Comrade Chairman,
Your Excellencies, and
Comrades,
Let me commence by thanking you, Comrade Chairman, and the SACP for inviting the African National Congress to be a party to this occasion in particular, for the opportunity of sharing a platform with the Communist Party of Great Britain, represented here by the General Secretary Gordan McLennan and with the Communist Party of Ireland, represented by Comrade Michael O'Riordan.
These are our allies; they are part of the international movement of solidarity which gives us strength and confidence in the certainty of our victory. These parties, together with other communist and workers parties around the world, are parties which we can always appeal to for solidarity in the conviction that they will respond.
It is a great pleasure for us, a great honour to participate with them on an occasion of great significance in our struggle in South Africa.
You, Comrade Chairman, and Comrade General Secretary of the SACP,(2) have shared hundreds of platforms together in our lifetime in South Africa and in many parts of the world outside our country. Today, we share a platform on an occasion which takes our reflections back across a span of 60 years, in which we can recall great names that have ensured that our struggle shall continue and is continuing today... names that shall always be honoured in our history.
We share this platform in another significant context, for me in particular. I have the great pleasure today of repeating on behalf of the African National Congress and our people in general, our congratulations to Comrade Moses Mabhida on his election some while ago, to the position of General Secretary of the SACP.
We utter these congratulations with a sense of confidence, knowing his background, knowing his role in our struggle especially in the discharge of his tasks in the ANC, his absolute loyalty and his understanding - profound understanding - of the character of the South African situation and its problems. Confidence because he succeeds one of the great giants of our struggle in the position of General Secretary of the SACP - Moses Kotane: whose contributions alone, to the building up of the forces that can resist fascist onslaught on any scale is acknowledged by all who have worked with him, such as I have - by all who have read about him.
We are confident that you Comrade Moses, will prove yourself a worthy successor, and perhaps in the fullness of time we shall likewise name you among the giants of our struggle.
Comrade Chairman, I should like to pay a special tribute to you today. It is 60 years since the SACP was formed. It is several decades since you have been involved in the front ranks of our struggle, inspiring everyone around you, inspiring younger generations: first among the volunteers in situations that threaten arrest, torture, imprisonment; never missing where there is struggle to be waged. You were awarded the title Isitwalandwe by our nation not as a formality but in recognition of your services. This was more than 25 years ago. Your presence here, and chairmanship of this particular meeting, enables us to recall with great clarity the various revolutionaries with whom you associated in your period of service to our people and our country.
On this the 60th anniversary of the founding of the South African Communist Party, I bring the greetings and felicitations of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, and the good wishes of all those engaged in the liberation struggle and all the oppressed in South Africa.
This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the women's great march to Pretoria - the march of our gallant women. It is the year that carries with it the 20th anniversary of the founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe. It is the year of the youth of our country. We hail the SACP in the name of these contingents of our army of liberation which together with the SACP comprise a fighting alliance that represents the power of the South African revolution in the making.
We salute the SACP, particularly in the name of the combatants who have fallen in the course of our struggle as well on behalf of the national leaders and militants presently held in the enemy's prisons.
We congratulate the SACP on this occasion, particularly for the dedication and commitment of its leaders and cadres that has ensured its survival these 60 years, despite intensive repression and desperate attempts to destroy it.
We applaud your achievements, for the SACP has not only survived, but is today stronger, and increasingly makes more significant contributions to the liberation struggle of our people.
The ANC speaks here today, not so much as a guest invited to address a foreign organisation. Rather we speak of and to our own. For it is a matter of record that for much of its history, the SACP has been an integral part of the struggle of the African people against oppression and exploitation in South Africa. We can all bear witness that in the context of the struggle against colonial structures and racism, and the struggle for power by the people, the SACP has been fighting with the oppressed and exploited.
Notwithstanding that it has had to concentrate on thwarting the efforts to destroy it, cadres of the SACP have always been ready to face the enemy in the field. Because they have stood and fought in the front ranks, they have been amongst those who have suffered the worst brutalities of the enemy, and some of the best cadres have sacrificed their lives.
