Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: The Cold War Resuscitated

Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: The Cold War Resuscitated

(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)

The Cold War Resuscitated

“As we began the Decade of Liberation, the most aggressive and reactionary forces of imperialism had gained or were gaining the upper hand in the countries of the West, including and ultimately in the United States. These forces began to resuscitate the cold war everywhere. They assumed an active posture against the progressive movement throughout the world and launched an economic and political offensive against the ordinary people and the democratic movement within the imperialist countries.

“As a result of these policies, the process of detente between the socialist countries and the imperialist world came to a halt. New nuclear weapons have since been deployed in Europe. International tensions increased as did the danger of a nuclear war. To this day, the United States Government has refused to ratify the SALT-II Treaty. The arms race continues to escalate.

“A determined effort was set afoot to roll back socialism, to reverse the victories of the national liberation movement and to force the peoples of the world to succumb to the wishes of imperialism. Hence we saw the complicated situation that arose in Poland. The offensive against democratic Afghanistan continued and intensified. The United States openly invaded Grenada, funded and assisted the removal from power of the progressive forces led by Michael Manley in Jamaica and has laid siege to Nicaragua. At the same time, it is actively involved in a campaign to defeat the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador, and openly supports the most reactionary and murderous regimes in Central and South America.

“United States imperialism has also helped to sabotage all efforts to resolve the problem of Western Sahara by giving maximum support to King Hassan of Morocco to defeat the POLISARIO Front. In the Middle East, it has encouraged the forces of reaction to liquidate the PLO and permitted Zionist Israel to invade the Lebanon in an effort to turn it into a pacified dependency of this ally of racist South Africa. As a token of their intent to intervene everywhere in their own interest, United States imperialism and its allies have established Rapid Deployment Forces which are designed to reach any part of the globe quickly.

“In an interview he gave during 1980, while still campaigning for the Presidency, Reagan’s assertion that the Soviet Union was achieving world domination was challenged by a journalist. He replied: ‘… You have forgotten, even though the Russians did not do it directly but through their proxies, there is Ethiopia, there is South Yemen, there is Angola, there is Mozambique, they have moved and advanced their positions – and in the Caribbean we are seeing by way of Cuba the export of revolution to the point that our sea-lanes for the essential things we must have, particularly in minerals and energy, are much endangered right now if the Soviets should decide to adopt that course…

‘(To) say that they have lost ground in Latin America, I think is to ignore the reality there. Right now, Colombia, Bogota, is having a great infiltration of the same kind of people that have brought the downfall of other countries there in Central America, the moving into Africa, Afghanistan, Iran – once the great bulwark between the Soviet Union and their advance southward to the Indian Ocean – is shattered and gone.. (The) communists are the menace to civilisation in the world today…

‘(As) Pope Pius XII said at the end of World War II, when the Soviet Union – when it looked as if the world might go into a thousand years of darkness: ‘…The American people have a great genius and capacity for performing great and generous deeds. Into the hands of America, God has placed afflicted mankind.’ I want to see – I want to help us get back to those fiercely independent Americans… and I believe in their greatness and I believe this country has a destiny.’

“Hitler, too, believed that Nazi Germany had a destiny to cleanse an afflicted world. He therefore set out to destroy socialism in the Soviet Union, to stamp out all progressive and democratic forces in Europe and to colonise people.

Life-and-Death Confrontation

“That, also, was the awesome meaning of the words that Ronald Reagan uttered. If they chilled and horrified the forces of progress throughout the world, they were like music in the ears of P.W. Botha. They signified that when Reagan assumed the Presidency of the United States, the Pretoria regime would have a powerful ally in Washington and would have the United States behind it in any action to remove what Reagan referred to as ‘Russian proxies’ in Angola and Mozambique.

“Like the Iran of the Shah, which Reagan described as the ‘great bulwark between the Soviet Union and their advance to the Indian Ocean’, apartheid South Africa would also win a place in United States strategy as a bulwark between the Soviet Union and its ‘advance’ into southern Africa.

“Thus, we were to come face to face with the world forces of counter-revolution in a way that we had not experienced in the period 1974–1979. Like the great Vietnamese people before us, whose experiences were studied by a delegation of our movement which visited Vietnam in 1978, we had to win this life and death confrontation first and foremost in the battlefields of our motherland, but also in the streets of the United States and the other imperialist countries which back the Pretoria regime.

“In 1978–79, we undertook an extensive review of our internal work, our structures handling this sphere, and our strategy and tactics. As a result of this review, we were better prepared to enter the Decade of Liberation, to build on the achievements we had scored and to help create the situation in which we can sense that victory is not far away.” (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!