Oliver Tambo: The Weapon of Unity

Oliver Tambo: The Weapon of Unity

(Extracts from the Message to the ANC External Mission, delivered by ANC Acting President Oliver Tambo, January 1971).

“Today, it is ever more important that we continue to hold in our hands the weapon of unity we have in the past wielded with such dramatic results in our External work. It is the weapon with which we have build up a volume of international support for our struggle, and a mountain of international pressure against the Racists, such as cannot but give great satisfaction to our colleagues who languish in South African jails. With that weapon of unity we have stood firm in the face of sustained and powerful enemy attacks on our movement – attacks mounted from different points at different angles with different methods.”

“With that weapon in our hands, we have gone to war, and it inspired the gallants of Umkhonto we Sizwe in the historic battles of Wankie and Sipolilo. They fought and fell, they punished and routed the imperialist agents, under the banners of the ANC, in the name of a united and suffering people. With that weapon, we shall fight and fall, we shall conquer and be free.”

“It is a weapon the enemy has sought to take from the oppressed people. ‘Hold fast on it!’ Chief Luthuli cries from the grave. ‘Hold it fast!’ It is not yours, it belongs to a suffering people, to posterity; it is the key to freedom. ‘Hold it!’ That is the call from Mini, Saloojee, Florence, Solwandle, and others. … AND WE SHALL HOLD IT. We, who are free to eat and sleep at will, to write to speak, to travel as we please; we, who are free to make or break revolution, let us use our comparative freedom, not to perpetuate the misery of those who suffer, nor give indirect aid to the enemy they fight withholding our own contribution.”

“We have an unequalled capacity for rallying to the banner of the ANC and consolidating our ranks when danger threatens. And danger does threaten: The campaign to break Africa’s resistance to apartheid and her support for the liberation struggle in Southern Africa has scored significant successes.”

“… Our militants are active both in and outside South Africa. The progress of our underground activities confirms the irrevocable commitment of our members to the cause of freedom, and to the armed struggle as an essential pre-condition for the achievement of that cause. In their work, our organisers are inspired to no end by the fighting mood of the oppressed masses themselves.”

“… In the meantime, the Black people of South Africa must recognise that freedom in South Africa, no less than for them as the most exploited will come only when they rise as a solid Black mass – rising from under the heel of the oppressor and storming across colour barriers to the citadels of political and economic power. Then only shall the noble principles enshrined in the Freedom Charter see the light of day, and turn South Africa into a happy home not only for Black people – at last, but for all people.”

“… Let us therefore be explicit. Power to the People means, in fact, Power to the Black People. … And who are the Blacks in South Africa? They are the people known, and treated, as ‘kaffirs’, ‘coolies’ and ‘hotnots’, together with those South Africans whose total political identity with the Africans oppressed makes them Black in all but the accident of skin colour. Where this identity is not merely reformist but is revolutionary, there, in my view, you have a Black man. This type of Black man in South Africa is rare in South Africa today. But he will grow in numerical strength as we drive our point deeper and deeper with the Spear of the Nation.”

“… What seems clear in my own mind is that the Black man is a vital and decisive factor in the survival or demise of Fascist South Africa – indeed as vital and decisive as his cheap labour is to the economic might of the Fascist State. … What does all this mean for those of us who for the time being operate outside South Africa? As I see it, it means we must work together, hand in hand, to build and consolidate power at the mass base, which, in the South Africa context, is Black.”

– Oliver Tambo, January 1971 –

Source:
Oliver Tambo, “Message to the ANC External Mission”, Sechaba, Vol. 5, No. 3, March 1971, pp. 2 – 3.

Castro Khwela
Good morning fellow Compatriots!🙏🏾✊🏾👊🏾