South Africa is a land of extreme wealth for the privileged white colonial population, and extreme poverty and destitution for the oppressed black majority. Whites, 17 per cent of the population, receive more than 70 per cent of all income. The poverty that prevails in our country is the direct result of apartheid - the result of white greed and military strength.
When we talk of struggle against apartheid we talk of what operates, for the vast majority of South Africans, as a police state. Apartheid is not merely racial discrimination. Its central feature is not the segregation of public amenities. Apartheid means not only inequality, racism, national and racial oppression and exploitation of the black majority in our country, but also the means necessary to enforce it, to defend it and to guarantee its survival in the face of powerful forces of resistance fighting to defeat it. Apartheid is a form of violence that operates, every moment of every day, against our people and the other peoples of Southern Africa, to perpetuate a white monopoly of political and economic power. Apartheid is everything progressive humanity opposes, and as such we call on all peace-loving people to make common cause with us to ensure its total destruction.
Since the townships were invaded by Pretoria's soldiers in 1984, thousands of people have lost their lives, many more have been injured and maimed, tens of thousands have been detained, while many have simply 'disappeared'.
Lives have been lost ever since the colonialists came to our country. The formation of the African National Congress on January 8th, 1912, created a people's organisation which transcended tribal, religious and class barriers in the fight for freedom in the land of our birth, an organisation which continued, under the new conditions prevailing, the anti-colonial struggle of our people.
Our struggle is fundamentally a national liberation struggle to rid our nation of the colonial oppressor. South Africa, a country of some 30-million people, is being run as two countries, the one colonising the other, the white country of 4.5 million people colonising the 27-million black majority, and maintaining control through force and international support.
Mass meetings, deputations, demonstrations, protests, passive resistance and strikes were the hallmark of the half-century of peaceful struggle waged by the people of South Africa. Every avenue of non-violent protest was met with violent repression on the part of the regime, culminating in the banning of the ANC after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, and the declaration of a state of emergency. The regime turned South Africa into an armed camp. The ANC went underground, determined to find new methods of struggle. 1961 saw the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, our people's army, our striking force for final liberation. The violence of the regime was now to be met by the revolutionary violence of the people. Since then, the ANC has combined political and armed struggle to defeat apartheid.
Our aim is a war fought by the entire people - in strikes, demonstrations, resistance to forced removals, as well as in the field of armed struggle. Our call, to make apartheid unworkable and South Africa ungovernable, has resulted in the severest crisis the Pretoria regime has yet had to face.
The African National Congress stands for a new South Africa, a South Africa in which racism shall be a thing of the past, where human dignity and equality shall prevail in the life of the country and its people, where the goals enshrined in the Freedom Charter shall be transformed into a living reality. Before that day dawns, many lives will be lost. Our people will suffer great hardship. But we are prepared to meet this challenge; to make whatever sacrifices are necessary for achieving freedom in South Africa.
On January 8th, 1987, the African National Congress commemorates the 75th anniversary of its foundation. It was the first African nationalist political organisation in South Africa, and indeed on the continent of Africa. Many political organisations of neighbouring countries, now independent, can trace their origins to the ANC. Since its modest begin-nings in the form of the regional Native congresses during the first decade of this century, the ANC has grown from strength to strength, sparing no effort to fulfill its goal of a united South African nation free from the chains of imperialism and racism. It has succeeded in uniting African, Coloured, Indian and democratic whites of South Africa under one, forward-marching body in the struggle for freedom.
The formation of the ANC in 1912 signified the birth not only of the ANC, but also of the South African nation. The ANC was assigned the task of midwife in this process of national rebirth and regeneration. The formation of the ANC meant the creation of a loyalty of a new type, a non-tribal loyalty, a loyalty which was inherently anti-colonial. It was an act of national salvation, a continuation - under new historical conditions - of the anti-colonial struggle of our people which had begun with colonialism itself.
South Africa was conquered by force and is today ruled by force. Whether in reserve or in actual employment force is ever-present. This has been so ever since the colonialists came to our country. As time has progressed, force in the fascist mould, has been implemented in greater and by more terrifying methods. Children, women, youth and the aged are subjected to brutal and systematic violence comparable only to that perpetrated under Nazi tyranny.
In order to fully appreciate the political and social significance that the ANC, as the liberation movement of oppressed South Africans, expresses, and the necessity for the type of organisation we have today, it is necessary to look at the past.
