Oliver Tambo: The Spirit of Bandung

Oliver Tambo: The Spirit of Bandung

(Extracts of an Address to the International Conference in Support of the Liberation Movements of Southern Africa and in Support of the Frontline States by O. R. Tambo, Lusaka, 10 April 1979)

“We are moved to recall the words of our late President Chief Albert Luthuli when he opened the 42nd Annual Conference of the ANC in 1953. To this day we repeat after him: ‘Our interest in freedom is not confined to ourselves only. We are interested in the liberation of all oppressed people in the whole of Africa and in the world as a whole … Our active interest in the extension of freedom to all people denied it makes us ally ourselves with freedom forces in the world.’”

“The struggles of this alliance of ‘freedom forces in the world’ has brought us to the threshold of the realisation of the goals set out at Bandung. Beyond that threshold lie two great Asian and African questions of contemporary international politics, viz., the liberation of the people of Palestine and the restoration of their national rights and the liberation of the peoples of southern Africa and the restoration of their national rights.”

“Imperialism recognises that even in southern Africa and in Palestine, naked colonial rule can no longer be maintained. The colonised peoples themselves are demonstrating in practice and in full view of the imperialists themselves, that they are determined to achieve victory or to perish in the pursuit of that victory. Of course, this is not the first time that imperialism has been faced with this reality. We all know what happened historically – the imperialists had to concede independence to the colonised peoples, as they will surely be forced to do in southern Africa.”

“Today, the imperialists … want a type of decolonisation which will leave its interests, its hegemony and its power in the region intact, a form of liberation therefore which will be incomplete and fraudulent, leaving the peoples of southern Africa bound hand and foot to the imperialist system of economic, military, political and other relations, the objects of imperialist exploitation and domination under a new guise. In short, imperialism aims for a neo-colonialist decolonisation.”

“The critical factor that confronts imperialism is that its antagonists … represent a future that is not anti-colonial merely but anti-imperialist as well. These liberation movements are the midwives of a future which will be characterised by the transfer of all power to the people: by ‘all power’ this conference should understand exactly that we mean political power, economic power, military power – a genuine and meaningful transfer of power to the people.”

“It would be of little moment to the racists of southern Africa, the Zionists in Israel and their international allies if these organisations represented a minority tendency on the fringes of a largely so-called ‘moderate’ broad liberation movement. The fact, however, is that these movements are the genuine representatives of their peoples. They constitute the core and the vanguard of the liberation forces of their respective countries without whom and against whom no just and lasting solutions of the fundamental problems of the Middle East and southern Africa are possible.”

“We should however remember that exactly because they recognise this reality, the imperialist Powers are carrying out manoeuvres of all kinds so as to ensure that the fall of the racist regimes does not mean the final liquidation of their interests, their hegemony and their power in the region. To achieve this result imperialism has embarked on an ambitious, integrated and brutal offensive designed to produce a solution in southern Africa and the Middle East which will guarantee the permanence of its hegemony in these regions.”

“The dangerous situation that has arisen in southern Africa, itself a reflection of how close we are to real and genuine victories throughout southern Africa, makes imperative the practical realisation of these demands. We can, with certainty say that such is the nature of the forces represented here that the results of this Conference will indeed take us one giant step nearer to the full accomplishment of the tasks laid down at the Bandung Conference.”

– Oliver Tambo (10 April 1979) –

Source:
Oliver Tambo, “The Spirit of Bandung”, Sechaba, July 1979, pp. 25 – 30.

Castro Khwela
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