Oliver Tambo: Mobilise Our Black Power
(Extracts from a Statement by Oliver Tambo, Acting President of the African National Congress, to the People of South Africa on the Tenth Anniversary of Umkhonto We Sizwe, 16 December 1971)
“Now let us talk of Freedom. Everywhere in the world today, the oppressed and exploited masses of people are up in arms. They are fighting against the forces of colonialism and imperialism. They are making great sacrifices to redeem their human dignity and fundamental liberties from the shackles of bondage. They are revolting against oppression, against foreign aggression, against the usurpation of their land; against human degradation. They stand for peace and justice: they clamour for an end to imperialist wars; they yearn for the birth of a new order. And to uphold their convictions they are prepared to pay with their own lives.”
“We call upon all the oppressed and exploited black masses of the people of South Africa to unite and close ranks against the apartheid monster.”
“In 1967 we made our voice quite clear in the battlefields of Zimbabwe. There the white oppressor learnt the lesson which we must teach him again and again – that a bullet kills a white man too. And out of the barrels of guns and homemade bombs let us go on showing Vorster and his Gestapo that we are determined to smash apartheid; to end racism: and to liberate the oppressed black people of our country. We are many and the white oppressors are few; our cau