European settlement in South Africa dates back to April 6th, 1652. Because of the intrusive, predatory and aggressive policies of the invaders, disputes, which soon led to war, ensued. In the Cape alone, nine wars of resistance against colonial encroachment were waged. Our people fought courageously and heroically and, in fact, were at no time ever conquered by the Boers. It was the arrival of the British military forces in South Africa which marked a qualitative and quantitative change in the resistance struggle. Immensely strengthened, the forces of colonisation and oppression, with their overwhelming superiority in arms and numbers of well-trained men, were able, after grim and bitter battles, to eventually subdue all military opposition.
Effectively, the defeat of the Bambata Rebellion in 1906 brought to a close this first, 250-year phase of resistance and set the stage for the handing over of the administration of the country to local white settlers by British imperialism.
Defeated militarily and totally disarmed, robbed of their land by foreign invaders, denied any say in the governing of their country, our people realised that new ways had to be found to continue the struggle. Old forms of organisation and methods of struggle were proving inadequate to meet the new conditions. The people were looking for new forms of organisation, and learning new methods of struggle; they were learning the ways of mass meetings, demonstrations, deputations, protests, passive resistance and strikes.
The ANC was born out of the lessons learnt from the past. The need for African unity in the face of the common enemy and common problems, a need long recognised by far-sighted African leaders, was forcibly brought home with the promulgation of the Act of Union in 1910, when General Louis Botha moved to consolidate white hegemony within the system established by the South African Act of Union, passed in the British House of Commons in l909, uniting the formerly embittered feuding sections of the white minority.
These underlying factors led to the formation of the ANC on January 8th, 1912. There was full recognition of the need for the strength achieved in unity - unity of purpose and unity in action. Furthermore, the far-sighted founders of the ANC recognised the urgency for united action to oppose the imminent Land Act, due to be implemented in 1913, which was to further rob the African people of their land, reducing their territorial rights to a mere 13% of South Africa.
The formation of the ANC was not an accident of history. It was a logical development of history, a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle of our people which began with colonialism itself. There were many factors that led to the formation of the ANC. The introduction of Christianity in South Africa led to the emergence of black Christians who later rejected the white Christian values, formed their own independent churches with new concepts and values. The first of these black converts to form an independent church was Nehemiah Tile, who played a significant religious and political role. He formed the Tembu Church in 1883 in the Transkei. The founding of the Ethiopian Church by Rev MM Mokone on the Witwatersrand in 1892 was tantamount to widening the battlefront started by Tile.
This period saw the emergence of young African intellectuals who came from mission schools established throughout the country. They helped in establishing the early beginnings of what later became an African press. They wrote articles in English and African languages, and therefore helped to develop the African languages. The first political organisation, Imbumba yama Afrika (Union of Africans) was formed in the Cape in 1882. It advocated African unity as opposed to denominational diversity and planned representations to white authorities. In 1884 two additional organisations were formed, again in the Cape, namely the Native Education Association and the Native Electoral Association, which were concerned mainly with electoral politics - in those days, Africans in the Cape could vote.
But it was during the Anglo-Boer War and immediately after the Treaty of Vereeniging in May 1902 that concrete steps were taken by Africans to form a movement which would devise some method of presenting grievances and complaints of Africans to the government.
This growing awareness and consciousness of a need for a political organisation of Africans on a broader basis led Martin Lutuli, Saul Msane and Josiah Gumede to meet Harriet Colenso to discuss the formation of an African political organisation. In July 1900, the Natal Native Congress was formed, its first secretary being HC Matiwane. Its chairman was Martin Lutuli - an uncle of the late former President-General of the ANC, Chief Albert Lutuli. Martin Lutuli was chairman for three years. being replaced by Skweleti Nyongwana, while he became vice-chairman. Local committees managed local affairs and the object and intention of Congress was to represent the whole African community in Natal.
In 1902 in the Eastern Cape, Africans close to the East London newspaper Izwi Labantu, and therefore opposed to Jabavu's Imvo Zabantsundu, and his preoccupation with European politics, founded the South African Native Congress. The tasks of this organisation were to co-ordinate African activities in the Cape Colony, particularly in connection with electoral politics. The political orientation of the South African Native Congress is contained in a 1903 statement of its Executive: 'Questions affecting the Natives and Coloured People resident in British South Africa'. The Native Vigilance Association of the Orange River Colony presented testimony before the South African Native Affairs Commission on September 23, 1904. What was striking, but not surprising if one takes into account the ethnic composition of the province, is the 'non-tribal' composition of the leadership of this organisation, judging by the delegation which saw the Native Affairs Commission.
