Oliver Tambo: We Must Protect Our Revolutionary Struggle

Oliver Tambo: We Must Protect Our Revolutionary Struggle

(ANC President O. R. Tambo Interviewed by Radio Freedom, 5 February 1986).

“It is the armed component of our struggle which causes the greatest threat for the apartheid system and its economy and under conditions of our struggle there is instability. They would rather, therefore, that the change were smooth, so that they have time to be adjusting to the change, by way of reforms, which means that there would be no rapid change transformation, and that we would be talking and arguing about things while they are making their profits, for 10 years, 20 years for 30 years, while they are making profits … It is the armed component which has made them want to come to the ANC … to see whether there is prospect of this being suspended.

“We naturally told them we could not abandon armed struggle. Armed struggle – it was a product, a direct product, of the apartheid system, of the existence of the apartheid system. And this affects the extent to which they can really come on our side.

“What replaces the apartheid system? What would be their position in the new system? Well, they cannot look forward to the kind of system that the ANC has in mind under the Freedom Charter, but at least they understood the reasons why the Freedom Charter had those provisions or why our people thought of putting those provisions in the Freedom Charter.

“They also want to reform the apartheid system in such a way that the end result is a system which secures their business but is minus racial discrimination. And that is what they are looking for – a system that falls short of the stipulations of the Freedom Charter but moves away from a system that thrives on violence and produces counter-violence.

“Well, we do not think that such a system is different. We certainly do not think that the regime and its supporters are really thinking of something which may be slightly different. We certainly do not think that the regime and its supporters are really thinking of an alternative to the apartheid system. They are thinking of something which may be slightly different. It might even be called something else, not apartheid, but would in practice be apartheid.

“We must protect our struggle against forces which sound correct but whose objective is entirely to destroy the cause, the·objective, of our revolutionary struggle”.

Source:
Oliver Tambo, “On Talks”, Sechaba, February 1986, pp. 31 – 32.

Castro Khwela
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