And so, your achievements are the achievements of the liberation struggle. Your heroes are ours. Your victories, those of all the oppressed.
The relationship between the ANC and the SACP is not an accident of history, nor is it a natural and inevitable development. For, as we can see, similar relationships have not emerged in the course of liberation struggles in other parts of Africa.
To be true to history, we must concede that there have been difficulties as well as triumphs along our path, as, traversing many decades, our two organisations have converged towards a shared strategy of struggle. Ours is not merely a paper alliance, created at conference tables and formalised through the signing of documents and representing only an agreement of leaders. Our alliance is a living organism that has grown out of struggle. We have built it out of our separate and common experiences. It has been nurtured by our endeavours to counter the total offensive mounted by the National Party in particular against all opposition and against the very concept of democracy. It has been strengthened through resistance to the vicious onslaught against both the ANC and the SACP by the Pretoria regime; it has been fertilised by the blood of the countless heroes; many of them are unnamed and unsung. It has been reinforced by a common determination to destroy the enemy and by our shared belief in the certainty of victory.
This process of building the unity of all progressive and democratic forces in South Africa through united and unified action received a particularly powerful impetus from the outstanding leadership of Isitwalandwe Chief Albert J Luthuli, as President-General of the ANC. The process was assisted and supported by the tried and tested leadership of such stalwart revolutionaries as Isitwalandwe Yusuf Dadoo and Isitwalandwe the late Moses Kotane, revolutionaries of the stature of J.B. Marks and Bram Fischer.
Today the ANC and SACP have common objectives in the eradication of the oppressive and exploitative system that prevails in our country: the seizure of power and the exercise of their right of self-determination by all the people of South Africa. We share a perspective of the task that lies ahead.
Our organisations have been able to agree on fundamental strategies and tactical positions, whilst retaining our separate identities. For though we are united in struggle, as you have already pointed out Comrade Chairman, we are not the same. Our history has shown that we are a powerful force because our organisations are mutually reinforcing.
It is often claimed by our detractors that the ANC's association with the SACP means that the ANC is being influenced by the SACP. That is not our experience. Our experience is that the two influence each other. The ANC is quite capable of influencing, and is liable to be influenced by others. There has been the evolution of strategy which reflects this two way process.
In fact the ANC was quite within its rights to tell the SACP that we are sorry we cannot release Comrade Moses Mabhida from his tasks in the ANC - find another comrade to be General Secretary. Yet we agreed he would make a good General Secretary for the SACP. He was not grabbed.
This kind of relationship constitutes a feature of the South African liberation movement, a revolutionary movement, a feature of the SACP which helps to reinforce the alliance and to make it work as it is working. It is a tribute to the leadership of the SACP.
We are therefore talking of an alliance from which, in the final analysis, the struggle of the people of South Africa for a new society and a new social system has benefited greatly.
Within our revolutionary alliance each organisation has a distinct and vital role to play. A correct understanding of these roles, and respect for their boundaries has ensured the survival and consolidation of our cooperation and unity.
As stated in its programme, the SACP unreservedly supports and participates in the struggle for national liberation led by the ANC, in alliance with the South African Indian Congress, the Congress of Trade Unions, the Coloured People's Congress and other patriotic groups of democrats, women, peasants and youth.
The strategy of the African National Congress sees the main content of the South African revolution as the liberation of the largest and most oppressed group: namely the black population. And by black I do not mean what our enemies have elected to designate as black - namely just the Africans. By black, we mean all the oppressed. Those who were formerly called non-whites and which we prefer to call black.
Of course, it does not suit the enemy to club all the oppressed and exploited together. It is better for the enemy that this vast majority be split up into what they call blacks and then Indians and Coloureds. That fits their strategy - serves the interests of their strategy best. But I am talking about the oppressed population as the blacks.
Whilst concerned to draw in, and unify, all progressive and democratic forces in the country, including those amongst the whites, our priority remains the maximum mobilisation of those who are the dispossessed, the exploited and the racially oppressed.