These testimonies and petitions to King Edward VII, for example from the Native United Political Associations of the Transvaal Colony (April 25, 1905), or the Orange River Colony Native Congress (June 1906), or the Natal Native Congress (October 1908) or from the 'Aboriginal Natives of South Africa resident in the Transvaal' (October 22, 1908), and resolutions of the South African Native Congress, April 10, 1908, give an insight into the problems and grievances of the Africans who showed an acute awareness of the magnitude of their disabilities and a sharp antagonism to any continuation of the political system of the Boer Republics.
These petitions (the Transvaal Native Union collected 3,764 signatures) asked for a common roll franchise throughout South Africa, plus separate representation for the mass of the African people unable to qualify for this. Within four months these organisations held congresses. The draft South Africa Act was discussed at these meetings. Resolutions deprecating the colour bar and the failure to extend the African franchise from the Cape to the North were passed. It was from these regional conferences that 60 elected delegates came to Bloemfontein to attend the South African Native Convention on March 24-26, l909.
The South African Native Convention consisted of delegates from the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State and Bechuanaland (now Botswana). Rev. Walter Rubusana, leader of the Cape delegation of the South African Native Congress, chaired the convention and was elected president of the Convention. They discussed those clauses of the draft Union Act which related to African and coloured people.
These resolutions, which attacked the racism inherent in the Draft Act were delivered to the Governors and Prime Ministers of the four colonies (Cape, Natal, OFS and Transvaal) and to the British High Commissioner for transfer to the Secretary of State for Colonies. If the Draft Act was not amended, a deputation was to be sent to England. The delegation was to comprise Rev Rubusana, president of the Native Convention, TM Mapikela of the Orange River Colony and D Dwanya of the Cape Congress. The Transvaal Native Congress appointed Alfred Mangena who was already in London and instructed him to work in co-operation with the other delegates. WP Schreiner was invited to join them and Tengo Jabavu represented his tiny Cape Convention. The Coloured community was represented by Dr Abdurahman, leader of the African People's Organisation while Advocate Gandhi represented the Indian community. This defiant deputation was later to be disappointed by the attitude of the British government, which once more deliberately ignored the express wishes of the black population of South Africa.
Faced with these problems and the fact that their interests had been totally disregarded in the absence of a political organisation of their own which could voice their grievances and aspirations, the Africans started to work towards unity for a common action and to educate themselves towards promotion of mutual help, a feeling of brotherhood and a spirit of togetherness. Pixley ka Isaka Seme, who became the convenor of the January 8 meeting, was in fact impatient about the formation of the ANC. In October 1911 he wrote: 'It is conclusively urgent that this meeting should meet this year because a matter which is so vitally important to our progress and welfare should not unnecessarily be postponed by reason of personal differences and selfishness of our leaders'. In what seemed to be a statement of policy or an item on the agenda of the coming meeting - the central theme of his contribution - he said: 'The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xhosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tongas, between the Basotho and every other Native, must be buried and forgotten... We are one people! These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of our woes and all the backwardness and ignorance that exists today'.
Thus on January 8, 1912, when the ANC was formed, Seme gave the keynote speech. After the opening speeches were made the gathering sang Tiyo Soga's Lizalis 'idinga Lakho Thixo, Nkosi yenyaniso (Fulfill Thy Promise, Thou True Lord). Seme, seconded by Alfred Mangena, moved that the assembly should establish the South African Native National Congress. He was unanimously supported. A committee was appointed to draw up a constitution. George Montsioa suggested that seven paramount chiefs be appointed as Honorary Presidents of the South African Native National Congress (the ANC). Thus the conference resolved that two houses, the Upper and Lower House, should be established. The Upper House consisted of Dalindyebo of the Thembus; Montsioa of the Barolong; Lewanika of Barotseland (part of Zambia); Letsie II of Basotholand (now Lesotho) who was elected President of the Upper House; Khama of Bechuanaland (now Botswana). Marclane of Pondoland and Moepi of the Bakgatla. Dinizulu, the Zulu chief who was deposed and exiled to the Transvaal by the British, was also included.
