Oliver Tambo Reacts to the 1989 Apartheid Reforms
On 30 June 1989, while addressing a Conference attended by the 115 white South Africans belonging to a body called the Five Freedoms Forum, as well as 20 senior African National Congress (ANC) Officials, dubbed the “Whites in a Changing Society”, held at the Intercontinental Hotel, Lusaka, from June 29 to July 2, 1989, ANC President Oliver Tambo described the five-year reform programme by the apartheid National Party government as an “insult”, saying, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered”. Tambo held that “Apartheid must be destroyed now, not after five years”, as according to him the reform programme unveiled the day before was “unable to offer any meaningful alternatives”.
For Tambo, “The conclusion is inescapable: In South Africa peace and freedom have become inseparable. We shall never enjoy the former until we have achieved the latter. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to attain peace by peaceful methods only. Often, to activate peace you have to wage war and cause loss of life. This is exactly what happened and is happening to the ANC. While we decry the violence of the apartheid system and its regime, we must admit that, as a result of that violence, in order to stop it, we too have had to be violent.”
Oliver Tambo was reacting to a press conference made by apartheid Constitutional Development Deputy Minister, Stoffel van der Merwe, on 28 June 1989, that the National Party
