I would like to take this opportunity once again to express our profound thanks to the MPLA, the government and sister people of Angola for the selfless and all-round support they extended to us to give us the possibility to achieve our liberation. It was natural that in this regard we would do our best to learn from our reliable ally, the MPLA, about what we should do properly to use our access to state power to serve the people, following the political victory of our own National Democratic Revolution in 1994. In this regard we took into account the fact that the NDR in Angola, led by our reliable ally, the MPLA, won its political victory in 1975, fully 21 years before our own victory in 1994.
One of the texts we studied in this regard was the book written by the outstanding and veteran British progressive journalist, Victoria Brittain, Death of Dignity: Angola’s Civil War, published in 1998, and the published interviews she held with leaders of the MPLA. In this context, in addition to the interaction of Oliver Tambo and others of our leaders with the leadership of the MPLA, including Joe Slovo, we paid special attention to the recorded observations of the leaders of the MPLA. In this context we know that one of these principal leaders of the MPLA, Paolo Jorge, said that when an Angolan Government Decree of 1992 allowed Government Ministers to engage in business on their individual accounts: “That brought a change in mentality – moral values disappeared, replaced by material values.”
Yet another principal leader of the MPLA, at one point in the history of the MPLA the immensely popular deputy to the outstanding African and Angolan leader, Aghostino Neto, Lucio Lara, said: “We (did not pay) a great deal of attention to the ideological problem … I speak of honesty, sticking to one’s principles, above all, kindness, generosity. A natural militant (of the national democratic revolution), by definition, is generous … because he (or she is) doing what he (and she) can for the people, without taking personal interests into account … We should have been able to prevent … personal interests, gradually, the little egos, (from) taking over from the generosity which should be the defining characteristic of militants in a party like ours.
“Today … I don’t have illusions about many things. In the Angolan struggle perhaps we did (not) have philosophers or sociologists, but we had the words of (Aghostino) Neto (that): ‘the most important thing is to solve people’s problems.’ Once, in the Council of Ministers, I heard someone say that we should stop using this phrase. I thought maybe he was right, because no one spoke out against him. In my opinion this was when the party began to collapse. The leaders felt they all had the right to be rich. That was the beginning of the destruction of our life. Our people are suffering and no one cares. If you talk to our people, they (are) all suffering. No one is smiling. But there’s no preoccupation with this from the leadership (of the party).”
From my recollection of the conversations which Victoria Brittain had with these leaders of the MPLA, Paolo Jorge and Lucio Lara, at the end of these interactions they made an admission that is immensely painful for all genuine revolutionaries, such as Oliver Tambo was. They said that when the MPLA formally allowed all its leaders to engage in business for personal benefit, and thus to enrich themselves, turning their back on the defining obligation of the leaders of the revolution to “solve the people’s problems”, this marked the moment of the death of dignity of both the party of the democratic revolution and the revolution itself.
As a people that has, for an entire century, placed our most sacred hopes about our better future in our own parliament of the people, the ANC, we must ask ourselves and answer a vitally important question, precisely during this year of the centenary of that parliament of the people – whether this historic creation of all the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora is, today, what it should be?
If Oliver Tambo was alive today, I have absolutely no doubt that he would surely have been gravely concerned that we do not conduct ourselves in a manner that would result in our own death of dignity. Despite the accident of his place of birth in what was already then the grossly disadvantaged rural Eastern Cape of South Africa, the Transkei, Oliver Tambo developed into a renaissance intellectual, eminently competent in many fields, including mathematics, biology and chemistry, legal jurisprudence, history, pedagogy and theology, military science, sociology and revolutionary social transformation, communications, creative literature, music and the arts. To express my profound respect for him and his many talents, and with your permission, I will end by citing what the creative writers of two continents have said in the past, which I trust will help to explain the grave challenges we face.
Some centuries ago, in his famous play, Hamlet, the eminent English playwright, William Shakespeare, reflecting on similarly troubled times in his imagined State of Denmark, got the hero of the play, Hamlet, to utter the challenging words full of pathos: “The time is out of joint – O cursèd spite, That ever I was born to set it right!”
I dare say that the time during which we live is out of joint. The challenge each one of us faces is whether we have the courage to set it right! Centuries after Shakespeare lived and composed his plays, early in the twentieth century, the Irish poet, W B Yeats, foresaw an epoch when the time would be out of joint for all humanity. In his famous poem, The Second Coming, he wrote: “The darkness drops again but now I know, That twenty centuries of stony sleep, Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle. And what rough beast, Its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
During the same century, the last, our own undeclared national Poet Laureate, S E K Mqhayi, foresaw similar times for our country and wrote the disturbing words, in one of our own languages: “Kunamhla nj’ ilizwe liyazuza; Kunamhla nje lo mhlab’ uyalunywa; Int’ esesiswini maze niyilumkele, Loo nt’ isesizalweni maze niyindwebele; Namhla ngathi kuza kuzalw’ uGilikankqo, Ngathi kuzalw’ isil’ esingaziwa mngxuma.”
Surely our own consciousness and consciences as revolutionary democrats must tell us that we would honour Oliver Tambo best, not by finding flattering and casual words to speak well of him, but by responding correctly to a time that is out of joint, by confronting the beast that is slouching out of Bethlehem to be born, by contending with isil’ esingaziwa mngxuma – the frightening beast of the wild, of no known abode and origin!
I can think of no better response to these historic challenges, to guarantee our victory over human deprivation and the dehumanisation of the African, than to do what we must, to emulate the example that Oliver Tambo set, which helped to define what the ANC must be. Thank you for your attention.
Foreword
NELSON MANDELA
I am a member of the African National Congress. I have always been a member of the African National Congress and I will remain a member of the African National Congress until the day I die. Oliver Tambo is much more than a brother to me. He is my greatest friend, and comrade for nearly 50 years. If there is any one amongst you who cherishes my freedom, Oliver Tambo cherishes it more, and I know that he would give his life to see me free. There is no difference between his views and mine.
It is an extraordinary exercise for a man to write an introduction to a book he has not seen, an exercise which may degenerate into inaccurate generalisations. All that I know is that the book is a collection of Oliver’s speeches and, at the moment of writing, I have not even the barest information as to exactly where and when the speeches were made, the actual issues discussed and the title of the book. He is a banned person, and in terms of South African law what he says may not be published. For this reason it has not been possible to keep track of his speeches during the 26 years in which he has been in exile.
But we live in abnormal times and our own actions must inevitably be influenced by the circumstances in which we have to carry out our political tasks. There are many areas of activity in which our responses must depart from the accepted norms and usual practice, and this introduction is one of them.
Fortunately the task is made relatively easy by the fact that the theme and quality of Oliver’s