Time to honour our commitment to reconciliation

Earlier this week an important Debate took place in our national parliament. This was on the occasion of the tabling by the President of the Republic of the final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In addition to the government, this gave an opportunity to all our political parties to indicate what they would do to respond to the critical challenge of national unity and national reconciliation.

Happily, with the exception of only one party, which has clearly still not learnt how to respond to the common national challenges, all parties joined the government in committing themselves to the accomplishment of these goals. This constituted a fitting tribute to the TRC and all our people who had participated and contributed to its work.

It also vindicated the correctness of the positions our movement took as we negotiated the transition from apartheid white minority domination to a non-racial democracy. Then, we had to take a centrally important strategic decision.

The apartheid system constituted a crime against humanity. It should therefore have been as criminally punishable as German Nazism, the genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia, and the war crimes that had been committed in some of the countries that constitute the former Yugoslavia.

The question that faced us as we participated in the 1990-1994 negotiations was whether the new democracy should constitute the sort of Nuremberg war tribunal that followed the defeat of Nazism and the courts trying the genocidaires.

We decided against this. Rather, we opted for the process expressed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The reason we took this position was very easy to understand, and decisive in its implications.

We decided that it was in the interest of all our people, black and white, and our country, that we end the conflict that had gripped our country since the arrival of the European settlers in 1652.

We concluded that if those who had sustained the apartheid crime against humanity and committed specific gross violations of human rights within this context, were faced with arrest and possible imprisonment, they would have no choice but to take up arms to resist the transition to a non-racial democracy.

Undoubtedly, they would lose in the end. But the cost in human lives and property, and an entrenched racial enmity among our people would be intolerably high. To impose such a cost on the people would have been fundamentally in conflict with the most basic founding principles of our movement, which have always focused on the assertion of the right of all our people to the inalienable right of every individual to life.

For this reason, we had, as long as we could, resisted the decision to adopt the strategy of armed struggle, to confront an intransigent regime that had taken steps to make a peaceful resolution of the conflict between apartheid and democracy impossible.

Even when we decided to resort to arms, we adopted and sustained the policy position and practice that we should, at all costs, avoid the loss of civilian lives. We formally adopted the Geneva Conventions governing the conduct of warfare, to bind ourselves to the humane obligations these Conventions seeks to entrench.

Despite all this, during the negotiations, we also had to recognise the fact that millions of our people had suffered immensely, both from the apartheid crime against humanity and specific gross violations of human rights, committed within this context. Even as we sought to end a violent conflict that had persisted for centuries, we could neither forget nor minimise the pain of those who had been its victims, some of whom were understandably demanding the kind of justice meted out at Nuremberg.

The TRC was constituted and mandated in the manner it was, to help our country achieve the necessary and delicate balance between the imperative to end the historical conflict in our country, and to address the legitimate expectations for justice on the part of those who had borne the pain of repression. Whatever its admitted faults and defects, it did its best to help our country to realise this necessary and delicate balance. Certainly, the masses of our people accepted the alternative it presented.

This is one of the reasons we did not and will not have any race riots inspired by the urge to punish the former oppressors and beneficiaries of oppression, for the pain they imposed on the majority of our people. We therefore have every reason to celebrate the TRC and its work, and to do what we can to implement those of its recommendations that we have accepted.

A critically important element of what informed the fundamental perspective of the TRC was the conviction that, in the medium and longer term, the peace and justice we sought could only be achieved through the pursuit and realisation of the goals of national unity and national reconciliation.

Accordingly, the acceptance by all our people of the solution offered by the route of the TRC rather than any other, meant that we also committed ourselves to work together to bring about such unity and reconciliation. Now that the TRC has concluded its work, all of us, black and white, are confronted with the challenge to answer the question, what we shall do to help realise these goals. This is the other factor in the equation representative of our celebration of the TRC.

Accordingly, the time has come for us to meet the obligations with regard to the contract we entered into among ourselves as South Africans, when we agreed to the TRC and its processes.

This obligation was referred to in the Interim Constitution we adopted in 1993, as indicated by the TRC Act, in the following words:

".the Constitution states that the pursuit of national unity, the well-being of all South African citizens and peace require reconciliation between the people of South Africa and the reconstruction of society."

Those who were central to the adoption of this vision, the patriots who fought for our liberation, who chose, voluntarily, to sacrifice everything to free our people, have continued to stand out as an outstanding example of what it means to be a true South African patriot.