That is only a priority, for we recognise that victory requires that we build up maximum unity of the forces for progress. Indeed we need to break up this white racist clique, win friends from among the ruling class and isolate the fascists. Then a united people of South Africa can deliver the final blow, crush the colonialist structures and move to a new South Africa.
The poverty of our people, the incidents of malnutrition, unemployment and other manifestations of the criminal policy, the criminal system under which we live, demand that our people should fight with everything they have, all the time, to destroy the system. To this end the ANC has called upon the people to resist this oppressive and exploitative system at every level, using every occasion and every means at their disposal. And the response has been nationwide. People in all walks of life and races have banded together in opposition to the fascist regime. Almost every township has been faced with rent strikes and other forms of resistance. Fare increases are met with boycotts. Youth and students have maintained their action against the education system and found widespread support from parents.
Though many of these actions are local and focus on immediate issues, they are not directed at seeking piece meal and at best temporary redress. These actions are not an end in themselves but they are part of the struggle for a new social system in our country.
The ANC has called upon and encouraged workers to use their labour power, not only to improve wages and working conditions, but also to destroy the exploitative system itself. Workers have been and are responding to this call. In the process, employers have been dismissing large numbers of the poorly paid and brutally exploited strikers.
The right of the workers to withhold their labour is universally recognised as fundamental. The ANC is determined to defend the right of South African workers to strike - especially the black workers. Firms which victimise strikers do so at their peril. They must be made aware that they dismiss their workers at the risk of dismissing their profits. The ANC intends to see to it that the workers right to strike is defended.
The objective of our struggle in South Africa, as set out in the Freedom Charter, encompasses economic emancipation. It is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the country to the people as a whole. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the roots of racial supremacy and exploitation, and does not represent even the shadow of liberation.
It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy; and our drive towards national emancipation must include economic emancipation.
Mr. Chairman, exploitation and repression are brutal. But they have not deterred or cowered us. On the contrary, throughout the country, the struggle is generating a climate of defiance, in which people are going into action without thought of torture, arrest or even death. They are asserting their right to freedom of association and speech, their right to strike, and most importantly for the right to govern.
They do so in the context of a mass struggle which demonstrates the success of our strategy of reinforcing popular actions with armed force - as was shown most forcibly during the nationwide campaign of boycott and rejection of the white republic in May of this year.
The ANC and its allies recognise that in our situation in South Africa armed struggle is an absolute imperative. But we have always seen mass mobilisation as essential to the growth and development of armed struggle. We acclaim it as an achievement, that in both areas of activity - mass struggle as well as armed action - there is now ample evidence of growth and expansion.
Umkhonto we Sizwe has emerged as a force to reckon with. And yet, we all know that before we can hope to bring the enemy down, the scope and scale, as well as the quality of the operations of this our people's army, must be greatly stepped up. Umkhonto we Sizwe has won its first great victory - namely, that the enemy has proved unable to stop its growth, its expansion and the increasingly effective striking powers of our guerrilla army.
That is a victory we must build on. To say that is to pronounce the challenge posed for our revolutionary alliance. Unless we build on that victory we will lose the victory itself.
For even as the unity of the oppressed has grown and strengthened so too has the offensive against us. As we stand poised for new advances, the onslaught grows more fierce.
As the apartheid regime has sought ways to preserve itself, power in South Africa has increasingly become concentrated in the hands of a particularly dangerous and authoritarian politico-military clique, which tries to retain control through the unashamed and overt use of institutionalised violence and the escalation of brutal repression. Not content with waging war against the South African and Namibian people, the regime has embarked upon an undeclared war against neighbouring States.
In repeated breaches of the United Nations Charter and of international law, the territorial integrity of Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe is violated by the regime, the political stability of independent States subverted, and economic development retarded and sabotaged.
In opening this meeting, Comrade Chairman, you have drawn our attention to the new crime of aggression against the People's Republic of Angola. We should like to especially associate the ANC with the resolution adopted here today. And to add, that in our view Angola's closest friends should rally to her defence, and that Africa must act against the aggression against Africa. We consider the situation demands an emergency meeting of the OAU to decide upon concerted measures to be taken to drive South African troops out of Angola and out of Namibia.
