Born five years after the birth of the ANC, OR Tambo has spent most if his life in selfless service in the struggle against apartheid. OR, as he is popularly known by his peers, was born on 27 October 1917 in Mbizana, Eastern Pondoland.
OR completed his high school education at St Peters College, going on to study for a Bachelor of Science degree at Fort Hare, completing his studies in 1941.
It was at Fort Hare that he first became involved in the politics of the national liberation movement, and where the lifelong partnership with Nelson Mandela was struck. After leading a class boycott in support of a demand to form a democratically elected SRC, he was expelled ending his efforts to complete a BSc Honours degree.
In 1942 he returned to St Peters College as a science and mathematics teacher. Among his pupils was Duma Nokwe, who became the first black advocate of the Supreme Court and a secretary general of the ANC.
Tambo was among the founding members of the ANC Youth League, became its first national secretary in 1944, president of the Transvaal ANC Youth League in 1948, and its national vice president in 1949. It was in the Youth League that Tambo, together with Nelson Mandela, Ashby Mda, Anton Lembede and others brought a new militancy into the post-war ANC. In 1946 Tambo was elected onto the Transvaal Executive of the ANC and in 1948, with Walter Sisulu, he was elected onto the NEC of the ANC. He has remained at the helm of the organisation ever since.
Tambo was instrumental in formulating key policy positions of the ANC from the 1949 Programme of Action onwards. Mandela and Tambo set up a legal partnership, the firm soon becoming a champion of the poor and victims of apartheid.
When Walter Sisulu was forced, in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act, to resign his post as ANC Secretary General in 1955, Oliver Tambo was appointed to fulfil the post. Tambo served on the National Action Council which headed the mobilisation for the Congress of the People, and was among the 156 accused in the marathon Treason Trial of 1956.
In 1958 Tambo left the post of Secretary General to become the Deputy President of the ANC. Like many of his colleagues, Tambo was banned for five years in 1959. In 1960, after the Sharpeville massacre, he was designated by the ANC to travel abroad and set up the ANC's international mission and mobilise international opinion in opposition to the apartheid system. Assisted by African governments, Tambo was able to establish ANC missions in Egypt, Ghana, Morocco and London. From these small beginnings, under his stewardship the ANC acquired missions in 27 countries by 1990.
In 1967, after the death of the President General, the late Chief Albert Lutuli, Tambo became Acting President until his appointment to the presidency was approved by the Morogoro Conference in 1969. Tambo travelled the world building massive support for the liberation struggle in South Africa. He was the key figure in the Revolutionary Council, set up at the Morogoro Conference to oversee the ANC's internal reconstruction and building of an underground and military capacity.
In 1985 Tambo was re-elected ANC President at the Kabwe Conference. In that capacity he served also as head of the Politico-Military Council of the ANC, and as Commander-in-Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe. On his return to South Africa after almost 30 years in exile, Oliver Tambo received a tumultuous welcome. At the ANC's first national conference inside South Africa, in July 1991, Oliver Tambo was elected its National Chairperson.
During his years in the ANC, Oliver Tambo has played a major role in the growth and development of the movement and its policies. He is among the generation of African nationalist leaders who emerged after the Second World War who were instrumental in the transformation of the ANC from a liberal constitutionalist organisation into a radical national liberation movement.
Today we pay tribute to an African giant with the highest honour we can bestow
- Isitwalandwe Seaparankoe.
Born in 1918, Mandela graduated from Healdtown and went to Fort Hare in 1938, being suspended after a student protest in 1940. He went to Johannesburg, completing a BA degree through the University of South Africa in 1942. He began working on a law degree at Wits University the year after. Already in contact with Sisulu, and having met Tambo at Fort Hare, Mandela participated with them in the founding meetings of the ANC Youth League, was elected its national secretary and became a member of the ANC national executive committee in 1949. In late 1950 he was elected president of the ANC Youth League. In 1952 he was volunteer-in-chief in the Defiance Campaign. In December of the same year he was charged, with 19 others, under the Suppression of Communism Act. Given a nine month suspended sentence, he was also served with banning orders forbidding him to attend gatherings or leave Johannesburg for six months.