The challenge we all face is to emulate that patriotism, as we confront the tasks ahead of us. This means that we must respond willingly, consciously and selflessly to the objective, together to transform the vision spelt out in both the Interim and the current Constitutions into reality.

As we all know, an important element of our national contract with regard to the TRC, was the provision of reparations to those who would be identified as victims of gross human rights violations committed in the period since the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960. In this regard, the TRC said of the liberators and patriots I have just mentioned:

"Others did not wish to be portrayed as a 'victim'. Indeed, many said expressly that they regarded themselves instead as soldiers who had voluntarily paid the price of their struggle.Many have expressed reservations about the very notion of a 'victim', a term which is felt to denote a certain passivity and helplessness. Military operatives of the liberation movements generally did not report violations they experienced to the Commission, although many who were arrested experienced severe torture. This is in all likelihood a result of their reluctance to be seen as 'victims', as opposed to combatants fighting for a moral cause for which they were prepared to suffer such violations. The same can be said for most prominent political activists and leadership figures.The Commission did not, for example, receive a single Human Rights Violation statement from any of the Rivonia trialists."

All these, the liberation fighters drawn from all our fronts of struggle, made the important statement that they engaged in struggle to ensure that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. They did this as both a moral and a patriotic duty. For this they expected no financial or material reward. The only reparations they sought, was the emancipation of all our people from the apartheid crime against humanity. These same patriots had borne the brunt of the brutal repression visited on our struggling people by the apartheid regime.

Yet when the time came, they took the decision that they did not want vengeance against their former enemies, but reconciliation among the people of South Africa and the reconstruction of our society. It is they who decided against following the route of the Nuremberg Trials, choosing the more difficult option of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Once more, when the time came, they elected to bear all the physical and psychological wounds they had to endure, without demanding that they be rewarded with money, services or material goods for having dared to stand up for the freedom of our people.

By so doing, they set an example for all of us, to identify what is moral and right with regard to the interests of the people, and to act to achieve what is moral and right for the greater good, without seeking personal gain.

No greater sacrifices could have been asked of any of our people. Neither can we pay a greater tribute to these patriots than to build on the victory they brought about through their selflessness. Consequently, the question each South African must answer is - what must I do to discharge this obligation!

Throughout their fighting lives, these patriots depended on their strength and the determination of the masses of our people to defeat apartheid tyranny. They never thought, nor worked on the basis, that the rest of the world would liberate us, even as they strived to develop a powerful international solidarity movement, and deeply appreciated its role and support.

Throughout their fighting lives, they always valued the sovereign right of our people to determine their future, refusing that this future should be decided by others from other lands, however powerful these others might be.

Throughout their fighting lives, they sought the unity of all our people, black and white, encouraging all South Africans to come together to defeat tyranny, and, later, to combine their efforts for the reconstruction and development of our country. In this regard, they always respected the right of every South African to hold any view of their choice, while working within a broad front to achieve common and agreed objectives.

The decision to establish the TRC, the objectives it pursued, the outcomes it has achieved, the challenges it has set, all reflect these fundamental convictions that informed the patriots who fought for our liberation throughout their lives.

There are others in our country, our historical ideological and political opponents, who have always worked for the defeat of our movement. These, and their predecessors, have consistently contested and sought to defeat our ideas and programmes, grabbing any opposing idea or programme that might be at hand.

Ever since our liberation, they have tried to fight against our transformation programme by threatening us with disapproval by the international community. They have worked hard to convince the masses of our people and ourselves, that we should derive our benchmarks for success from supposed international norms.

Their favourite threat is that what we are doing to transform our country is driving away foreign investment. They have written often about how political leaders elsewhere in the world are supposedly embarrassed to have to deal with a South African political leadership that does not meet so-called international standards.

They have felt no sense of shame in seeking to compromise our nation's right to self-determination, arguing that the need to fill our empty stomachs, through the assistance of the international community, should take precedence over the exercise of that right.

The strange thing is that as we made our responses to the recommendations of the TRC, these same people turned reality on its head. Unable to argue against and defeat the outcome of the historic positions of the patriots who fought for our liberation, some of them now use the mass media to claim these positions as their own.

Suddenly, it is they who are the best representatives of our nation's right to self-determination. Accordingly, they extend a condescending welcome to our supposedly newfound commitment to our people's right to self-determination, as well as our similarly newfound recognition of the need for unity in action.

