ANC Arusha Conference

ANC Arusha Conference

On 1 – 4 December 1987, the African National Congress (ANC) called a Conference under the theme: “People of the World Unite Against Apartheid for a Democratic South Africa”. More than 60 countries were represented, and the conference was attended by more than 500 delegates. The ANC called on the progressive people throughout the world to come and devise new forms of struggle under the new conditions wherein the racist Pretoria regime was in a tactical retreat. This conference was called under the circumstances in which the Botha regime had dismally failed to defeat the people’s struggle, and when the people were not yet strong enough to defeat the regime.

On the first day of the Conference, 1 December 1987, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, President of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) of Tanzania, a party that succeeded the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), welcomed all the delegates attending ANC conference in the Tanzanian city of Arusha. The Mwalimu Nyerere called for an end to National Party (NP) rule in South Africa and encouraged the struggle against apartheid to continue. In his speech Nyerere stated that: “It is because of the resistance, and the active opposition, of all these people that the struggle for justice is still able to continue. Not all the might, the ruthlessness, viciousness and inhumanity of the South African racists has been able to subdue the ANC or defeat the cause for which it stands.”

According to Nyerere, “Throughout these long years the struggle has been waged inside South Africa, by the people of South Africa. It has waxed and waned. There have been many setbacks, until sometimes the faint-hearted despaired and occasionally even the courageous retreated for a time into sullen resignation. But never was the flame of resistance extinguished. We are fighting a strong, well-organised and determined – as well as ruthless – enemy, who has strong external allies”, Nyerere added. “We have to use all means of struggle against it, and take advantage of any opportunities for advance which occur on any front. It is the combination of political, economic and military struggle which will bring us to victory.”

President Julius Nyerere played an important role in the struggle against apartheid by condemning the apartheid government in various international forums and in the early 1960s, as well as providing military training facilities for the liberation forces of southern Africa in general, and South Africa, in particular. Furthermore, in 1975, the Tanzanian government donated a sisal farm of five thousand hectares of land to the ANC in Mazimbu, Morogoro, which was developed in various spheres and where the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO) was constructed. Significantly, the facilities wherein the ANC Conference was held, Arusha, is the city where Nyerere issued the Arusha Declaration in 1967, which inaugurated the UJamaa Movement. UJamaa advocated for an independent, socialist programme based on a concept derived from a variant of African socialism.

Alongside Nyerere, ANC leader Oliver Tambo delivered the opening and the closing speeches of the Arusha Conference. Oliver Tambo stated that, “The central question in the conflict within our country is the issue of political power. On one side of the barricades is the Botha regime, its allies and supporters which say that political power must forever be the monopoly of the white minority. On the other side of the barricades is the ANC, the mass democratic movement and their allies and supporters who demand that power must be transferred to the people as a whole. These are the two poles of the South Africa political spectrum, each with its political programme and perspectives and each with its own organised forces of struggle.”

The Conference ran from 1 – 4 December 1987, under the theme: “Peoples of the World Unite Against Apartheid for a Democratic South Africa”. It concluded with a declaration by the ANC, condemning “apartheid as a crime against humanity”. The Declaration condemned military aggression by the apartheid South African government towards other Southern African states. The last Item of the Declaration stated: “With renewed vigour and determination we declare our commitment to continue the fight to put an end to apartheid, the illegal occupation of Namibia and the destabilisation of the neighbouring states. There is no doubt that the people of Namibia and South Africa, led by SWAPO and the ANC, shall be victorious.”

The Conference then adopted a Programme of Action “as the only means available to the international community to minimise the amount of bloodshed in the struggle to free the people of South Africa, Namibia and the Frontline States”. In the Programme of Action, measures were proposed for effective economic sanctions against the apartheid regime, which was phrased as Conference recognising the urgent need for comprehensive and mandatory sanctions. The approach was that “all sections of the international community should intensify their efforts to achieve this through concerted as well as unilateral action”.

Specifically, Conference discussed particular means by which the sanctions were to be achieved, highlighting three areas that included, implementation, monitoring and response to sanctions breaches. Implementation largely looked at raising awareness about the need for sanctions; the denial of financial loans to the regime, especially by the member states of the IMF; the observance of the ban on the import and sale of Krugerrands; the termination of trade in South African gold, precious metals, and other mineral resources, including uranium; the intensification of the coal boycott; as well as the monitoring and cooperation in ensuring that sanctions are implementing, including the sport boycott.

