Oliver Tambo – The Spirit of Bandung
(On 18 – 24 April 1955, the first large-scale Afro–Asian Conference, also known as the Bandung Conference, which was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, took place in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. We take extracts of an Address to the International Conference in Support of the Liberation Movements of Southern Africa and in Support of the Frontline States by O. R. Tambo, Lusaka, 10 April 1979)
“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.”
“Imperialism recognises that even in southern Africa and in Pale