Our ideological and political opponents have not abandoned their strategic goal to wage war against us, for our defeat. To achieve this objective, they have decided to appropriate the victories of the patriots who fought to liberate our country, as theirs. Thus do the wolves, dressed in sheepskin, hope to catch their prey, the masses that spared neither life nor limb, to achieve their own liberation.

Others wiser than us have said that the enemy manoeuvres, but it remains the enemy.

The task ahead of us is to follow the lead and example of the great heroes and heroines, the liberation fighters, whose reparations are nothing more, or less, than the genuine emancipation of our people. Times and circumstances change, obliging our liberation movement to manoeuvre, and yet we remain the same movement of the patriots who brought us freedom and gave birth to the TRC.

Our task is to unite all our people to respect the national contract they all entered into as they agreed to the establishment of the TRC. With the exception of one political party, all the elected representatives in our national parliament undertook to honour this contract. The time has come for that contract to be translated into action, despite the wishes of the wolves in sheepskin.

Oliver Tambo I

A giant of the struggle is remembered

Next week, on 23 April, South Africans will mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Oliver Reginald Tambo, former ANC President and a giant of the struggle for a democratic South Africa.

At a tumultuous time in the country's history, barely two weeks after the murder of Chris Hani, the death of Oliver Tambo was deeply saddening for a country already in shock. Tambo, who had led the liberation struggle for three decades, passed away on the eve of the democratic breakthrough to which he had dedicated his life.

Tambo led the ANC through some of the struggle's darkest moments. Yet his leadership and vision was responsible for bringing South Africa to the verge of a negotiated end to apartheid. He oversaw the rebuilding of the structures of the ANC following the devastating repression of the early 1960s. Over many years he worked to mobilise the international community to oppose and isolate the Pretoria regime, building a powerful and vocal global movement against the system of apartheid.

At the same time, Tambo presided over the building of Umkhonto we Sizwe as a people's army, able to wage with ever-increasing effectiveness a guerilla war against the powerful apartheid security apparatus. He inspired a generation of local activists to organise, mobilise and rise up against the apartheid state, using mass action and defiance to bring the National Party government to the negotiating table.

Born five years after the ANC was formed, Oliver Tambo spent most of his life in the struggle against apartheid. Known by his peers as 'O.R.', he was born on 27 October 1917 in Mbizana, in eastern Mpondoland in what was is now the Eastern Cape.

At the age of seven he began his formal education at the Ludeke Methodist School in the Mbizana district and completed his primary education at the Holy Cross Mission. He then transferred to Johannesburg to attend St Peters College, in Rossettenville, where he completed his high school education.

From St Peters, Tambo went to study at the University College of Fort Hare, near Alice, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science Degree in 1941. It was at Fort Hare that he first became involved in the politics of the national liberation movement. He led a student class boycott in support of a demand to form a democratically elected Student's Representative Council. As a consequence he was expelled from Fort Hare and was unable to complete his Bachelor of Science honours degree.

In 1942, he returned to St Peters College as a science and mathematics teacher. At St Peters he was to teach many who later were to play prominent roles in the ANC. Among these were Duma Nokwe who became the first black South African Advocate of the Supreme Court and ANC Secretary General.

It was while he was in Johannesburg that Tambo threw himself body and soul into the ANC. He was among the founding members of the ANC Youth League
(ANCYL) in 1944 and became its first National Secretary. He was elected President of the Transvaal ANCYL in 1948 and national vice-president in 1949.

In the ANCYL, Tambo teamed up with Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Ashby Mda, Anton Lembede, Dr William Nkomo, Dr C.M.Majombozi and others to bring a bold, new spirit of militancy into the post-war ANC. In 1946 Tambo was elected onto the Transvaal Executive of the ANC. In 1948 he, together with Walter Sisulu were elected onto the National Executive Committee.

The ANCYL piloted the adoption at the 1949 ANC national conference of a 'Programme of Action' which envisaged the transformation of the ANC from an organisation that held public meetings and occasionally petitioned the government to a campaigning movement that would draw in large numbers of people through mass actions.

Tambo left teaching soon after the adoption of the Programme of Action and set up a legal partnership with Nelson Mandela. The firm soon became known as a champion of the poor, victims of apartheid laws with little or no money to pay their legal costs.

During the Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws of 1952, Oliver Tambo was among the numerous volunteers who courted imprisonment by deliberately breaking apartheid laws. His law firm partner and colleague, Nelson Mandela was the National volunteer in chief.

