Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Heroes and Veterans Remembered
(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)
Heroes and Veterans Remembered
“… 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.
“Some of them are with us in this hall today. But among them we would like to select for special mention the late Comrade Joe Gqabi, former Robben Island prisoner, member of the NEC and our first representative in Zimbabwe. This implacable enemy of the apartheid regime wa
