Oliver Tambo: A Future Free of Exploitation
(Extracts from ANC President Oliver Tambo’s address to the First Congress of the MPLA – Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola – which took place in Luanda, December 1977)
“The heroic anti-colonial struggles of the peoples of Africa for national independence … culminated in the epoch-making collapse of Portuguese colonialism in Africa. The earth-shaking victories of FRELIMO and MPLA brought southern Africa to the crossroads. But the revolutionary experience accumulated during the liberation wars ensured that the people’s advance towards social emancipation would not be halted.”
“The historic significance of the first Congress of MPLA is precisely that, for southern Africa, like the FRELIMO Congress, it blazes a new trail out of the crossroads towards the conquest of a socialist future for the peoples – a future free of exploitation. Our esteemed Leader, Friend and Comrade President Agostinho Neto, expressed a key and important truth when he said in one of his statements that the victory of the Angolan people was ‘a victory of the peoples advancing towards progress’.”
“This first Congress of MPLA is a victory of the Angolan people. It is also a victory of all the peoples, including the peoples of South Africa, who are pledged to fight for the creation of new socio-economic systems which will be characterised by the abolition of exploitation of man by man through ownership of productive wea