The Executive of the Lower House, the executive proper, consisted of: Rev John L Dube, President; Solomon T Plaatje, Secretary; Pixley ka Isaka Seme was elected Treasurer; Thomas Mapikela of the Orange Free State became Speaker and Montsioa Recording Secretary. Rev Mqoboli of the Wesleyan Church became Chaplain-in-chief with Rev HR Ngcayiya, President of the Ethiopian Church as his Assistant. The Rev Walter Rubusana, Meshack Pelem, Sam Makgatho and Alfred Mangena were elected vice-presidents.
The first National Executive Committee consisted of ministers of religion, lawyers, an editor (Plaatje), a building contractor (Mapikela), a teacher and estate agent (Makgatho) and an interpreter, teacher and Native labour agent (Pelem). These are people who went through mission schools; five of them studied abroad (Britain and USA) and others had attended conferences overseas. These men were prominent both in local political organisations and nationally. They were relatively young - in their thirties, and early fifties. The four provinces were represented on the Executive. The chiefs were honoured in accordance with African tradition. They represented the rural masses who were then the majority of the people.
At the inaugural conference of the ANC eleven papers were read, the topics ranging from discussions about schools, the burning current issues of 'Native' labour, segregation, the land question and the 'Squatters' law. To conclude the proceedings John Knox Bokwe's Give a Thought to Africa was sung and the delegates returned to report back to their local organisations on the practical means of implementing their vision of African unity and the fight against white domination. These resolutions could only be implemented in the course of struggle.
The closing notes of John Knox Bokwe's 'give a thought to Africa' were still ringing in the ears of those who participated at the ANC foundation conference at Mangaung (Bloemfontein) when the first battles confronted the newly formed ANC. The years following 1912 were a period of development and regrouping under new conditions; a period in which newly created political formations of the people continued to struggle and grew to maturity; a period in which, above all, national consciousness began to assert itself against tribal sectionalism. This period witnessed the emergence of the primary organisation of the liberation movement - the African National Congress.
This was a time of organisational growth punctuated by struggles ranging from mass campaigning and general strikes to mass acts of defiance. The aims of the ANC campaigns at this time were:
The first major struggle the African National Congress launched was against the 1913 Land Act, which reduced our people in the countryside to landlessness, ruin and destitution. This fight was also carried to England. The African National Congress sent two deputations - in 1913-1914 and in 1919 - financed by both the chiefs and the people. Though it had its own parliament, South Africa was still under the British Crown, and our leaders and people correctly went to London to present our case and ask the British Government to intervene in the dispute. The deputation was, however, unsuccessful.
There was also an attempt by the authorities in the Orange Free State in 1913 to extend the pass system to African women. This, too, became a campaign issue, resulting in temporary victory.
It was these immediate campaigns, along with a number of smaller struggles, which steeled the ANC as a people's organisation. The ANC developed its identity as the true expression of African nationhood, the symbol of African unity, the mouthpiece of the oppressed people of South Africa and their instrument for national emancipation. It emerged as a new type of organisation, created to meet the complex and difficult situation and conditions arising from foreign domination and exploitation.
Through the anti-1913 Land Act campaign and the African women's anti-pass campaign, it was clearly demonstrated that the ANC embodied the aspirations of the people of South Africa, spearheading the fight to destroy foreign domination and injustice in the political, economic and social spheres. The ANC set out to win back for the African people their rightful position as controllers of the destiny of their country.
1948 saw the Nationalist Party coming to power, entrenching white minority fascist domination of our country.
In an attempt to stem the tide of reaction unleashed by the Nationalist Party, and in order to advance the cause of liberation and freedom, the Annual National Conference of the African National Congress in 1949 adopted a militant Programme of Action: the document commonly and popularly referred to as 'The 1949 Programme of Action'. Among other things the Programme laid down the forms and methods of struggle which the African National Congress will employ in its struggle for emancipation.
These were: strikes, boycotts, 'civil disobedience' and 'non-cooperation'. Civil disobedience means defiance of laws and Government orders. Non-cooperation means 'to cease to recognise a foreign authority on your soil; to cease to obey it; to ignore its law-courts; to refuse to pay taxes; and to decline to serve it as soldiers and policemen'.
