Declaration of The African National Congress (S. A.) Executive Committee - Morogoro, 17-20 March '75

Once again the eyes of the world are focused on South Africa. The issue of the destruction of the criminal regime of apartheid is once again being discussed throughout the world. The issue remains cardinal in the world-wide struggle against racism, colonialism and fascism. It remains cardinal to the work and the very survival of the OAU.

Our people have always being convinced that the concerted onslaught of our brother liberation movements in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome & Principe, supported by the OAU and the rest of progressive humanity, would finally result in the destruction of Portuguese colonialism.

The ANC is convinced that the moment has now come to mobilise all forces in Africa and the world over to crown the victories of the peoples of the former Portuguese colonies with a massive and concentrated onslaught on the Pretoria regime.

1. A new situation has come into being in Southern Africa. Portuguese colonialism has collapsed, thanks to the heroic battles waged in fraternal solidarity by our brothers in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau and the democratic forces in Portugal, supported by the whole of freedom loving mankind especially the neighbouring frontline independent African countries. In Namibia and Zimbabwe the struggle for liberation has reached new heights. In South Africa itself, the level of confrontation between the oppressed and their oppressors is at its sharpest in a decade.
2. The new situation that obtains in Southern Africa is characterised therefore by the emergence of conditions that not only favour the passage of the initiative into our hands, but demand also that the African National Congress, the whole liberation movement and all the oppressed people of our country, should seize the initiative into their hands for the capture of power.
3. World imperialism, led by the USA, together with its South African outpost, has studied and prepared for this situation with great care. They have decided that unless they recapture the initiative, White minority domination faces immediate doom. On this basis the enemy has already undertaken actions to enable him to maintain the sole right and power to determine the content, direction and pace of change in Southern Africa.
4. The speed of advance of the African revolution is threatened by this counter-revolutionary manoeuvre The very gains of that revolution, as represented by the reality of independent Africa, are themselves threatened with compromise. This situation demands that all the forces fighting for the destruction of apartheid, both inside South Africa and throughout the world, must strengthen their unity and together double and treble the offensive against the South African white minority regime.

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5. The South African racist regime is engaged in a major campaign to improve its image and prestige internationally. It is seeking to project itself as a vehicle of progressive change in South and Southern Africa. It seeks to hoodwink the world into believing that it is a genuine friend of the peoples of the African continent.
6. Yet the change in the balance of forces in Southern Africa does not signify a change in the nature of the South African regime. The regime remains fascist, racist and colonialist. It continues to pursue a policy of:
   • extreme national oppression of the black people;
   • the super-exploitation of the black working people and the concentration of the country's wealth in the hands of the white minority;
   • the suppression at all costs of the movement for national liberation; and,
   • the domination of independent Africa by resorting to neocolonialist means and methods.
     
7. The change in the balance of forces in Southern Africa has compelled the Vorster regime to tighten its iron hold on the struggling people of our country. In the current financial year, racist South Africa has doubled its military budget. At the same time it continues to strengthen its squad of terrorists, murderers and saboteurs, organised in the Bureau for State Security (BOSS). Already in the recent past BOSS has directed operations which have resulted in the murder of workers inside the country and activists of the liberation movement both inside and outside South Africa. Black militants are today held in the South African jails solely for expressing solidarity with the people of Mozambique, under the leadership of FRELIMO.
8. The change in the balance of forces has also forced the fascist regime to intensify its Bantustan programme of so-called separate development. It is seeking to cloak this balkanisation of our country into racial and kraals with the noble concepts of national self-determination and independence. By this means it is seeking to legitimise the continued colonial domination of the black people of South Africa. Increasingly, the representatives of this counter-revolutionary programme are being used to breach the wall of isolation that has so effectively contributed to the weakening of the racist regime.
9. Equally, the enemy has further reactivated a programme that it adopted in the years when Africa was gaining independence. That was a programme for the colonisation of Africa, based simultaneously on the threat to use, and the actual use of force against independent Africa and the offer of economic bribes to thee independent African States, drawing on huge funds accumulated from the sweated labour of the black people of South Africa.
10. To succumb to this many-sided counter-revolutionary offensive of the South African colonialist regime and its imperialist allies; to admit into the midst of anti-colonial Africa the colonialist regime of South Africa; to substitute the authentic leadership of the black people of South Africa with the Bantustan placemen of the racist regime, would signal active collaboration with counter-revolution, against the interests of the peoples of Africa at large.

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11. Yet, in the current period, we find some independent African States taking a leading position in championing the cause of what amounts to collaboration with the counter-revolution.
12. Acting contrary to their moral and political obligations, these Member States of the OAU have joined in a veritable scramble to establish and consolidate diplomatic, political and economic links with the colonial regime of South Africa.
13. Acting contrary both to their own specific decisions and to the lessons drawn from African continental experience, these Member States of the OAU have joined the racist regime in a programme to dismember the African people of South Africa into tribal groups. Continuing contact between these governments of independent Africa and the Bantustan leaders serves this purpose.
14. Acting contrary also to their own specific decisions, these Member States of the OAU are substituting themselves for the authentic leaders of our people, Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Tambo and others, in the solution of the South African problem.

    Consciously or unconsciously, they are co-operating in a manoeuvre to render irrelevant and destroy the organisation which these patriots lead, namely, the African National Congress, an organisation which has always defended and continues to defend the Charter of the OAU, an organisation which participated in the very formation of the OAU, when the latter pledged to struggle against racism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.
    

15. These activities have strengthened the hand of the world imperialist forces which have for so long sought to defeat the isolation of apartheid South Africa. They served to open the doors for the forces of international reaction to pursue with increased vigour their strategic aim of building up South Africa as a springboard for the recolonisation of Africa.
16. The future of the whole African continent, as a continent fighting for its own total liberation, as a continent fighting to consolidate its independence and to ensure the upliftment of the masses of the people, is at stake. South African and world imperialism are engaged in a gigantic manoeuvre to roll back the march of freedom in Africa. This situation demands immediate, decisive and principled action by the African National Congress, the OAU, the UN and the world-wide movement of solidarity with our struggling people, unequivocally to beat back the enemy's counter-offensive.

    We call on the OAU and the international community to:

    • Reaffirm the correct stand of the OAU and the United Nations of recognising the African National Congress of South Africa as an authentic representative of the struggling people of our country; and spokesman of the South African people as a whole;
    • Re-affirm the OAU condemnation and rejection of the Bantustan policy designed to dismember our Motherland, break the OAU, isolate and destroy the Liberation Movement and legitimise the Pretoria regime.
    • Re-affirm its adherence to total diplomatic, political, economic, cultural and military isolation of the Pretoria regime and call on all member States to refrain from establishing any such contact.
    • Re-affirm the recognition of the legitimacy of the armed struggle and call on all Member States to spare no effort to help increase the striking power of our Liberation Movement in pursuit of the struggle for the seizure of power in South Africa.
    • Declare the Pretoria regime a product of colonial conquest whose independence, sovereignty and United Nations membership constitutes a violation of the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and call on all Member States to intensify their efforts towards its immediate expulsion from the United Nations.

THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS DECLARES ITS FIRM RESOLVE TO PURSUE THE ARMED STRUGGLE UNTIL FINAL VICTORY.