Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: Our Right to Fight
(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)
Enemy Counter-offensive
“The forces of counter-revolution which had described the Mozambique revolution in 1980 as an affliction and which had thought in 1969 that the ‘only hope (of the independent States of our region) for a peaceful and prosperous future lies in closer relations with the white-dominated States’, could justifiably claim that they had scored a victory. What had gone wrong? Why was it that in 1975 Africa could resolve that no matter how strong the enemy counteroffensive, we should not retreat and in 1984 be forced to accept retreat? The answer of course lies in the reply that Reagan had given to a journalist in 1980.
“Given the offensive posture of United States imperialism, the Botha regime also felt that, for the first time in five years, the balance of forces was shifting in its favour. Consequently, it resolved that the opportunity had come for it also to go on the offensive, to shift that balance further in its own favour, in keeping with the global drive of its most powerful allies. It thought it was possible to reverse the advances that the national liberation movement had achieved from 1975 onwards and set out to realise this result, acting in concert with