For a variety of reasons the African National Congress decided that the programme laid down in its 1949 Programme of Action should be carried out in a non-violent way, under a policy of non-violence. Among the reasons advanced for this were:
The African National Congress at the time based its policy partly on two strategic and tactical propositions, namely:
Another important consideration was the avoidance of the massacre of our unarmed people. As the leader of the African people, the African National Congress had to see to it that, if possible, mass slaughter had to be avoided. It is a notorious fact that the Boers are always ready and happy to shoot down Africans. Where the lives of thousands of people are involved, a leader cannot afford the luxury of experiment, gamble or recklessness.
The ANC resolved to embark upon a massive campaign of defiance of apartheid laws. On June 26, 1952, together with the South African Indian Congress, the ANC launched the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws. The Defiance Campaign carried on through 1953, covering all major cities and centres in South Africa. Over 8,000 volunteers belonging to the ANC and its allies, defied apartheid and were jailed. In 1954 the ANC launched a struggle against the imposition of the inferior Bantu Education system, calculated to reduce African youth to hewers of wood and drawers of water for the white people. Massive agitation took place among parents and teachers and a boycott of Bantu Education was organised. This period is defined by some as the passive resistance period of the ANC, often because such people, who do not recognise the full viciousness of the regime, would have it that the ANC should have remained a 'pacifist', civil-rights type of movement. The ANC in the 1950's was never pacifist nor a movement for civil rights. To say this would be a distortion of history. Rather, our policy was one of non-violence.
The 1952 non-violent campaign was certainly not a passive affair. To avoid creating an impression of passivity, the campaign was advisedly called 'Campaign for Defiance of Unjust Laws'. The spirit of defiance engendered by this campaign produced, though indirectly, the riots of 1953 at Port Elizabeth, East London, Kimberley, Denver and elsewhere. It also produced the militant struggles in Wynburg, Zeerust, Maloka (Rooijantjiesfontein), Sekhukhuniland, Pondoland, Zululand, Transkei, Peddie, the African women's fight against dipping and passes in Natal, as well as the struggle of the people of Mabieskraal and other areas. Nor can we overlook the numerous successful militant boycott campaigns already referred to earlier.
Last but not least the activities carried out under the policy of non-violence forced the government of Verwoerd to abandon all pretences of legality, to throw overboard all its laws and to rely entirely on martial law and brute force. They caused the Verwoerd government to declare a state of emergency four times in the years 1960 to 1962!
In the 1950's the question of unity among all genuine democratic forces, which had always had the serious attention of the ANC, was beginning to take more concrete shape. A firm base of solidarity and joint action in the struggle among Africans, Indians and Coloureds was firmly established. Later, during the Defiance Campaign of 1952, some pro-gressive Whites joined the struggle on the side of the oppressed people, and the Congress of Democrats was formed.
This alliance was further strengthened with the South African Congress of Trade Unions, formed in March 1955. As the only non-racial trade union federation in South Africa, it brought the weight of thousands of organised workers into the struggle.
Having succeeded substantially in mobilising the various African ethnic groupings into a single fighting nation, the ANC, in keeping with its overall strategy to lead a united front of all anti-racist and democratic forces, hammered out a common programme with the representatives of the various racial groups and the democratic trade union movement.
This programme was further crystallised when early in 1955 the ANC called for 50,000 volunteers from all sections of the South African people to go among the people and collect freedom demands to be incorporated into a common programme for South Africa. Thus began one of the greatest campaigns in the history of the South African liberation movement. Demands flowed into the offices of the ANC from every corner of South Africa; from Africans, Indians, Coloureds and Whites; from workers and peasants; from shopkeepers and intellectuals.
On June 26 that year at the historic Congress of the People, the fighting demands of all South Africans were enshrined in the Freedom Charter.
The success of this campaign and the widespread support the Charter received from the people did not go unnoticed by the racist regime in South Africa. In 1956, the political police swooped and arrested 156 leaders of the ANC and its allies and charged them with High Treason, using the Freedom Charter as the basis of its charge.
After a trial lasting over four years all the accused were found not guilty and discharged. However, many were served with banning and restriction orders.
