Under his leadership the world constituted itself into the most powerful international post-Second World War solidarity movement to date, described as the International Anti-Apartheid Movement. Beginning with the banning of the ANC and the PAC in 1960, following on the banning of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1950, the apartheid regime, supported by powerful international allied Western anti-communist states, led by the US, sought to use extreme repression completely to liquidate all organised opposition in our country to the apartheid regime and system. We must admit that during perhaps a decade from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, except for the resurgence of university student resistance, serious national organised opposition to the apartheid regime collapsed, and therefore that extreme state repression succeeded in its purposes, imposing on the masses of our people what we can honestly describe as our own “dark age”.
It is in this context that we must understand the critical importance of the reality that was created by the actuality that Oliver Tambo, originally sent abroad by the ANC leadership essentially to mobilise international support for our domestic struggle, led the processes which ensured the very survival of the ANC. In the absence of what was done outside our country, and under his leadership, there would have been no organising centre representing the oppressed majority, and therefore the ANC, which served as the counter party in the complex process which ended with the 1994 political victory.
During the challenging years of the virtual exile of the ANC, and operating in the context of a complicated international situation, Oliver Tambo led the political processes which both ensured that the ANC maintained the confidence of the South African masses, and ensured that these masses remained loyal to the strategic objectives of the NDR. As the master strategist he was, Oliver Tambo made a critical contribution to the elaboration of the strategic perspective of the ANC at an historically critical moment of the struggle to defeat the apartheid crime against humanity, which resulted in the identification and combined pursuit of the “Four Pillars of the Revolution”, these being:
•mass action within the country, involving millions of our people, which came to be represented by such eminent formations as the UDF, COSATU, the South African Council of Churches, the women’s, youth and student formations, NAFCOC (representing black business), organisations of journalists, workers in arts and culture, traditional leaders, sports people, members of the intelligentsia and the professional echelon, and others;
•underground action within the country carried out by organised structures of the ANC, which were based among the people;
•the armed struggle carried out by and under the auspices of Umkhonto we Sizwe; and,
•international solidarity, involving the isolation of the apartheid regime, active support for the ANC and the broad democratic movement, support for the other sister liberation movements in our region, and the defence of the “frontline states” of southern Africa, including all our neighbours, which served as our critically important rear-base, in which capacity they made enormous and selfless sacrifices to help guarantee our liberation.
Further, Oliver Tambo had the maturity of revolutionary strategic and tactical intelligence, during the later years of the 1980s, to understand that the strategic balance of power had shifted decisively in favour of our country’s National Democratic Revolution, and therefore that the combined force of the ANC, the broad democratic movement in our country and the world Anti-Apartheid Movement had to prepare themselves for an historically new phase of struggle. Accordingly, he worked to position the entirety of this movement, at home and abroad, to prepare for this new phase of struggle. Among others, this included the preparation for the necessary processes for the transfer of power in our country through a process of negotiations, which ultimately resulted in the adoption of the important documents – the “Harare Declaration”, “Ready to Govern” and the “Reconstruction and Development Programme”.
Accordingly, I will not hesitate to say that the late President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, lived up to his revolutionary obligation to lead our movement and people in the protracted and complex struggle successfully to achieve the first objective of the National Democratic Revolution, and to lay a firm base for the correct pursuit of the second objective of this revolution.
The success of this first objective, the political victory of 1994, has now become part of the commonly-owned national heritage. Happily, now, and quite correctly, all South Africans see it as their solemn duty to defend this heritage. Nevertheless, and within the context of this lecture, I would like to make bold to say that all of us should position ourselves as revolutionary democrats, to do everything possible to protect and advance the national heritage I have mentioned – the genuine democratisation and deracialisation of our country, fundamentally based on our Constitution, in its letter and spirit.
Let me now state what I believe is the legacy left behind for all of us by our dear Oliver Tambo, which we have no alternative but to incorporate into our thinking and actions, to empower us to take the next step further along the road towards the achievement of the strategic objective further to advance our National Democratic Revolution.
Essentially this boils down to two major tasks, these being:
•successfully to address the objective of the eradication of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, this being the second strategic objective of the National Democratic Revolution, the NDR; and,
•producing yet more Oliver Tambos to lead the struggle to achieve this objective.
It would seem obvious to me that as we celebrate the centenary of the ANC, and therefore the memory of such outstanding leaders of the ANC as Oliver Tambo, and others, our broad movement for national liberation, the national democratic movement, must, as a matter of urgency, undertake an open, honest and critical assessment of its actions since 1994, relating to the two major tasks I have just mentioned. I am convinced that in the main, with regard to both these tasks, we have not, and I repeat, not realised the strategic advances we set ourselves to achieve, these being:
•decisively to break the back of the colonial and apartheid legacy; and,
•to build the national cadre both politically committed and professionally qualified to help ensure the accomplishment of the second strategic task of the national democratic revolution.
In reality, the very lively and legitimate national debate which has engaged the country for some time now, and will undoubtedly continue, is exactly about the real or perceived failures of the National Democratic Revolution with regard to these tasks. Earlier in this lecture I mentioned various important elements of the colonial and apartheid legacy whose eradication stands at the centre of the achievement of the second strategic task of the National Democratic Revolution. These include such matters important to the achievement of this task as:
(i) radically modernising the mass skills base, especially among the African majority, and therefore changing the system of education and training to enable the achievement of this objective;
(ii) expanding and modernising the production base of the economy through consistently high rates of investment, resulting in sustained high economic growth rates, and deracialising our system of property relations in favour of the national majority;
(iii) achieving the objectives of the emancipation of women and gender equality;
(iv) systematically addressing the challenge of the empowerment of the youth;
(v) altering the structure of our economy to end its historical relationship with the developed world as essentially an exporter of raw materials;
(vi) significantly reducing the racial and gender inequalities in terms of wealth, income and opportunity;
(vii) creating the material base to underwrite the achievement of national unity, and therefore national reconciliation and shared patriotism, thus to achieve progress towards ending the divisive racial and ethnic divisions that were entrenched during the apartheid period;
(viii) achieving the sustained