Forty Years of the Kabwe Conference: The Struggle Mounts
(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 Struggle Mounts
“The decision of the Morogoro Conference helped us to overcome many shortcomings and to gear our organisation to make a more effective contribution to the mounting struggle inside our country and the anti-imperialist offensive of the peoples internationally. For, indeed, as the world forces of reaction basked in a passing glow of superior strength in 1969, the revolutionary and democratic movement was engaged in ever-mounting struggles to wrest victory from the oppressors and the exploiters. Five years after our Conference, the situation in our country, in our region and in other parts of the world was very different.
“Already by 1969 the masses of our people had begun to stir, in the process of overcoming the reverses and relative lull imposed on us by the brutal counteroffensive that the enemy had unleashed and which had resulted not only in the banning of the ANC, but also in the Rivonia and others arrests, the assassination and execution of patriots and the systematic use of torture as an instrument of State power.
“In particular, the youth and the workers were once more taking up the cudgels, engaging in boycott and strike actions during 1972 and 1973. S