The progressive developments of the 1950's were not without effect within the African National Congress. The transformation of the ANC into a greater mass movement, the formation of the Congress Alliance and the adoption of the Freedom Charter provoked a backlash from a minority group of 'Africanists'. Some now familiar phrases were bandied about. According to this faction, the ANC leadership under Chief Albert Lutuli, had 'abandoned' the genuine African nationalism of the 1949 Programme of Action and had become the tools of the 'white communists' of the Congress of Democrats. These 'Africanists' opposed joining with the democratic organisations of national groups other than African in the Congress Alliance, and violently rejected the Freedom Charter, particularly its provision that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. They also opposed what they called the 'leftist', economic clauses of the Freedom Charter and the general 'leftist' influence in the ANC. They left the ANC in 1958, and in 1959, led by Robert Sobukwe and PK Leballo, they formed the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which today is little more than an organisation in name only.
In 1957, the ANC together with local residents' associations, organised the Alexandra and Pretoria bus boycotts. In April 1958, the ANC organised another one day national strike. In 1959 at its national conference in Durban, the ANC resolved to conduct a massive nationwide struggle against the pass laws over the following year. This campaign was already under way when the PAC sought to wreck it by launching its passive resistance campaign only ten days before the National Anti-Pass Campaign was to begin on 31st March, 1960. When the police massacred the people at Sharpeville, the PAC was in disarray. The ANC called a national one day strike on March 29, 1960 and ordered massive burning of passes. The South African regime, alarmed by the powerful wave of mass action by our people, declared the African National Congress illegal. The ANC refused to accept the order and decided to continue the struggle as an underground and illegal organisation. The ANC was not the only organisation to suffer this silencing. Ten years previously, the Communist Party of South Africa was banned following the passing of the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act. But in 1960 it announced its func-tioning as the South African Communist Party, which had been reconstituted, operating underground since 1953. On March 30, 1960, the regime declared a State of Emergency and arrested over 2 000 people. The following March saw the convening of the All-in African Conference, attended by 1,400 delegates, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela. It called for a national convention to decide a new constitution.
By May 31, 1961 the country was placed on a war footing to smash the nationwide strikes called to protest against the establishment of the so-called Republic of South Africa. On June 26, 1961 Mandela declared the next stage of the struggle was to be one of non-collaboration and stated that he would remain underground to lead it. He would continue to act as the spokesman for the National Action Council.
The regime unleashed a reign of terror and turned South Africa into an armed camp. New methods of struggle had to be found.
In 1960, under conditions of a state of emergency and a harsh crackdown on the ANC, a number of our leaders were sent abroad to establish an external mission under the then Deputy President-General of the ANC, Oliver Tambo. Faced with the regime's reign of terror and the closing of all avenues of legal protest and organisation, the ANC decided to form an army of liberation. In 1961 the ANC, together with the South African Communist Party, formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a people's army, with Nelson Mandela as the first Commander-in-Chief. Large numbers of cadres left the country for military training.
On December 16th, 1961 organised acts of sabotage took place throughout the country, marking the emergence of MK - the Spear of the Nation, the armed wing of the ANC. A leaflet issued by the High Command of Umkhonto stated in part that: 'Umkhonto we Sizwe will be at the front line of the people's defence. it will be the fighting arm of the people against the government and its policies of race oppression. It will be the striking force of the people for liberty, for rights and for their final liberation...
In these actions, we are working in the best interests of all the people of this country - black, brown and white - whose future happiness and well-being cannot be attained without the overthrow of the Nationalist Government, the abolition of white supremacy and the winning of liberty, democracy and full national rights and equality for all the people of this country'.
The violence of the regime was now to be met by the revolutionary violence of the people. To prepare effectively for this new stage of our struggle, Nelson Mandela illegally left the country and travelled extensively in Africa and Europe. He returned to South Africa in July 1962, and worked underground until his arrest in August of the same year. He was sentenced, at that time, to five years' imprisonment.
The early actions of MK were based mainly on sabotage attacks against state installations, and were initially very successful. However, on 11 July, 1963, our underground movement suffered a serious setback with the capture of some of our leaders at Rivonia. The Rivonia trialists - Mandela, Mbeki, Sisulu, Goldberg, Kathrada, Mhlaba, Mlangeni and Motsoaledi - were sentenced to life imprisonment. The state had demanded the death penalty, and it was only the massive international campaign on their behalf, inspired by their courageous and uncompromising stand, which saved their lives.
Despite such setbacks, the struggle continued. 1967 saw the Lutuli Combat Detachment comprising ZAPU and ANC guerrillas cross the Zambezi into Rhodesia at the start of the Wankie and Sipolilo battles, which lasted until late 1968.
