debate honouring Oliver Reginald Tambo
20 September 2007
Madam Speaker
Honourable members
Comrades and friends
Heritage is one of the primary sources of identity, imparting to communities
a sense of belonging. That South Africa is culturally diverse is readily
recognised. Less evident is the role that heritage can play in nurturing our
national identity, social cohesion, conflict prevention and promoting human
security. A group of independent experts set up by the Director General of
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco)
defined cultural diversity as "the manifold ways in which the cultures of
social groups and societies find expression." This suggests that rather than
dividing us, cultural diversity is our collective strength, which could benefit
the entire world. In this sense, it should be recognised and affirmed as the
"common heritage" of all South Africans.
Our South African Heritage draws on three continents and we on this side of
the house, have always accepted this outcome as the verdict of history.
Humanism, that affirms the dignity and worth of all people, based on our human
capacity to reason, is the connecting thread among these traditions. Its
African spirit is best expressed as "Umntu, ngumntu ngabantu" â One's humanity
is affirmed in the recognition of the humanity of others!
One finds the same notion highlighted in the writings of a social and
political philosopher who was voted the most influential thinker of the second
millennium A.D. by the audiences of the BBC World Services:
"To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But for humanity the root
is humanity itself hence the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations
in which humans are debased, enslaved forsaken, despicable beings."
Madame Speaker,
The man whose life's work we are commemorating was born on 27 October 1917,
in the Mbizana district of eastern Mpondolond (eQawukeni) in the Transkei.
After serving the usual rural apprenticeship as herd boy he enrolled at an
Anglican school before going to St Peter's Secondary school in Johannesburg. He
was awarded a scholarship by the Transkei Bhunga which took him to the
University College of Fort Hare, where he attained a degree in science,
qualifying to become a teacher of mathematics and science.
From 1943 until 1947 he taught these subjects at his alma mater, St Peter's
in Johannesburg. He gave up teaching to study law in 1948 and established the
first African legal partnership with Nelson Mandela in December 1952. The
repressive hand of the apartheid regime pre-empted a second career change in
December 1956. Two days before the Bishop of Johannesburg, The Most Reverend
Ambrose Reeves, was due to prepare him for ordination as a priest; Oliver Tambo
was arrested with 155 others on charges of High Treason on 6th December
1956.
Oliver Tambo chose his path when he joined the African National Congress
(ANC) after completing his studies at Fort Hare. From 1947 until his death in
1993, Oliver Tambo was among the leading figures of the ANC and he left an
indelible mark on South African politics. When Walter Sisulu was forbidden from
taking an active part in ANC affairs in 1954, Oliver Tambo became
Secretary-General of the ANC; by 1957 he had been elected Deputy President to
Chief Albert Luthuli. He became Acting-President when Chief Luthuli died in
1967 and assumed the ANC's Presidency at the Morogoro conference in 1969.
Though the ANC-led campaigns were militant, they were scrupulously
non-violent. The response of the White minority government, however, was not as
restrained. It unleashed a wave of repression. Armed police, sometimes assisted
by army units, shot peaceful demonstrators; police wielding batons, billy clubs
and pick-axe handles administered brutal beatings to those not fleet-footed
enough to get away; entire villages of people in the rural areas were deported
to distant areas and the pre-dawn Security Police raid became a regular feature
of South African life.
Commencing with the passage of the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, in
incremental steps, the apartheid government turned the law into a formidable
instrument of repression. These repressions culminated at Sharpeville in March
1960, when 69 peaceful demonstrators, the majority shot in the back, were
massacred by police as they protested against the Pass Laws.
A few days prior to 30 March, Oliver Tambo was instructed to travel abroad
to establish an external mission for the ANC to mobilise international support
and co-ordinate activities for the anticipated years of underground struggle.
In July 1963, Security Police swooped on a farm, Liliesleaf in Rivonia. The
upshot was that ten leaders of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, were put on
trial on charges of planning acts of sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the
government. Their trial, known as the Rivonia Trial, ended with Nelson Mandela
and seven of his colleagues being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.
