Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Our Cadres and Their Crucial Role

Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Our Cadres and Their Crucial Role

(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)

International Solidarity Grows

“Internationally also, the movement of solidarity with our movement and our struggle is growing and increasing its effectiveness. Already, many countries consider the ANC virtually as a government and work with us as such. On the other hand, the process of the isolation of the racist regime is developing rapidly, especially and notably in the United States.

“In this respect, we should also mention the extensive political and material support that we enjoy from the non-aligned countries, the Nordic and other Western countries and the international anti-apartheid movement. Our relations with these important world forces have also contributed greatly in further weakening the Pretoria regime and strengthening our movement and struggle.

“The key to our further advance is organisation. Our NEC addressed itself to this question in its last January 8th statement when it proclaimed this, the Year of the Cadre. The fact of the matter is that despite the enormous impact we have made in developing the struggle to the level it is today, our organisation inside the country is relatively weak.

“We need a strong organisation of revolutionaries because, without it, it will be impossible to raise the struggle to greater heights in a planned and systematic fashion. Without such a strong revolutionary organisation, we cannot take advantage of the uprisings we have spoken about and which are a reality of the mass offensive of our people.

“We have to discuss carefully the question why we are not as strong as we can and should be, review our experiences and draw the necessary conclusions. One thing that is clear is that we have to realise that we have in fact developed many cadres inside the country who understand our policy very well, who are in daily contact with the situation and our people and are committed to our organisation and struggle. It is vital that these cadres should be properly grounded in our strategy in its entirety, so that they can in fact advance all our strategic tasks.

Daily Contact with our People

“It is very important that our leadership, by which we mean all those whom we consider the most mature among our ranks, must begin to involve itself directly in this work of internal organisation. We have to be in daily contact with our people.

“We must also move with all due speed to take the tasks posed by our perspective of people’s war. In this respect, we would like to mention in particular that we have to take the question of mass revolutionary bases very seriously. We shall also be discussing this issue when we consider the document on strategy and tactics.

“As a result of the strength and tenacity of the people’s offensive, many areas in our country are emerging perhaps in a rudimentary way, as such mass, revolutionary bases. The people are engaged in active struggle as a conscious revolutionary force and accept the ANC as their vanguard movement. They are organised in mass democratic organisations. They have destroyed the enemy’s local organs of government and have mounted an armed offensive against the racist regime, using whatever weapons are available to them. What is missing is a strong underground ANC presence as well as a large contingent of units of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

“We must correct this weakness in a determined and systematic manner because it is within these mass revolutionary bases that we will succeed to root our army. It is the risen masses in these areas who have to be organised into larger formations of Umkhonto we Sizwe, turned into organised groups of combatants, and who have to replenish and swell our military ranks.

“We have to bear in mind the fact that the comrades we are training outside constitute the core of our army. They are the organisers and the leaders of the mass army that we have to build inside the country. They are our officer corps. We cannot deploy them forever as combat units. For obvious reasons, no army in the world fights with combat units composed of officers. Ours will be no exception.

Our Cadres: Their Crucial Role

“The question of the kind of cadre we are producing assumes greater significance with each passing day. The level of struggle demands that we deploy inside our country as many of our cadres as possible. As we succeed to do this, these cadres will constitute an important component part of our internal structures and therefore of the ANC as a whole. They must therefore be what the ANC wants them to be. This cannot be left to chance.

“It is a good thing that Conference will be discussing the question of cadre policy. Our decisions in this regard will have to be implemented seriously and consistently. All other decisions we take at this Conference will only have real meaning if we have the cadres to implement them with the sense of purpose that everything we decide here will require. We are raising questions which might be organisational. But they are central to the solution of the question of how we raise the struggle to higher levels. Anyway, they are issues which require our most serious reflection.

“We would also like to raise the question of the release of political prisoners. But in the first instance the NEC would like to report at this Conference that over the years, we have tried our best to keep in contact with these outstanding leaders of our people and activists of our movement. In this we were assisted by the great ingenuity and daring that these comrades showed in themselves ensuring that we kept in contact.

“When the need arose, we have consulted them on important questions of our revolution. Their constant steadfastness and their calibre as leaders was demonstrated only recently when they turned down Botha’s offer to release them on condition that they renounced violence.” (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
Good morning fellow Compatriots!