In 1955, ANC Secretary General Walter Sisulu was banned in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act and ordered to resign his post as Secretary General. Oliver Tambo was appointed to fill the post, pending ratification by the annual conference.

In 1958, Oliver Tambo left the post of Secretary General to become the Deputy President of the ANC. The following year, he, like many of his colleagues, was served with a five year banning order. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, Tambo was designated by the ANC to travel abroad to set up the ANC's international mission and mobilise international opinion in opposition to the apartheid system.

Working with Dr Yusuf Dadoo, he was instrumental in the establishment of the South African United Front (SAUF), which brought together the external missions of the ANC, the PAC, the SA Indian Congress and the South West African National Union (SWANU). As a result of a very successful lobbying campaign the South African United Front was able to secure the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1961. After this initial success the SAUF broke up in July 1961.

Assisted by African governments, Tambo was able to establish ANC missions in Egypt, Ghana and Morocco, as well as in London. By 1990 the ANC had missions in 27 countries. These included all the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the exception of China, two missions in Asia and one in Australasia.

The suppression of the 1961 stay-at-home strike led to the ANC adopting the armed struggle. Tambo was again an important factor in securing the co-operation of numerous African governments in providing training and camp facilities for the ANC.

In 1965 Tanzania and Zambia gave the ANC camp facilities to house trained Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) combatants. In 1967, after the death of ANC President General Chief Albert Luthuli, Tambo became Acting President until his appointment to the Presidency was approved by the Morogoro Conference in 1969.

During the 1970s Oliver Tambo's international prestige rose immensely as he traversed the world, addressing the United Nations and other international gatherings on the issue of apartheid. He became the key figure in the ANC's Revolutionary Council (RC) which had been set up at the Morogoro Conference to oversee the reconstruction of the ANC's internal machinery and to improve its underground capacity.

When Portuguese colonialism collapsed in 1975, the ANC stood poised to take maximum advantage of the geo-political changes. Angola offered camp and training facilities for MK, and the long-standing relationship with Frelimo enabled the ANC to acquire diplomatic facilities close to South Africa.

In 1985 Tambo was re-elected ANC President at the Kabwe Conference. In that capacity he served also as the Head of the Politico-Military Council (PMC) of the ANC, and as Commander in Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Among black South African leaders, Oliver Tambo was probably the most highly respected on the African continent, in Europe, Asia and the Americas. During his stewardship of the ANC he raised its international prestige and status to that of an alternative to the Pretoria Government. He was received with the protocol reserved for Heads of State in many parts of the world.

In 1989 Oliver Tambo suffered a stroke, and underwent extensive medical treatment.

He returned to South Africa in 1991, after over three decades in exile. At the ANC's first legal national conference inside South Africa, held in Durban in July 1991, Tambo was elected National Chairperson of the ANC. He was also chairperson of the ANC's Emancipation Commission.

Oliver Tambo died from a stroke during the night of 23 April 1993.

Speaking at his funeral, Nelson Mandela said Oliver Tambo lived because he had surrendered his very being to the people. He said: "While the ANC lives, Oliver Tambo cannot die! Oliver Tambo cannot die while his allies in the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions remain loyal to the common purpose. O.R. cannot cease to be, while the millions of our people gather themselves into the democratic organisations that make up our own rainbow coalition.

More Information:

• Oliver Tambo: His Life and Legacy
• Selected speeches, writings and articles of Oliver Tambo

Oliver Tambo II

The voice of the oppressed

During three decades at the head of the liberation movement, Oliver Tambo was the chief spokesperson of South Africa's oppressed majority. He addressed the UN General Assembly and its committees. He spoke in the capitals of the world, addressing world leaders and their people. To the people of South Africa, he was the voice of the ANC, heard on Radio Freedom and read in underground pamphlets and publications. Below is a selection of his statements.

On apartheid
Apartheid, in its more comprehensive connotation, is the sum total of all the policies and practices, stratagems and methods, beliefs and attitudes that have been marshalled and are being employed in an attempt to ensure and entrench the political domination and economic exploitation of the African people by the white minority.

One of the biggest failures of any group of people this century has been the failure of the ruling white minority in South Africa to discard policies which have nothing but destruction and disaster to offer for the future of the country. The failure is the bigger for the insane determination of the authors and high priests of these policies to push them to their logical extremities against a rising tide of indignant world opposition and in defiant unconcern for the consequences.