In May 1969 a seven-day ANC Consultative Conference took place in Morogoro, Tanzania. The main aim was to bring about a qualitative change in the organisational content of our movement in keeping with the new situation - namely a Revolutionary People's War. The pace for the 1970s was set by the historic Morogoro Conference, where the strategy and tactics that would guide our movement in the pursuit of our cherished goal - total liberation - were adopted. Thus by the early 1970s the strength of the people was manifested in the extensive strike waves, the militancy of the youth and students, and the oppressed people's clear identification with the armed struggle being waged - and won - in neighbouring Angola and Mozambique. The whole world reverberated with the barbarity of racist aggression in the 1976 nationwide uprisings which left more than a thousand of our youth dead, but marked a new stage in our struggle, raising mass resistance on all fronts to unprecedented heights.
The Seventies also saw the situation in the whole of Southern Africa change dramatically. The political and military defeat of Portuguese colonialism in Africa significantly altered the balance of power in favour of the revolutionary forces. There emerged people's power in Mozambique, and Angola. These countries evolved new kinds of state power, new types of social and property relations, and therefore sharpened the confrontation between the forces of progress and those of colonial and racist reaction in Southern Africa. Similarly, the liberation of Zimbabwe was to be of great significance to our struggle.
Of crucial importance, too, will be the victory of the people of Namibia under the leadership of SWAPO.
South Africa remains the last bastion of colonialism and racism on the African continent. The apartheid regime now faces an all-round offensive in the spirit of the ANC' s rallying call for united action.
The struggle of the people of South Africa consists of four inter-linked elements - the vanguard role of the underground structures of the ANC; the united mass political action of the people; the international campaign to isolate the Pretoria regime, and the armed struggle, spearheaded by our people's army, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Our struggle embraces a variety of methods and tactics, the different forms of struggle complementing and strengthening each other. We are freedom fighters set out on the road to build a new society. We are waging a political struggle with arms in hand. We have always defined the enemy in terms of a system of domination, and not as a people or race. Our war efforts are directed at the state machinery, not at civilian targets.
The liberation war we are engaged in is often referred to as people' s war, a war which actively involves all the people of South Africa, a war where all the oppressed people are involved in battle against the oppressor, a war in which men and women, young and old, are active fighters.
We hold the firm view that there can be no separation between the military and political leaderships. The army is, and must remain, the instrument of the political movement. Revolutionary armed struggle is political struggle by means which include the use of military force, and the victory we strive for has as its aim the seizure of power by the people led by their political vanguard, the ANC.
MK has to fulfill two main elements in our strategy. It must raise the level of mass action inside the country. This means that the army should reinforce the people's struggles. Such struggles are taking place along a very wide front. Our army has to step up its operations in order to imbue the masses with confidence in their ability to fight back. Building a people's army to fight a people's war means that our movement and our army must create and consolidate the conditions for the existence, survival, growth and expansion of our army among the people. These condition should be so created that no matter how hard the enemy tries to uproot us, our existence and our capacity to attack over a large area increases.
Today, the people of South Africa are on the march. Our demand is for people' s power. Apartheid cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed, root and branch. In his January 8th, 1985 address to the nation, President Tambo said: 'Through struggle and sacrifice we have planted the seeds of people's war in our country, that is, a war waged by the people against the white minority regime. One of our central tasks in the coming period is to transform the potential we have created into the reality of people's war. Guided by that perspective, we must build up the mass combat forces that are training themselves in mass political action for sharper battles and for the forcible overthrow of the racist regime. The mass combat forces that are and have been engaged in the popular offensive, these death-defying patriots, must now become part of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the vital cutting edge of our onslaught. It is in this way that we will ensure that the people's army deepens its roots and grows inextricably among the popular masses. It is in this way that we will ensure that it grows in size, in the spread and quality of its operations and in the weight of every blow it delivers'.
Pretoria's response to the mass upsurge of our people has been to impose martial law, blanket press and media censorship, and the granting of unlimited licence to kill to the racist soldiers, police and death squads. Thousands of our people are paying the supreme sacrifice for liberty - laying down their lives in the bitter war that is raging. Pretoria is able to arm, deploy and finance its massive military machine because of the economic, political and diplomatic support granted by Western governments, in particular the United Kingdom and the USA.
In the decade of the Eighties what does an all-round offensive within South Africa mean? The ANC has decided to engage the enemy on all fronts - political struggle, trade union activity, mass women's campaigns, school boycotts, struggle on the religious front, peasant revolts and military actions. Umkhonto we Sizwe always attempts to apply military theory to our concrete conditions.