Rivonia and the repression which followed thrust upon the very ample
shoulders of O.R. Tambo the responsibility of leading the ANC in exile as well
as at home: A task he assumed with a quiet determination and immense dignity.
By the time he took over the helm of the ANC, Oliver Tambo was a seasoned
political leader with two decades of active engagement behind him. He
understood his task as two-fold and to rebuild the ANC as a mass movement
inside South Africa, while enhancing its capacity to lead an armed insurgent
movement from outside South Africa's borders.
In celebrating the life of Oliver Tambo, we are honouring an important
dimension of our South African Heritage the heritage of struggle against
colonial domination and racial oppression. Oliver Tambo pursued the goal of
liberation and creating a democratic South Africa with an unrelenting energy, a
quiet tenacity and steadfast perseverance. By the end of his life, the object
of his dreams was within sight. His singular contribution was his insistence
that the movement never compromise its humanity!
At the ceremony marking the ANC's adherence to the Geneva Protocols on the
Conduct of War, among other things he said:
"We in the African National Congress (of South Africa) solemnly undertake to
respect the Geneva Conventions and the additional protocol one in so far as
they are applicable to the struggle waged on behalf of the African National
Congress by its combatants, Umkhonto we Sizwe. This Convention is one of the
cornerstones of humanitarian international law."
By that action, Oliver Tambo demonstrated that even though the liberation
movement had taken up arms, was engaged in acts of violence which sometimes
resulted in deaths, there was no moral equivalence between it and the
oppressive apartheid regime.
Madam Speaker,
Historians have warned that it is not nations that generate nationalism, it
is nationalism that produces nations. Definitions of who is included and who is
excluded are not pre-ordained, but take account of differing historical
circumstances. South Africa, like many other states in the world, is a
heterogeneous melting pot of different races, ethnic groups and languages.
Our Constitution defines a South African citizen in terms of our national
territory, allegiance to our national institutions and the people of our
country. This conception of the nation has won near universal acceptance
amongst South Africans today. But that was not always the case. At the time of
the founding of the ANC all the white political parties espoused an undisguised
white supremacy. From 1913, when General Hertzog founded the National Party
(NP), it strove to exclude all blacks from South Africa's body politique such
that by the time Verwoerd assumed leadership of that party in 1957, Africans,
Coloureds and Indians had all been disenfranchised. The NP thus became the
party of the pre-1994 status quo deeply racist, repressive and backward
looking.
Addressing the nation on Radio Freedom on 8 January 1979, Oliver Tambo
reiterated that vision, dating back to 1912:
"Let us in South Africa learn to stop being Bantus, Coloureds, Indians and
Whites. Let us be what we are, Africans in Africa. Let those who are committed
racists, who came to this continent determined to keep Africans in chains, to
be perpetual white masters over blacks let them persist in their role as
foreigners on African soil."
This profoundly anti-racist and non-racial ethos was rooted as much in his
politics as in his deeply held Christian values. However, he never allowed
these to impair the movement's capacity to wage armed struggle. Drawing a sharp
distinction between the institutionalized violence of the oppressive system and
the violence of resistance, he argued that an unconditional adherence to
non-violence on principle would help sustain the institutionalised violence of
apartheid.
Oliver Tambo was a very tough taskmaster because he insisted on the quality
of the movement he led. He repeatedly underscored the quality of its leadership
as he did the quality of its actions. But he was a leader who led from the
front. While he was demanding on those who worked under him, he was himself a
tireless worker, very often undertaking far too many tasks and consequently
over-extending himself. In the end it was the demands he placed on himself that
subsequently led to his ill health and probably hastened his death.
It was these qualities which made Oliver Tambo a truly great leader of the
ANC and of the South African liberation movement. It was these qualities that
endeared him to all the ANC ranks, from its leadership to the youngest cadre.
It was these qualities that made him a great South African!
In the words of Prince Emeka Anyaoku:
"For the best part of half a century he had toiled unstintingly to bring his
people out of the bondage of apartheid slavery and he died knowing that this
was as good as achieved."
In honouring Oliver Tambo, we honour the best in ourselves.
Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
20 September 2007
