On 8 January 1986, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) declared 1986 the Year of Umkhonto we Sizwe – the People’s Army. Delivering the Statement, ANC President Oliver Tambo extended warm revolutionary greetings of the ANC to all Compatriots and saluted them in the name of the People’s Army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).
In the introduction to the statement, OR Tambo mentioned that the ANC was speaking to the nation “fully aware of the immense responsibility that rests on all of us to make the apartheid system of oppression and exploitation, repression and aggression a thing of the past. It is our singular honour that we have been charged with the serious responsibility to point the way forward in the coming period."
"We approach this task," according to Tambo, "with the same seriousness that has inspired you as you launched countless heroic mass battles during the year that has just ended. The message of that year, the Year of the Cadre, is simple and yet momentous. It is that the end of the criminal system of apartheid is in sight.”
Continuing with the triumphant introduction, OR Tambo maintained that “There is nothing that the Pretoria regime can do that can change this historic outcome of our struggle. Our uninterrupted forward march has thrown the apartheid system into an enormous general crisis. A central feature of this crisis is the rebellion of millions of our people against the criminal system. Even the stubbor
