Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Consolidation and Further Advance

Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Consolidation and Further Advance

(Portions of the Political Report of the National Executive Committee to the National Consultative Conference, which was presented by the President of the African National Congress, Oliver Tambo, 17 June 1985, Kabwe, Zambia)

Period of Expansion

“Conversely, during this period, the victories of the national liberation movement in southern Africa in particular, acted as an important factor in raising the level of militancy among our own people and spurring them further into action. Great, new possibilities emerged for us to reach into our country. Because allies with whom we had cooperated for a decade and more in the struggle for national liberation were now in power in Mozambique and Angola, a whole variety of other opportunities to increase our effectiveness emerged.

“One outcome of these developments was that, from 1975 onwards, we were able to establish an official presence in the Kingdom of Swaziland. Among the independent countries of southern Africa, Malawi was the only one with which we had and have no relations. At the same time, and as a consequence of these developments, the political crisis of the apartheid regime began to emerge into the open.

“Building on what had been achieved in the past, we continued to expand our contact with the masses of our people as well as their democratic organisations, including the trade unions and the Black Consciousness Movement as well as the religious community within our country.

“This is the appropriate occasion to disclose that in the course of this work we had, by 1976, arrived at the point where the time had come for us to meet that leading representative of the BCM, the late Steve Biko. By this time Steve and his colleagues had arrived at the following positions: (a) That the ANC is the leader of our revolution; (b) That the Black People’s Convention should concentrate on mass mobilisation; (c) That the BPC should function within the context of the broad strategy of our movement; and (d) That a meeting between the leadership of the BPC and ourselves was necessary.

“Arrangements were made for us to meet Steve Biko in 1976. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to bring Steve out of the country for this meeting. Another attempt was made in 1977, but this also did not succeed. Subsequent arrangements also failed as, for instance, Barney Pityana was arrested when he was due to lead another delegation. Steve Biko was of course subsequently murdered.

The Historic Soweto Uprising

“These events might be of historic interest now, particularly as the BCM as an organised force was severely affected by the bans imposed by the Pretoria regime on the BCM organisations in 1977. However, this experience proved the correctness of the positions we had taken to deal with the BCM not in a competitive spirit but to relate to it as part of the broad movement for national liberation. The achievements made in building our relations with this movement and giving its members access to our policy, strategy and tactics were of great importance in enabling us to defeat a determined attempt by the forces of counter-revolution to build a so-called Third Force, especially in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising.

“This uprising of 1976–77 was, of course, the historic watershed of the period we are reporting about. Within a short period of time, it propelled into the forefront of our struggle millions of young people, thus immeasurably expanding the active forces of the revolution and inspiring other sections of our people into activity.

“Naturally, these heroic struggles had a profound impact on our organisation as well. They resulted in the accelerated expansion of our movement both inside and outside the country. That process of course resulted in increasing the relative proportion of the youth and students within our ranks. It brought into our midst comrades many of whom had very little contact with the ANC, if any. It put at the immediate disposal of our movement militant cadres who were ready and yearning to carry out even the most difficult missions that the movement wished to give them. It increased many times over the responsibility we had to maintain large numbers of people outside our country.

“Conference will discuss the question whether, as a movement, we have built of this new army of our revolution the kind of cadre that the new situation and the tasks that we face demand. The issue of a proper cadre policy that takes into account our human resources and our perspectives is of fundamental importance to our further advance.

“In this regard, we would like to take this opportunity to pay glorious tribute to the older cadres of our movement, those that fought in Zimbabwe in 1967 and 1968, those who were the delegates at the Morogoro Conference. These same cadres manned the operations structures of the Revolutionary Council. They are the ones who were sent back into our country to carry out the organisational tasks that the Morogoro Conference and the Revolutionary Council had elaborated. Many of these are now serving long sentences on Robben Island.

“Indeed, we could say that had it not been for the steadfast commitment and loyalty of these comrades to our organisation and our revolution, there might very well have been no ANC to join when the youth poured out of our country after the Soweto Uprising. The new situation that confronts us, the task that this Conference will decide upon, require that we pay attention to the question of utilising to the full the experience and maturity of these outstanding cadres of our movement.

“The message of the Soweto Uprising was clear enough. It was that we had entered a new phase in our struggle, one that would be marked by an ever-sharpening confrontation between the masses of our people and the apartheid regime, one in which the mass offensive would, to all intents and purposes, be continuous and uninterrupted. It would also place the issue of the resumption of the armed struggle on our agenda, as an extremely urgent question in the face of the reality that the apartheid regime was using, and would continue to use, maximum force against our risen but unarmed people.

Consolidation and Further Advance

“We have characterised the period we are discussing as one of Consolidation and Further Advance. As we have been trying to demonstrate, we had been consolidating our gains and on that basis taking further steps forward especially with regard to political work. We have also referred to the fact that from 1972 we had also been sending cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe into the country to prepare exactly for the resumption of the armed struggle. In brief, we were getting better prepared to assume our place as the active vanguard force of our struggling people within the country.

“The Soweto Uprising demonstrated that our country was a veritable powder keg. A decade and a half after the military suppression of the general strike of 1961, the pent-up revolutionary fury of the people rose to the surface. It became possible to conclude that such uprisings would become a permanent feature of our struggle.

“Our movement, as other revolutionary movements before it, has a responsibility to take advantage of such moments when the activity of the masses is increased a thousandfold, when the masses are prepared to fight to the finish for the destruction of their adversary. Understanding all this, it was however true that in 1976–77 we had not recovered sufficiently to take full advantage of the situation that crystallised from the first events of June 16, 1976.

“Organisationally, in political and military terms, we were too weak to take advantage of the situation created by the uprising. We had very few active ANC units inside the country. We had no military presence to speak of. The communication links between ourselves outside the country and the masses of our people were still too slow and weak to meet the situation such as was posed by the Soweto Uprising.

“An outstanding role in this situation was, however, played by those of our comrades who were inside the country, many of them former Robben Island prisoners. Through their contact with the youth, they were able to make an ANC input, however limited, in the conduct of the bloody battles of 1976–77.” (To be continued)

– Oliver Tambo (17 June 1985) –

Source:
Oliver Tambo, “The Eyes of Our People are Focussed on this Conference”, Sechaba, October 1985, pp. 2 – 9.

Castro Khwela
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