African
Revolutionary Writers, Part 5b
Oliver Tambo
This thoroughly confident speech of O R Tambo’s in December
1969 (downloadable via the link below), was made not long after ANC’s
Conference in May of that year that had adopted the famous Strategy and Tactics
document.
After the banning of the ANC in 1960, an equal or greater
set-back had been the arrest of the top revolutionary leadership at Lilieasleaf
Farm, Rivonia, Johannesburg on 11th July 1963, including Govan Mbeki
who featured here yesterday.
The 1960s, we can see now, were far from being an interlude.
What was laid down in those years is what was going to come to pass, and that
meant, in Tambo’s words, that “the enemy
is headed for inevitable and ignominious defeat.”
The speech was broadcast on the anniversary of the formation
of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the “new national
army” as Tambo called it.
Tambo’s typically broad historical sweep, in this short
speech, includes an acknowledgement of PAIGC, the revolutionary liberation
movement led by another in this series, Amilcar Cabral, at the time, and which
was about to achieve a stunning victory.
The unbanning of the ANC and the return of Tambo to South
Africa were not achieved until more than twenty years later. Yet it is easy to
see why the ANC used to say in those years: “Victory is Certain!”
The next and last item in this fifth part of our African
Revolutionary Writers series, we will see through the eyes of Comrade Mzala
(Jabulani Nxumalo) how the theory and practice of armed and political struggle
drew inexorably towards its goal.
These four pieces of writing from “Africa’s Oldest
Liberation Movement”, taken together, should leave no doubt as to the
systematic and deliberate nature of the ANC’s project, and the all-round
exemplary way in which it has been carried out to date.
You can read more of O R Tambo’s speeches here.
Please download and read the entire text via
this link:
Further reading:
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