Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: The Morogoro Conference and the Need for Maximum Unity

Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: The Morogoro Conference and the Need for Maximum Unity

(Portions of the Political Report of the National Executive Committee to the National Consultative Conference, which was presented by the President of the African National Congress, Oliver Tambo, 17 June 1985, Kabwe, Zambia)

1969 Morogoro Consultative Conference

“Within our country, the Vorster regime was at the pinnacle of its power. It felt that the period of extreme reaction which the racists had unleashed when it banned the ANC, with Vorster as the general officer commanding the campaign of repression, had succeeded to smash the revolutionary movement. The Pretoria regime also thought that it had further secured itself by helping to suppress the armed liberation struggle in Zimbabwe, in which units and cadres of the Luthuli Detachment of Umkhonto we Sizwe had participated with outstanding heroism and skill…

“It was in this situation that the Morogoro Consultative Conference was convened in 1969. Yet when it met it was not in a mood of pessimism. Rather, it was characterised by high revolutionary enthusiasm to confront our problems frankly and squarely and find solutions so that we could further intensify the struggle and, in practice, demolish the misguided confidence that the apartheid regime and its allies shared.

“Many who participated to ensure that the Morogoro Conference was the success that it was are no longer with us. … They left us a heritage of unwavering commitment to the people’s cause, a spirit of self-sacrifice for the victory of our struggle and a revolutionary morality and practice which did not allow for personal ambition, factional conspiracies or cowardice and timidity in the face of an enemy counteroffensive. As we observe a minute’s silence in their honour, let them serve as our example of the kind of cadre we must produce to carry their work forward to its successful conclusion.

“Out of Morogoro came significant results, the most important being the reorientation of our movement towards the prosecution and intensification of our struggle inside South Africa, the restoration and reinforcement of unity within our own ranks and the integration of all revolutionaries within the ranks of the external mission of the ANC.

“It is important to observe that, at Morogoro, our movement did not seek to underestimate the importance of or downgrade our international work. Indeed it could not, as the work that our movement had done, up to that point in our history, provided exactly the rear base from which we would carry out our internal work. The Morogoro Conference sought to ensure that we achieved the proper balance between our internal and our international struggle, with the internal being primary.

“… With regard to the issue of unity within our own ranks, the Morogoro Conference drew attention among other things to the importance of strengthening the links between the leadership and the membership, the necessity for the leadership to be accountable to the movement as a whole and the need to have clear strategic and tactical perspectives and a programme of work around which the membership would unite in pursuit of common objectives.

Need for Maximum Unity

“These questions remain important still. Conference will therefore need to make the necessary assessment to ensure that we have an organised and systematic way to ensure that, at all times, we enjoy maximum political and organisational unity within our own ranks and that all members are actually involved in activity which contributes to the advance of our struggle.

“The question of open membership, as it has come to be called, is also on our agenda. In the period since the Morogoro Conference dealt with this issue, the National Executive Committee has raised it with the membership, at home and abroad, with a view to determine whether as a movement we still felt it was justified to keep the restrictions that were decided upon at Morogoro. There has been extensive discussion of this question. It should not be difficult for us to reach agreement and, building on what was decided at Morogoro, to take decisions that will take our movement and struggle further forward.” (To be continued)

– Oliver Tambo (17 June 1985) –

Source:
Oliver Tambo, “The Eyes of Our People are Focussed on this Conference”, Sechaba, October 1985, pp. 2 – 9.

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