In December 1952 Mandela became deputy national president of the ANC, serving under Chief Lutuli. Mandela openly flouted the banning orders until new bans were imposed in 1953, forcing him to resign officially from the ANC and attend no gatherings for five years. From then on, Mandela began to operate in a more clandestine manner, overseeing attempts to implement the M-Plan, aimed at building a mass membership at grassroots level.
The Transvaal Law Society, to its everlasting shame, tried to have Mandela disbarred in the mid-1950s. Accused in the Treason Trial, conducting the defence with Duma Nokwe, he was involved in the proceedings until its end in 1961. He attended to All-in African Conference in Pietermaritzburg in 1961 and, to underscore the demand for a national convention, a demand which is only beginning to be achieved 30 years later with the holding of Codesa, Mandela called on Africans to mark the formation of the Republic, March 31, 1961, with a three-day stay-at-home. Evading arrest for incitement, Mandela went underground to organise the strike, but was eventually arrested in August 1962.
During the 17 months he operated underground, known as the "Black Pimpernel", Mandela left South Africa and toured independent Africa. In his address to the Pan African Freedom Movement in Addis Ababa in January 1962, Mandela informed the world of the turn to armed struggle and the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. While abroad, Mandela underwent a brief military training course in Algeria.
Convicted in November 1962 of incitement and illegally leaving the country, Mandela was sentenced to five years imprisonment. After the Rivonia raid, Mandela was brought from prison to stand trial as a member of MK's High Command. From the dock Mandela delivered his world famous "I am prepared to die" statement and, together with his colleagues, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Robben Island became the people's university and the most famous penal island in the world. From behind prison walls Mandela and his colleagues continued to lead the struggle despite bitter conditions and deprivation of all news for years on end. The whole world knows how its most famous political prisoner in fact kept his jailers imprisoned until he was ultimately unconditionally released on 11 February, 1990.
Nelson Mandela has, since his release, received a heroes welcome not only at home but in virtually every country of the world. He was elected President of the ANC at its national conference in July, 1991.
As with Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, it is impossible to capture the role and life of Walter Sisulu in a brief biography. Born in the same year that the ANC was founded, he came to Johannesburg from Engcobo, Transkei in 1929, and worked as a labourer, miner, kitchen boy and a series of factory jobs. Only able to attend school to Standard IV, Walter Sisulu studied on his own to improve his education. Joining the ANC in 1940, the same year that Dr AB Xuma became its president. He was among the group of radicals who, in 1943-44, formed the Youth League, becoming its treasurer. Instrumental in bringing the ANC to the watershed 1949 conference, where the Programme of Action was approved and Sisulu was elected as ANC Secretary General, a post he held until 1954 when banning orders forced him to resign the position.
Sisulu served on the Joint Planning Council for the Defiance Campaign, and led one of the first batches of passive resisters when the campaign began in 1952. Jailed briefly as a resister, he was arrested and tried again with other leaders of the campaign in late 1952, being sentenced to nine months imprisonment suspended for three years.
In 1953 Sisulu travelled to Europe, Russia and China. In 1956 until 1961 he was a defendant in the Treason Trial, having been jailed for the duration of the 1960 state of emergency. In 1962 he was placed under 12-hour house arrest. Convicted in March 1963 of furthering the aims of the banned ANC and of helping to organise the 1961 May stay-at-home, Sisulu was sentenced to six years in jail. He was released on bail and placed under 24-hour house arrest.
On 20 April, 1963, he disappeared from his home to join the underground, and on 26 June broadcast to the nation on secret ANC radio transmitters. Among those arrested during the Rivonia Raid, Sisulu was sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in October 1989, Sisulu was a member of the Internal Leadership Core and elected ANC Deputy President at the national conference of July, 1991.
Helen Joseph was born in England in 1905, completed her education at the University of London in 1927 and taught for three years in India. In 1931 she came to South Africa for a visit and remained. Deeply moved by the Defiance Campaign of 1952-3, she helped found the Congress of Democrats and later served as its national vice chairperson. When the Federation of South African Women was formed in 1954, she became its Transvaal and later is national secretary, playing a leading role in organising the march on Pretoria in August 1956 in protest against the extension of passes to African women. She was among the accused in the 1956 Treason Trial, during which time she was placed under bans forbidding her to leave Johannesburg or attend gatherings.