On the Rivonia Trial
Let Nelson Mandela and his colleagues be assured that history will not let them down, nor will it fail to punish the real criminals. Their committal to South Africa's brutal jails is a challenge to the liberation movement and the people they led. It is a challenge to their colleagues and brothers, the leaders and people of Africa. It is a challenge to the world which denounced the Rivonia trial as arbitrary and demanded the release of all political prisoners and the immediate abandonment of the policy of white domination.

On international support for Apartheid
The overthrow of apartheid in South Africa has been delayed because of the support and assistance of the powerful international financiers in Britain, United States, Western Germany, France and other imperialist countries. They have accumulated vast fortunes out of cheap labour and stolen wealth of our people, and continue to do so. Their direct assistance and the enormous influence their wealth enables them to exert on their own governments, has thus far shielded the fascist Pretoria regime from the sanctions and isolation decided upon by the great majority of the people and governments of the world who abominate apartheid and all it stands for.

On armed struggle
Let us arm ourselves with the willpower and fearlessness of Shaka: the endurance and vision of Moshoeshoe: the courage and resourcefulness of Sekhukhuni; the tenacity and valour of Hintsa; the military initiative and guerrilla tactics of Maqoma, the farsightedness and dedication of S.P. Makgatho, Sol Plaatje, Langalibalele Dube, Isaka ka Seme. W.B. Rubusana, Meshach Pelem, Alfred Mangena, Paramount Chief Letsie II of Lesotho and all founding-fathers of the African National Congress. Let the dream of Moshoeshoe who cherished a great alliance of African people to resist their separate conquest come true in our lifetime. Let us fight for Freedom.

On a vision for South Africa
We have a vision of, and we fight for, a future South Africa in which national oppression will be abolished once and for all, in which racism in whatever form it rears its ugly head will be suppressed with all the might of popular power. We fight to restore power to the hands of the people.

We fight also for a South Africa whose wealth will be shared by its people equitably. We fight to abolish the system which obtains in our country today and which concentrates almost all productive wealth in the hands of a few, while the vast majority exists and toils to enlarge that wealth.

We will create a South Africa in which the doors of learning and of culture shall be open to all. We will have a South Africa in which the young of our country shall have access to the best that mankind has produced, in which they shall be taught to love their people of all races, to defend the equality of the peoples, to honour creative labour, to uphold the oneness of mankind and to hate untruth, obscurantism, immorality and avarice.

On internal resistance
The darkness that has shrouded our country for so long is now lit by flames that are consuming the accumulated refuse of centuries of colonialism and racism. For us, these flames are like beacons which draw us faster towards our goal.

Our people want freedom now. They want to govern and determine the destiny of their country today and not tomorrow. They have lost patience with all ideas that their liberation can be postponed for any reason whatsoever. They measure the purpose of life by no other standard than that it should have been spent in the struggle for the liberation of our country. They have therefore shed all fear of death because the words to live have acquired the same meaning as the words to be free.

On negotiations
The ANC has never been opposed to negotiations. We could never deliberately seek the path of war in our quest for liberation if an alternative, non-violent path were available to us. We must, however, make it clear that we are not interested in talking merely for the sake of dialogue. Any discussions must be seriously meant to end the tyrannical and murderous system of apartheid immediately. This is a demand which our people justly make because it can never be in our interest that the apartheid system last even a day longer if we can help it.

On non-racialism
The idea of non-racialism has triumphed in the country. This must spur us on to redouble our efforts in transforming our country into an oasis of democracy where a person's skin colour or sex will no longer be relevant in determining their station in life. Racial and tribal divisions that apartheid has assiduously nurtured over the years should be vigorously fought by all of us. The spirit of non-racialism should not only extend to the people as a whole, but it should also be a firm foundation stone upon which our new society stands. Each of us should, therefore, foster the spirit of oneness amongst all our people. Even though suspicions will not disappear overnight, the building of one South African nation is a national task of paramount importance.

On returning home
I am happy to be back home, amongst you my people. I salute you all in your own name, you who, through sheer tenacity and will, have brought our struggle to the threshold of a great leap forward. It is a truly emotional moment for us to meet you in your multitudes. I embrace each and every one of you.

On a new South Africa
We believe that we must stand together in creating the new South Africa. When our work is done, let all look at the new South Africa with hope and encouragement - hope and encouragement because she will have demonstrated that it is possible for people of different colours and different races and nationalities to live together in peace and friendship, sharing a common sense of nationhood and humanity.

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