With regard to the monitoring of sanctions, Conference placed responsibility on the United Nations Sanctions Monitoring Committee, as well as the African and non-aligned countries to ensure that the imposed sanctions were implemented. Monitoring also included the implementation of the United Nations Arms Embargo, which included dual-use equipment and systems, penalties for breaches, invocation of licences to manufacture systems; the cancellation and termination of the export of spare parts; and the prescription of action to be taken against those countries that purchased armaments from apartheid South Africa. All these measures were recommended by Conference for inclusion in the United Nations Mandatory Arms Embargo.

Conference also addressed nuclear collaboration with the apartheid government, especially the recruitment, training and exchange of scientists involved in nuclear technology; the importing of uranium; the delivery of enriched uranium; monitoring nuclear collaboration; and the expulsion of the Pretoria regime from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). International action was also called for with regard to the oil embargo, which was regarded as fuelling apartheid, and urged the UN Security Council to make it mandatory. Delegates were urged to utilise existing sources of information to expose the attempts of the Pretoria regime to circumvent the oil embargo.

Another specific area of focus was the academic and cultural boycott, in which it was said, “As a natural consequence of the development of the mass democratic movement and the emergence of an alternative democratic power within the country, a new situation has arisen in relation to the academic and cultural boycott. Therefore Conference calls upon the ANC to initiate, as a matter of urgency, consultations with the democratic forces inside the country and the world anti-apartheid movements in order to establish the criteria and mechanisms to continue the intensification of the academic/cultural boycott of the illegitimate regime while strengthening support for the academic/cultural forces of resistance.”

In order for the sanctions campaign to succeed, the Conference called for concerted People’s Sanctions in every country, such that “even the most intransigent opponents of sanctions can be compelled to reverse their position”. Several structures were to be mobilised in this campaign, including the trade unions, the youth, the women’s, religious and faith-based organisations, local authorities, the business community, professional bodies and the media, to coordinate the activities and actions of the international anti-apartheid movement. Furthermore, Conference urged the international community to provide support to the Frontline States, the ANC and the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), as well as the severance of all ties with the apartheid regime.

In his closing speech at the end of the Conference, ANC President Oliver Tambo said, “The time has come for all of us to leave this friendly city which has been our home for a few days, and return to our respective theatres of struggle. The sadness we might feel at this parting is lessened by the knowledge that we leave as emissaries of a common cause, committed to energise all humanity everywhere to act against apartheid, for a democratic South Africa. We disperse and shall attack the apartheid enemy of all humankind on all fronts and from all corners of the globe. We shall conduct a concerted offensive because we will be proceeding from the common positions we have agreed at this historic Conference. We depart from the shores of this great African country enormously strengthened by all that happened here during this week which will go down as a watershed in the history of our struggle.”

According to President Tambo, “You will undoubtedly go home strengthened by the knowledge, directly acquired from your own experience, that the forces of liberation from racism are not only those in Soweto and Bonteheuwel, Lamontville, Galeshewe and Bochabela. There are fighting forces too in Arusha and Harare, Lagos and Cairo, Moscow, New York, Tokyo, Wellington and Buenos Aires – all of them, as Pierre Albertini and Klaas de Jonge said, willing to sacrifice for the common cause. Peoples of the world, united against apartheid for a democratic South Africa, we salute you convinced that we shall all march to Pretoria together!”

Sources:
South African History Online (SAHO).
Oliver Tambo, “Closing Speech by Oliver Tambo at the ANC Conference Peoples of the World United Against Apartheid for a Democratic South Africa”, African National Congress (ANC) Archives, 4 December 1987.
African National Congress, “Programme of Action Adopted at the Arusha Conference, 1–4 December 1987, People of the World Against Apartheid for a Democratic South Africa”, African National Congress (ANC) Archives, 4 December 1987.
African National Congress, “Arusha Conference: Declaration, 4 December 1987”, African National Congress (ANC) Archives, 4 December 1987.
Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, “Our Common Victory Is Assured: Address by Mwalimu Julius K Nyerere, Chairman, Chama Cha Mapinduzi at the Opening of the ANC Conference, Arusha, 1st December 1987”, Sechaba, January 1988.
Editorial, “The Arusha Spirit”, Sechaba, February 1988.

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!