From Ungovernability to Peoples Power - 1986

ANC Call To The People

The National Executive Committee of the ANC made the following Call to the Nation in May, 1986.

Dear Comrades and Compatriots,

The mass offensive is reaching new levels in ever widening areas of our country. More and more of our people are being awakened to action in organised contingents against apartheid's evil forces. Inspired by the leadership of the ANC and its allies, the people are continuing to show unending revolutionary inventiveness and creativity.

In April 1985 we called for:

• The strengthening and uniting of the trade union movement as a weapon in defence of workers' economic interests and in the struggle for national liberation.
• The replacement of the collapsing government stooge community councils with people's power.
• The creation of mobile defence units and the finding of ways to obtain arms as part of the process of strengthening the People's Army, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
• The withdrawal of more and more blacks from the machineries of apartheid and for those in uniform to come over to the side of the people.
• The whites to move away from apartheid and to support the liberation struggle.
• The strengthening of our underground presence and the intensification of the armed activities of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

On January 8th, 1986 we called upon the nation to attack, advance and give the enemy no quarter. These calls have been answered with increasing and dramatic vigour.

• The seeds of people's power are beginning to germinate and spread their roots. People's committees, street committees and comrades' committees are emerging on a growing scale as popular organs in place of the collapsed racist stooge administrations. People's courts, people's defence militia and other popular organs of justice are, in many cases, challenging the legitimacy of the racist' s machinery of justice and their uniformed forces of repression.
• Our organised working class has created a mighty new trade union federation - Cosatu - and has demonstrated its strength in the two-million strong May Day strike.
• The schools and universities continue to be simmering flashpoints for freedom. The youth stand poised to strike organised blows for liberation from their re-occupied bases. The forthcoming 10th Anniversary of June 16 will fan the flames of resistance to slave education and reinforce the surge towards a free South Africa.
• The fires which have been raging in our cities for the past two years are spreading to more and more areas of the countryside. The starving millions in the bantustans are demonstrating their anger against these hated institutions and the puppets who are committed to running them on behalf of Pretoria.
• The terror unleashed on the people by the racist army and police in the black ghettoes has totally failed to destroy their will to resist. Instead, under the leadership and inspiration of the People's Army. Umkhonto we Sizwe, new ways are continuously devised to deal with the enemy's onslaught. The automatic gunfire is no longer always one-sided. The racist army and police are now also falling under a hail of bullets. Modern weapons are beginning to replace the stone in the hands of militants. The white communities in the cities and on the farms are also beginning to experience the unavoidable consequences of armed struggle.
• The power of the black consumer boycott has been dramatically demonstrated in a number of areas. The refusal by the people to pay house rents is spreading and the authorities are powerless to enforce payment of the massive accumulated arrears.
• Division and disarray are growing daily more acute in the enemy camp as white business feels the pinch of international isolation and increasingly exposes its inability to stem the tide of the people's resistance. This is leading to a rising toll of desertion from the previously monolithic white laager. Increasing numbers among the white community are beginning to accept that no solution is possible without the ANC.
• There are signs of demoralisation in the enemy's armed forces and a growing number of black soldiers and police are shedding the uniform of apartheid. Those who continue to carry out its orders and who work with and for the enemy are shunned by the communities and can find little rest living among the people.

These impressive achievements must become the launching-pad for further advances. The second half of 1986 must see an ever greater escalation of the offensive on all fronts, an offensive based on mass resistance, on an intensified armed struggle and on growing refusal to obey racist authority.

More particularly:

• Let us in an organised way spread the mood of total civil disobedience, including an organised campaign leading to nationwide refusal to pay all taxes and rents.
• Let us make the National General Strike called in observance of the 10th Anniversary for June 16th the mightiest demonstration yet of our people's resolve to bring the ruling class to its knees. Let every mine, factory, farm and white home be without labour. Let every university and school be emptied of its youth. Let every shop close its doors. Let every community strike a blow for freedom.
• Let us declare freedom of movement throughout our land and set aside a day on which we burn our badges of slavery - the passes. We have already forced the regime to sound a retreat on the old style dompas. Now let us resist all other attempts by Botha to deny us free access to any part of our united South Africa, whether by means of new identity documents, bantustans, resettlement camps, group areas or other racist devices.
• Let August 9th - the 30th Anniversary of the women's heroic march on Pretoria - be a day on which the whole nation moves with our women in the march towards freedom.
• Let us mobilise everywhere to smash the bantustans and to isolate the puppets who continue to collaborate with apartheid. The few bantustan office-bearers who are aligning themselves with the democratic movement are showing the real way forward.
• Let us hammer more nails into the coffin of the tri-cameral 'parliament'. Let those who continue to serve Pretoria as the so-called representatives of our Coloured and Indian people, withdraw from those bodies or be made to feel the wrath of the people.
• Let us intensify our armed activities at all levels. More and more contingents of our people must be armed. Efforts must be redoubled to obtain arms from the enemy and from any other source. Let us influence our people in uniform to surrender their arms to the people's representatives. We must multiply the formation of people's defence militia everywhere so as to meet more effectively the assault by the enemy's armed forces and the treacherous vigilantes and 'impis' which they employ. Our People's Army, strengthened by the emerging popular militia, must intensify and spread its armed actions across the country.
• Let us strengthen further underground organisation and emerge from every campaign with more powerful and united contingents of organised mass forces.
• Let us do all in our power to strengthen the unity of the workers and encourage the affiliation to Cosatu of all those democratic trade unions who still remain outside its ranks.
• Above all, let us act in unity. Let us strike with one fist. Every action, whether local, regional or national, must involve all sections of our people. The workers, youth, women and other strata among the oppressed must everywhere move in an organised way together. The black masses - African, Coloured and Indian - must continuously find ways of engaging the enemy together and defeating its policies of divide and rule. And those among us who exploit the people's offensive to engage in acts of thuggery and hooliganism must be isolated and stopped from carrying out their anti-social activities.

We have reached a point of no return. The historic conditions necessary to ensure the collapse of the apartheid system have taken shape in greater measure than ever before in our history. But much still needs to be done to destroy it once and for all.

Compatriots, freedom beckons us. It stands before us demanding that we refuse no sacrifice and we spare neither life nor limb in the coming battles to win back our land and to end the 350 years of race plunder, oppression and exploitation. Workers and youth, men and women, town people and country people, all patriots among the oppressed, democratic whites who have shed racism and who accept a united land run by the will of the majority -

Let us together, under the leadership and umbrella of the ANC, render apartheid South Africa even more ungovernable. Let every township and every community become a stronger organised fortress of our revolution.

Let us move from Ungovernability to People's Power!