Oliver Tambo: Southern Africa, South Africa and the Revolution

Celebrating the Oliver Tambo Month
Oliver Tambo: Southern Africa, South Africa and the Revolution

(Extracts of Sechaba Interview: Oliver Tambo, Acting President-General of the African National Congress of South Africa Replies to Questions on Southern Africa, South Africa and the A.N.C.)

“Our delegation has been to Algeria and Tunisia. Other ANC delegations have visited other States. The need for the delegations to undertake these missions arises directly from the unfolding crisis in Southern Africa. After all, we are not fighting an individual cause. Africa has committed herself to the total liberation of the Continent before any individual independent state can consider itself truly independent. At the moment the greatest problem facing Africa in terms of liberation is in Southern Africa. And within Southern Africa itself the hardest core of reaction is the South African regime. It has always been clear to us that an armed struggle against South Africa poses immediate dangers and threats to the entire continent of Africa, if it supports that struggle.”

“We have always warned that South Africa’s annual military budget … has designs not only to the ruthless suppression of the Liberation Movement in South Africa, but also for the support of all reaction in the rest of Southern Africa and for the invasion of the African Continent itself. We think it dangerous to minimise the threat to the independence of the African states. And as it is part of our plan to intensify the revolution, we feel it incumbent on us as leaders to discuss the implications of the revolution with African leaders.”

“… These missions have been most successful and we feel they will serve to guide us in our conduct of the revolution we have taken upon ourselves not only for the freedom of our people, but for the whole of Africa and as a contribution to the victories of the peoples in the international struggle against racism, colonialism and imperialism.”

“… There is more than a chance of the revolution spreading on an extensive scale in South Africa. This is a question which of course does not depend only on our will and determination to wage revolution. It also depends of the existence of objective conditions which taken together with the determination of the people make it inevitable. The political struggle in Africa has not been stagnant, nor has it been so in the rest of the former colonial world. The defeat of forces of colonialism and imperialism is a process that is going on and has been dramatically demonstrated in the victories of the peoples of Africa over colonial rule in the past decade.”

“Apartheid is a scheme, a device and a machinery for keeping a White minority in political and economic power in South Africa. It is also a machinery which serves the interests of international big business. It hinges on the colour of the skin and has placed the entire African population at the economic beck and call of this White minority which in turn, by holding the reins of exploitation, becomes the agent of colonial and imperial interests. On the African continent, the concentration in South Africa of 3½ million Whites holding 15 million Africans in subjugation makes that part of Africa a big prize for overseas investors.”

“… The end of apartheid therefore must mean the dismantling of this machinery – the elimination of the agents which the White minority are, and the destruction of the means of exploitation of the African people. This is how I see the end of apartheid. It will therefore represent a transfer of political and economic power from the minority of Whites to the majority of peoples of all colours. There will be no racial discrimination because it will have ceased to serve the cause of exploitation. The bountiful wealth of our country will be shared by all its citizens.”

“Here again the detailed process by which these ultimate objectives will be achieved must be left for decision by the masses after victory. But it is important to emphasize that not even victory in the battlefield represents the end of the struggle for the true independence of the people. It is therefore not possible to spell out how the total and final end of apartheid and all that it means and has meant will be attained. But the people of South Africa will attain it is historically certain.”

– Oliver Tambo (April 1968) –

Source:
Sechaba, “Oliver Tambo, Acting President-General of the African National Congress of South Africa Replies to Questions on Southern Africa, South Africa and the A.N.C.”, Sechaba, Vol. 2, No.4, April 1968, pp. 2 – 5.

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