Once her bans were lifted in 1962, Helen drove around the whole country investigating the living conditions of political offenders banished to remote areas. On her return she was placed under 12-hour house arrest for 5 years, the first person to be restricted in this way. In 1967 her house arrest order was renewed for a further five years, but was lifted in 1971 after a severe illness.
Kathy, as he is popularly know, was 34 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in Umkhonto we Sizwe's activities. He had left school when he was 17 to work full time in the office of the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council, and served his first jail sentence for civil disobedience in December 1946. While a student at Wits university, and as chairman of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress, Kathy attended the Berlin World Youth Festival in 1951, going on to attend a Congress of the International Union of Students in Warsaw, returning to South Africa in 1952. One of the organisers of the Defiance Campaign, Kathy was tried with other leaders in December 1952 and received a nine-month suspended sentence. Banning orders curtailed his open participation in politics after 1954, but he was among the accused in the 1956 Treason Trial. In October 1962 he was placed under 12-hour house arrest, but after several months he went underground and operated with Umkhonto we Sizwe until his arrest at Rivonia in July 1963. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Kathy was elected to the NEC in July, 1991.
Harry Themba Gwala joined the Communist Party in 1942, and subsequently the ANC and the ANC Youth League in 1944. He was listed under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950, and in 1952 was served with a two-year banning order. Repeatedly detained in 1960 and 1963, Harry Gwala was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in 1964. On his release from Robben Island, he was again detained in 1975, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1977. Released unconditionally in 1988 when he was 68 years old, Gwala remained deeply involved in the liberation struggle. After the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, he became a member of the Internal Leadership Core and was elected to the National Executive Committee at the ANC's national conference in July 1991.
Born in Sekhukhuniland in 1924, Elias Motsoaledi spent his formative years as an active trade unionist. The first union he joined was the Leather Workers' Union in 1949. He served as chairman of the Council of Non-European Trade Unions and in the South African Congress of Trade Unions after its formation. He joined the ANC in 1948, becoming a member of the Transvaal executive. Detained during the 1960 state of emergency, and again in 1963 under the notorious 90-day detention laws, Motsoaledi was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia trial. He had joined Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1962 and participated in its activities. At the July 1991 National Conference Elias Motsoaledi was elected to the NEC of the ANC.
Also one of the Rivonia Trialists sentenced to life imprisonment, Andrew Mlangeni was born in 1926. He joined the ANC Youth League in 1951. From 1958 to 1960, when the ANC was banned, Mlangeni served as ANC regions secretary for Soweto. In 1961 he helped organise the All-in African Conference in Pietermaritzburg. A member of the Internal Leadership Core after his unconditional release from Robben Island, Mlangeni was elected to the NEC of the ANC at the July 1991 National Conference.
Born in the Eastern Cape in 1920, Mhlaba became an active trade unionist in his youth. In 1943 he joined the Communist Party and from 1946 until its banning in 1950, served as the district secretary for Port Elizabeth. He was elected its Deputy Chairman at the Party's first legal conference inside the country since its unbanning - December 1991. Mhlaba joined the ANC in 1944, and from 1947 to 1953 was Port Elizabeth branch chairman. Mhlaba was the first ANC leader to be arrested in the 1952 Defiance Campaign. Banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, Mhlaba was nevertheless elected to the Cape executive committee of the ANC in 1954, and continued with his political activities. Caught in the swoop at Rivonia in 1963, Mhlaba was among those sentenced to life imprisonment. He was elected to the NEC of the ANC at its national conference in July, 1991.
Born in 1923, Wilton Mkwayi became a union organiser for the African Textile
Workers in Port Elizabeth in the early 'fifties, later serving as treasurer
of the South African Congress of Trade Unions. He was among the leaders of the
Defiance Campaign of 1952, and was one of the accused in the 1956 Treason Trial.
During the 1960 state of emergency, Mkwayi went underground and travelled abroad
to obtain international support for the ANC. He later returned secretly to South
Africa and continued operating underground. Arrested in 1964 and charged with
helping to organise Umkhonto we Sizwe, he was sentenced to life imprisonment
on Robben Island. He was elected to the NEC of the ANC at its July 1991 national
conference.