ANC President Oliver Tambo Suffers a Brain Spasm

ANC President Oliver Tambo Suffers a Brain Spasm

On 30 August 1989, the Secretary General of the African National Congress (ANC), Alfred Nzo, confirmed reports that the ANC President Oliver Tambo was in a London hospital for more than two weeks after suffering a brain spasm. According to Nzo, Tambo was comfortable, in good spirits and was progressing well. Oliver Tambo, who had undergone extensive treatment and rehabilitation in Britain and Sweden, was ailing from the effects of a stroke.

International newspapers reported that Tambo had suffered a stroke in Lusaka on Wednesday, 9 August 1989, and was flown to Britain on Friday, 11 August in a jet belonging to a British multinational company, Lornho PLC. A spokesman for Lonrho confirmed that a company jet, which was in Lusaka on other business, flew Tambo to London, accompanied by a doctor and nurse. According to newspaper reports, Tambo was “being treated in a private London hospital and no information about his condition has been released”. Lornho PLC said it was happy to offer him a lift on the company jet, which had been in Lusaka, and that, “There was no hesitation. It was a matter of some considerable concern that he should get back to Britain as soon as possible. The plane was coming in this direction anyway.”

Previously, however, when Tambo failed to turn up on 10 August 1989 for a summit meeting on the eve of the signing of the Harare Declaration in Lusaka between the presidents of southern Africa’s frontline states and ANC leaders, Thabo Mbeki, as a senior ANC official then, said on Sunday, 13 August 1989, that Tambo was suffering from fatigue and had been flown to London for a medical checkup. Thabo Mbeki, who was the ANC’s head of international affairs, denied that ANC President Oliver Tambo, who was 71 years old, had suffered a stroke and said doctors had ordered him to rest.

Mbeki maintained that the ANC leader, who had led a revolutionary guerrilla struggle against apartheid white-minority rule for more than 20 years, went to London for a checkup and a vacation. Newspapers internationally also posted in their publications that an ANC official was reported to have said that he was on holiday having a short rest. Later on, however, it was reported that pressure and exhaustion took its toll on Tambo and in 1989 he suffered a severe stroke that resulted in him losing his speech.

Following his stroke, he was rushed from Lusaka, on Tony Rowland’s executive plane on the order of President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, to Harley Street in London. Rowland also paid the expenses for the medical treatment. Against the advice of his physician and the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC), Tambo continued his punishing work schedule, travelling on ANC business. The Swedish Foreign Ministry said Tambo arrived in Sweden on 3 January 1990 for treatment at a Stockholm hospital. The decision to move Tambo, who was previously being treated at a London clinic following a stroke in Lusaka, in August 1989, was made when the British clinic announced its imminent closure.

According to the Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bo Heineback, “Mr. Tambo will remain in Sweden until he is well enough to leave. He is welcome for as long as it takes.” Tambo was to be treated at the Stockholm Erstagard Clinic, a rehabilitation centre for stroke patients with brain damage. Immediately after his illness in August 1989, the ANC said in a statement that Tambo’s stroke had partially paralysed the right side of his body. Subsequent reports suggested that although Tambo was slowly recovering, his powers of speech and the movement of his right arm were impaired. He suffered another stroke in 1991 whilst undergoing medical treatment in Sweden. Again, Rowland flew him back to London where he was treated.

Despite these depressing reports about Tambo’s condition, for apartheid authorities, Tambo was the official “bogeyman”, as he started out and remained the racist Nationalists’ number one enemy. Over a period of decades Pretoria vilified Tambo only stopping short of giving him horns and a tail. Pretoria turned him into a kind of horrible mythological character, which could be used to scare the kids at night to conform to their parents’ wishes. So “ghastly” was his politics that no one in South Africa was allowed to see his face or hear his voice.

Because he was never seen or his voice heard in South Africa, Pretoria and its lackeys, such as the KwaZulu Bantustan leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, explained his messages in the manner they saw fit. And so of course he became an invisible enigma haunting whites. For many ordinary whites listening to their racist government, Tambo became an omnipotent “terrorist”; the grand genocidal instigator of all that was unholy. It would not be an overstatement to say that Tambo, thanks to Pretoria, became the physical embodiment of the white’s worst political fears for their future in Africa.

For the oppressed and struggling masses in South Africa and the continent, Tambo symbolised and epitomised the struggle in progress – that struggle to end the system which caused the African masses to suffer intolerable harm. If Tambo’s struggle succeeded, Nelson Mandela would go free; free to become a symbol of suffering ended, evil overcome, and of a new beginning. So, Tambo was a symbol too – but of the struggle against apartheid and of a wave towards ending the suffering endured under apartheid. Tambo equalled the struggle-in-progress. The struggle to free Mandela was equal to end apartheid – a symbol of the drawn-out struggle against apartheid and to build a non-racial and democratic South Africa.

It was Tambo’s struggle that cracked apartheid. It was Tambo’s struggle that led to the onetime political fantasy becoming present day political reality. Remember, the international call was to end apartheid and in fact it was up to Tambo to lead the masses to free South Africa. He epitomised the struggle and he waged it for decades. It was Tambo’s struggle that made the apartheid regime to feel the pressure of the revolutionary forces and the masses’ demands for a better future. Yet, a new South Africa seems not to have enough room for appreciating both political fantasy-turned-reality and remembering who got it there.

