Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Destroy the Old Order (Part 1)

Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Destroy the Old Order (Part 1)

(Excerpts from an Address by Oliver Tambo to the Nation on Radio Freedom, 22 July 1985)

Compatriots,

“Forty-eight hours ago P.W. Botha announced a state of emergency affecting the Eastern Cape, the Witwatersrand and the Vaal Triangle. Already in these areas many people have been arrested. Combined military and police units have moved to occupy certain townships such as Kwa Thema. People have been murdered by these forces of occupation. The truth about the criminal misdeeds of these bands of marauders has been kept out of the public eye through tightened press censorship.

“Inevitably the fascist measures of extreme repression that Botha has imposed will be extended to other areas of our country. Botha has at last decided to impose martial law. He has granted full powers to his armed forces to govern certain areas of our country. This is an eventuality for which the Botha regime has prepared and about which we have repeatedly warned. This regime can now no longer conceal its true face. What has become plain for all to see is the reality of military dictatorship and not the comforting but spurious image of a reformer that Botha had sought to cultivate and project.

“The Pretoria regime speaks about law and order. It says it has imposed martial law on large parts of our country in order to reestablish order and stability. In cynical disregard of the interests of the majority of the people of our country, the United States government, the principal ally of the apartheid regime, has not hesitated to approve of the new measures of repression that its friends in Pretoria have adopted.

“The Reagan Administration has openly said that it hopes that these measures will succeed in their purpose. Botha and Reagan hope and pray that the intensified campaign of terror against the people and our democratic movement will succeed to stop our march to liberation. They are intent to ensure that racist law and apartheid order continue to hold sway. That is the hopeless mission that the Pretoria regime and its supporters have given themselves.

“Our own tasks are very clear. To bring about the kind of society that is visualised in the Freedom Charter, we have to break down and destroy the old order. We have to make apartheid unworkable and our country ungovernable. The accomplishment of these tasks will create the situation for us to overthrow the apartheid regime and for power to pass into the hands of the people as a whole.

“We have achieved a good deal of progress in making South Africa ungovernable. Correctly, we concentrated on the weakest link in the apartheid chain of command and control. For months we have maintained an uninterrupted offensive against the puppet local government authorities in the black urban areas as well as other state personnel in the townships such as the police and their agents.

“By declaring a state of emergency in these areas, Botha has admitted that his organs of government has collapsed. He has conceded that the only way he can restore apartheid rule in these townships is through martial law. He could no longer govern in the old way. The perspective ahead of us is to intensify the struggle exactly in these areas that are under martial law.

“In struggle, we must make it impossible for our enemy to govern even in the new way. We must confront its new organs of government in the townships – the combined army and police units which have been brought into our midst exactly to reassert apartheid rule and therefore to perpetuate our oppression and suffering. This is the first task we have to accomplish the light of Botha’s state of emergency – to confront and defeat his new organs of government.

“While saluting those among our people who have responded so magnificently to our call to make our country ungovernable, we must also draw attention to the fact that not all areas of our country and not all sections among the oppressed responded with the same level of activity and determination. This has enabled the enemy to concentrate its forces on certain areas of our country. Even now, under its state of emergency, the apartheid regime has the possibility to concentrate its attack on a selected number of areas in our country.

“This is a situation which we must correct. It is vital that all areas of our country should join in the general offensive to make the apartheid system unworkable and South Africa ungovernable. There is not a single black person anywhere in our country who can say that he or she lives in conditions of freedom. We are all subjected to domination by organs of government imposed on us by the apartheid regime. This is the case whether we live in the towns or the countryside.

“In the past, all of us have joined together to reject apartheid rule, whatever form it took. Accordingly, we have consistently rejected the bantustan system and the community councils. We have also overwhelmingly rejected Botha’s tricameral parliament as well as the organs of local government visualised in the latest apartheid constitution. But, as we had foreseen, all these institutions have been imposed on us despite the fact that we do not want them. As usual, the apartheid regime has refused to act in accordance with the will of the people.

“We, for our part, have no cause to submit to the dictatorship of the racists. We have said we are opposed to its apartheid institutions. These have been imposed on us against our will. We have no choice but to destroy them. This is what we have done in the Eastern Cape, on the Witwatersrand, in the Vaal Triangle and the Free State. We must spread this offensive to reach all other parts of our country. In all our localities, wherever they may be, we must rise now and destroy the apartheid organs of government that are used to hold us in bondage. We make this call to all black people – African, Indian and so-called Coloureds.

“Our people in some parts of the country are suffering under the iron heel of military dictatorship. They are facing the full might of the apartheid state because they dared to stand up to fight for our liberation. Regardless of what the martial law administrators do, the masses of our people in these areas will continue to fight for our emancipation.

“The time has come that the rest of the black masses of our country, all 25 million of us, should join in one determined offensive to make all of our country ungovernable. If needs be, let us force the apartheid regime to deploy its armed forces in every village and township in our country. Let us act together to make all of South Africa ungovernable.

“Racist white South Africa is, without doubt, applauding P.W. Botha for declaring the state of emergency. These hidebound white supremacists see this act of desperation on the part of the apartheid regime as a demonstration of firmness and a determination to protect white privilege at all costs. They are convinced that Botha will succeed to suppress our struggle and save the apartheid system from collapse.

“White South Africa will not awaken from this dream world while our struggle is concentrated in the black areas of our country. We cannot and should not allow a situation of relative peace and tranquillity to obtain in the white areas of our country while the black townships are in flames. We must take the struggle into the white areas of South Africa and there attack the apartheid regime and its forces of repression in these areas which it considers its rear.

“For many years, the Pretoria regime gave its white supporters a false sense of security by deluding them into believing that the battlefront of struggle was drawn at the borders of our country. We have shattered that myth and brought the struggle to the very doorstep of the colonial oppressor. The enemy, however, continues to hope that it will manage to hold our struggle to that line of battle, outside of the white towns and cities.

“As we buried the illusion of a confrontation taking place at the borders of our country, so must we now put paid to the notion that our struggle will remain confined to the black areas. No longer should white South Africa live with the idea that it can continue with its business as usual while our people are perishing in their hundreds, out of sight of the white families that have sent their sons into our townships, armed to the teeth and with one intention only, to kill, kill and kill.” (To be continued)

– Oliver Tambo (22 July 1985) –

Sources:
Oliver Tambo, “Address by Oliver Tambo to the Nation on Radio Freedom, 22 July 1985”, South African History Online (SAHO), 13 October 2011.
Adelaide Tambo, “Oliver Tambo Speaks: Speeches, Letters and Transcripts”, Kwela Books, 1987, pp. 308 – 316.

Castro Khwela
Good morning fellow Compatriots!