We are aware that there is no victory possible without mass participation, that is to say active and conscious involvement of the oppressed black masses. No group of revolutionaries acting on their own, however gallant, disciplined and self-sacrificing they may be, can succeed in overthrowing the fascist regime.
The main content of the present stage of the South African revolution is the national liberation of the largest and most oppressed group - the African people. This strategic aim must govern every aspect of the conduct of our struggle, whether it be the formulation of policy or the creation of structures. Among other things, it demands in the first place the maximum mobilisation of the African people as a dispossessed and racially oppressed national majority. This is the mainspring and it must not be weakened. There can be no ambiguity on the question of the primary role of the most oppressed African masses. But the African, although subject to the most intense social oppression and exploitation, is not the only oppressed national group in South Africa.
The Coloured and Indian communities suffer from varying forms of humiliation, discrimination and oppression. They are part of the oppressed black base upon which is built white privilege, constituting an integral part of the forces ranged against white supremacy.
The ANC fights not only against the oppression of the black people by the white, but also for the establishment of a united South African nation, not based on race, tribe or creed. The struggle of the ANC for one nation embodies the aspirations of those democratic and peace-seeking white people who are prepared to throw their lives into the struggle with the oppressed majority in the cause of a non-racial, national identity.
Unity in action among all the oppressed groups is fundamental to the advance of our liberation struggle. Historically, all these communities have played a most important part in the intensification of our struggle for freedom. The jails in South Africa are witness to the large-scale participation by Indian, Coloured and White comrades at every level of our revolutionary struggle.
The ANC held its Second National Consultative Conference at Kabwe, Zambia, on June 16 to 23, 1985. It was a representative Conference of 250 democratically elected delegates representing all sections of our movement: the workers, the women, youth, media workers, soldiers - everybody.
For seven days our people discussed issues connected with our struggle, our strategy and tactics, our strengths and weaknesses. The mood and spirit of Conference was that of comradeship and frankness. This Conference, which took place on the Ninth Anniversary of the Commemoration of the Soweto Uprising, also endorsed the principles enshrined in the Freedom Charter, whose 30th anniversary we commemorated on June 26, 1985. It reaffirmed the decisions of the 1969 Morogoro Conference and re-endorsed the anti-imperialist positions of the ANC.
Indeed, this Conference has been described as a Council of War precisely because it charted the way forward to the intensification of the armed struggle. It decided that the distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' targets should disappear. This was not a new idea. It had been discussed (like all other issues) in the numerous, continual regional pre-Conference discussions which involved everybody, including all those who were not elected as delegates to the Conference.
The question of intensifying armed struggle poses new challenges for, and responsibilities on, the ANC and on the international community which - by the look of things and the nature of the violence of the enemy - is going to be more involved in that struggle for liberation.
One of these questions is the question of sanctions, comprehensive sanctions. In 1977 the UN called for sanctions. We are far from suggesting that sanctions will bring apartheid to its knees. All we are saying is that sanctions will weaken apartheid and that will enable us to fight against a weakened enemy. This will minimise the loss of lives, shorten the duration of our struggle and lessen bloodshed. This will be a contribution to our struggle and an act of solidarity with our people.
Another important decision, taken at the Conference, was the question of opening ranks at all levels inside and outside the country, to all South Africans who have come to join the ANC. Conference felt that the ANC composition at all levels should reflect the South African society - people who are sacrificing and fighting for the national liberation of the blacks, especially the Africans, and social emancipation of both the blacks and whites.
Conference also adopted a new Constitution and a Code of Conduct. A new National Executive Committee was elected, and it was charged with the task of implementing Conference resolutions and leading the ANC in the coming battles.
As the ANC observes the 75th anniversary of its formation, it is conscious of the bitter struggle that lies ahead for our people. Bul It is also conscious of the ever-growing solidarity, support and strength of the international democratic community, which has set itself against colonialism, apartheid, racism and fascism. The ANC has, for these 75 years, remained faithful to the cause of freedom. It leads the struggle for the emancipation of all oppressed and exploited black people. It stands for a new order in South Africa where racism shall be a thing of the past and human dignity and equality shall prevail in the life of the country. But before that new order is born many lives will be lost. We are prepared to meet the challenge.