Oliver Tambo: Against Apartheid Culture
(Extracts from an Address by ANC President O.R. Tambo to the World Conference against Apartheid Racism and Colonialism in Southern Africa, Lisbon, 16 – 19 June 1977)
“The battle of progressive humanity for the total and final elimination of the vile and preposterous system of colonialism in Africa has entered its final stage. The inevitability of victory has moved the people on the last barricades of struggle – from the Horn of Africa to the southern most shores of the continent – to acts of unprecedented heroism. In South Africa our people, after more than three centuries of brutal national oppression, are asserting their wish to be free with inspiring bravery.”
“Attempting to give a spiritual and cultural rationalisation for their racism, the ‘thinkers’ and propagandists of the white minority must dig their own intellectual graves. … It states: ‘The domination of White over Black is justified by the regimes through right to this land on the strength of three historical realities: purposeful and uninterrupted occupation and habitation, effective and sustained economic development, and effective and continuous political control’.”
“… The key to understanding the social and political structure of South Africa, we are told, lies in a ‘balanced appraisal of the unique diversity of cultures… and the differing levels of socio-economic and political sophistication’. These differing levels, it seem