Oliver Tambo was not perfect, he also made mistakes. Nonetheless he, arguably more than any other South African, was daily involved with the struggle against apartheid. Whether honouring him or criticising him does not matter, it is ironic that even in the new South Africa, Oliver Tambo remains an enigma – he was the one man who was arguably more intensely and longer involved with the anti-apartheid revolutionary politics than any other South African political activist. Tambo fled into exile in 1960 when the ANC was banned by the apartheid government. He directed the ANC’s activities in exile, pressing for sanctions against South Africa and helping set up a guerrilla organisation in neighbouring African states.

After failing to win support from the United States and other Western powers to provide support for the ANC, Tambo obtained an agreement in 1963 with the Soviet Union to supply arms and other support, in terms of education, training and logistics. Tambo travelled constantly on behalf of the ANC, meeting with corporate leaders to urge that they withdraw their operations in South Africa. He also organised scholarship programmes to educate and train young members of the ANC abroad.

According to Lauren C. Marx, “It is fair to say that Tambo possessed a rare clarity of vision in his thought-making processes. He was consistently considered in all decisions and inclusive of all ideas. His ascension to leader of the ANC, albeit with a certain degree of reluctance, enabled the party to garner international attention and mobilisation against apartheid South Africa, but also created the structures internally to fight oppression. His meticulous attention to detail was underscored by his ability to navigate the often murky political waters of revolution without compromising his steadfast integrity. Marti Luther King Junior was once quoted as saying: ‘The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy’.”

Hugh Macmillan agrees that “Oliver Tambo managed to hold together a disparate and potentially fractious exile movement through a … process of racial, ethnic and political balancing. Internal democracy may have been limited, and there were undoubted abuses of power, especially in Angola, but the crises in the organisation in 1968–69 and in 1983–84 were both followed by consultative conferences, at Morogoro in 1969, and at Kabwe in 1985, where the major issues were discussed. Unity was important, but it was maintained as much by an almost voluntary closing down of debate and postponement of difficult decisions until ‘after we get home’ as by ‘ferocious discipline’.”

“During Tambo’s time as president”, Marx avers, “he certainly experienced his fair share of hardships, challenges and indeed controversy, if one considers the reaction and response to ANC camps and blurring of target lines within the country. However, Tambo maintained his course through rocky waters and shone his light on everyone and everything he came across. It is this ethical, diplomatic, collective, courageous and visionary leadership at all structures which allowed the ANC to return home a party of the people and lead South Africa into democracy.”

Luli Callinicos maintains that “The stress of the massacres and murders, of identifying and containing infiltrators, curbing both the zealous Mbokodo and mutiny in the camps, as well as handling the happier but demanding tasks of meeting the many diverse people from home, giving guidance during the ‘people’s war’ while simultaneously conducting highly sensitive and perilous negotiations took up all his waking hours. In an ironic tragedy, it was at the climax of the struggle of the movement that Oliver Tambo’s own hidden and private struggle over his health was brought into the open.”

“By 1985”, according to Callinicos, “Tambo publicly admitted that he was ailing. As if to warn his movement, at the end of his summation of the Kabwe Conference, he put aside his notes and spoke directly to his audience: ‘Comrades, my health is not good; but,’ he pledged ‘what remains will be consumed in the cause of the struggle.’! … That he survived as long as he did could only be attributed to his own willpower and anxiety to complete his mission, of seeing through the ANC’s ‘historic task of leading the political and military assault on the apartheid regime’, as he had been mandated to do nearly 30 years earlier.”

The “Gentle Terrorist”, as some referred to him, in a 1982 interview, Oliver Tambo said: “We are called terrorists. After 70 years, what would anybody do if the response had been murder, torture, life imprisonment? Who is a terrorist? Is it not the person who has been persecuting human beings simply because they are black?”

In another interview in 1985, Tambo jokingly asserted, “We could have been terrorists if we had wanted to, but we chose not to be. So even that has been an exaggeration. It is true that more recently, as for instance in May 1983 when a bomb exploded and others were attempted, this was stepping up things. It is proper to recognise that this was after 20 years at it. We started in 1961 and 20 years later you get a bomb exploding. We could have done this much, much earlier on numerous occasions. We did not want to be seen as terrorists; we are trying to put on pressure. And we have been notoriously restrained in our armed actions – notoriously.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
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Anthony Heard, “O. R. Tambo Interviewed by Anthony Heard, October 1985”, South African History Online (SAHO), 14 September 2017.
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Hugh Macmillan, “The African National Congress of South Africa in Zambia: The Culture of Exile and the Changing Relationship with Home, 1964–1990”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2009.
Lauren C. Marx, “A Giant Steering the Ship: The Leadership Style of Oliver Tambo and the Lessons that can be Drawn”, Oral History Journal of South Africa, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2018.
Vladimir Shubin with Marina Traikova, “Chapter 12: ‘There is no threat from the Eastern Bloc’”, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 3, International Solidarity, Part II, South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET), UNISA, 2015.
Luli Callinicos, “Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains”, David Philip, 2004.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp, “Hani: A Life Too Short”, Jonathan Ball, 2009.

Castro Khwela
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