We should not omit to emphasise and underscore the special role of the new Administration in the United States in relation to this aggression. There has been some consistency in the behaviour of the South African regime ever since Mr. Reagan appeared on the scene. The first signs of a new arrival in the arena of international relations was the fact of the Geneva Conference being torpedoed.
A state has been reached when all concerned had agreed including South Africa, and at that moment the Reagan Administration appeared on the scene. The first evidence of that was the collapse of that Geneva Conference. It was succeeded by an attack on Angola; an attack, an invasion against Mozambique when our people were butchered and assassinated in Matola.
Now as pressure grows for the implementation of Resolution 435 to resolve and finalise the Namibian question, the greatest ever invasion is mounted against Angola - the greatest certainly, since the mid-1970s. Backing all this up is surely that Administration which proclaims itself as an ally of South Africa, which labelled the national liberation movement as international terrorism to be eliminated and liquidated. It is in pursuance of that policy that by way of liquidating SWAPO, the South African regime is being assisted and encouraged and equipped to try and destroy Angola.
In condemning this aggression, we must also condemn with equal vigour the allies of the criminal regime in South Africa.
For our part, we declare our indissoluble unity with the people of Namibia in their struggles. We support SWAPO and we will do everything in our power to ensure the success of their struggle.
We have in the past declared our solidarity with the peoples of southern Africa, especially when they come under attack by our immediate enemy. We proclaim this support today for the people of Angola.
The ANC has received and continues to receive international support and solidarity from a variety of sources. We must today acknowledge especially, with appreciation, the very significant support we receive from the socialist countries. You have mentioned many of these countries - all of them without exception have given freely by way of supporting our struggle and meeting our demands.
We appreciate in particular that they and some African countries have not hesitated to deliver weapons to peoples fighting for their liberation. The enemy likes to squeal that we have been fighting with either Soviet-made weapons, or Communist-made weapons. It does not matter what made weapons they are. But we are glad to have them, and shall continue to use them if they are effective - and they are.
This support has been given during the liberation struggles in southern Africa and the rest of Africa and has been extended to the independent States that have been forced to defend their own victories.
The devastation wreaked in southern Africa by the Pretoria regime places an added responsibility upon the liberation movement. For it is only after the seizure of power in Pretoria, that the people of southern Africa will be able to concentrate all their energies and resources into consolidating their independence, furthering economic development and promoting social change. Until the Pretoria regime is defeated in Namibia and South Africa, there are no prospects for peace and security in southern Africa... and the defeat of that regime is precisely the task of the ANC, SACP and all the peoples of South Africa who have committed themselves to the struggle for total liberation.
For the revolutionary movement, anniversaries cannot only celebrate the past. We must recall and acclaim our history, but more importantly, we must use the past to arm ourselves for the future: to learn lessons and to strengthen our resolve and commitment.
The founders of the African National Congress vested in the organisation the historic responsibility of uniting the South African nation across the boundaries of colour, race and creed. That task has devolved upon each of our members and cadres, and to it has been added the isolation of the Pretoria regime and the mobilisation of the widest possible support for our liberation struggle.
The ANC's capacity to unite our people and to lead a unified liberation struggle is one of our most formidable weapons, and it is consequently a prime target of the enemy.
It is only as a united force that we can move forward.
It is as a united people that we shall be victorious.
To move forward, we need to move forward toward victory. An essential of forward movement is that we should together work for the highest level of mobilisation of our people inside South Africa and of the international community. For the consolidation and expansion of our underground organisation in our country, we should aim at planting Umkhonto we Sizwe and spreading it among the popular masses, so that the masses become the active expression of our armed struggle.
We need to work together for the fulfilment of the objectives elaborated in the Freedom Charter.
We need, in other words, to consolidate further our alliance and ensure its maximum effectiveness.
Long Live the SACP!
Long Live the Alliance between the ANC and SACP!
Long Live the Unity of all Progressive and Democratic Forces in our own Country and in the rest of the World! 1 From: Sechaba, September 1981; also in African Communist, No. 87, Fourth Quarter 1981. Dr. Yusuf M. Dadoo presided over the meeting.