popular power has started in those two countries. Imperialism recognises that even in Southern Africa and in Palestine, naked colonial rule can no longer be maintained. The colonised peoples themselves are demonstrating in practice and in full view of the imperialists themselves, that they are determined to achieve victory or to perish in the pursuit of that victory.

Of course, this is not the first time that imperialism has been faced with this reality. We all know what happened historically – the imperialists had to concede independence to the colonised peoples, as they will surely be forced to do so in Southern Africa. However, as an inevitable consequence of the development of the African revolution, as we have said, the liberation movements of Southern Africa as well as the imperialists themselves are faced with the question what kind of decolonisation shall this be?

The fact that this question has become an issue of practical and immediate politics in Southern Africa is a sign of how much the balance of forces has changed in this region, in Africa and in the world. A mere 20 years ago, this question was laughed out of court as premature within the milieu of African politics. Today, the imperialists themselves recognise the immediacy of this question.

Thus while imperialism recognises that the time for the decolonisation of South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe has come, it wants a type of decolonisation which will leave its interest, its hegemony and its power in the region intact, a form of liberation therefore which will be incomplete and fraudulent, leaving the peoples of Southern Africa bound hand and foot to the imperialist system of economic, military, political and other relations, the objects of imperialist exploitation and domination under a new guise. In short imperialism aims for a neo-colonialist decolonisation.

The continuation of imperialist hegemony in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa aims not only to protect the immense imperialist interests in these countries. Thus imperialism wants to maintain its hegemony in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa in order to use this area as its base to put back under its hegemony the independent states of Southern Africa. Conversely, imperialism is haunted by the spectre that … (millions of) people of the unliberated south of Africa will succeed to break the chains of imperialist domination and achieve complete and genuine liberation, an event that would have radical and fundamental repercussions, further altering the relations between Africa and the imperialist world in favour of the masses of the ordinary working people of our continent.

The critical factor that confronts imperialism is that its antagonists as represented by PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) in Palestine, SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation) in Namibia, the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe and the ANC in South Africa represent a future that is not anti-colonial merely but anti-imperialist as well. These liberation movements are the midwives of a future which will be characterised by the transfer of all power to the people: by all power this conference should understand exactly that we mean political power, economic power, military power – a genuine and meaningful transfer of power to the people.

It would be of little moment to the racists of Southern Africa, the Zionists in Israel and their international allies if these organisations represented a minority tendency on the fringes of a largely so-called “moderate” broad liberation movement. The fact however, is that these movements are the genuine representatives of their peoples. They constitute the core and the vanguard of the liberation forces of their respective countries without whom and against whom no just and lasting solutions of the fundamental problems of the Middle East and Southern Africa are possible.

… The dangerous situation that has arisen in Southern Africa itself a reflection of how close we are to real and genuine victories throughout Southern Africa make imperative the practical realisation of these demands. We can, with certainty say that such is the nature of the forces represented here that the results of this Conference will indeed take us one giant step nearer to the full accomplishment of the tasks laid down at the Bandung Conference.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Office of the Historian, “Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations: Milestones: 1953–1960”, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/bandung-conf
President OR Tambo, “The Spirit of Bandung”, Sechaba, July 1979.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!