On behalf of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, its militants and combatants inside and outside South Africa, on behalf of the workers, the peasants, the women, the youth, the revolutionary intellectuals and progressive church people, on behalf of the whole struggling population of South Africa, we bring warm fraternal greetings to this Fourth Congress of the FRELIMO Party.
To you, Comrade President, outstanding son of our southern African soil, dedicated freedom fighter, resolute defender of the Mozambican revolution, and steadfast companion of all throughout the world who engage in just struggles, to the comrade members of the Central Committee, and to all the delegates gathered here, go our heartfelt wishes for the success of your Congress. Your reports, debates and conclusions, dealing with five years of rich turbulent history, will have repercussions going far beyond your country. The heroic people of Mozambique, under the leadership of their vanguard party, FRELIMO, together with their brother people in Angola under the leadership of the MPLA, have struck out in new directions and accumulated an invaluable storehouse of experience which is of deep interest to all those involved in the task of revolutionary transformation.
We can assure you that the proceedings of this Congress will be analysed with special attention by our whole movement. You have had your difficulties, but also your triumphs in tackling the twin scourges of our continent, namely under-development and neocolonialism; in a creative manner you have embarked upon building a single nation, with a strong common patriotism and a vigorous cultural personality, out of a population formerly divided by racism, regionalism and tribalism; you have built up your Party, created new organs of people's power, and laid the foundations of a planned economy; right on the doorstep of the world's most vicious system of exploitation, you are creating a new kind of society free of all forms of exploitation of man by man.
The Unity of Our Peoples
We also came to affirm our solidarity, to be at your side during these historic moments. Relations between our two peoples are as ancient and as deeply rooted as is our presence in this part of Africa. It is no simple physical proximity that unites us; we know that neighbours can be united in oppressing and exploiting others. But what unites us is the geography of shared goals. How many Mozambican workers have not been entombed side by side with South African workers deep in the gold mines of our country, or had their lungs eaten away by dust, so that a handful of exploiters could live in splendour? How many of our finest combatants have not shared danger as they marched off to their different fronts of a single struggle to liberate our continent? And how many dreams were not shared by Eduardo Mondlane with members of the ANC Youth League when he studied in our country - dreams whose materialisation forms the subject matter of this Congress?
Anti-Imperialist Forces Stand Firm
Comrades, the Fourth Congress of FRELIMO Party takes place at a time when international imperialism is mounting a global political and military offensive threatening world peace and security, with Central America, the Middle East and southern Africa itself as the focal point of its attack. But the anti-imperialist and progressive forces are standing firm in their defence of peace, and are resolutely advancing towards a new world order. The socialist and other peace-loving peoples of the world are a bulwark against international reaction, a military force for progressive change. The Non-Aligned Movement has gained new strength; the Organisation of African Unity has recovered from a state of temporary impotence, and in Africa, the people are in unison declaring, "A Luta Continua!"
In the Middle East, the greatest single issue is the struggle to assert the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people under the tried and tested leadership of the heroic PLO. The Nazi-style massacres of Sabra and Chatilla, conceived and presided over by the Zionists, will inevitably, like the massacres of Nhazonia, Chimoio and Tembe, be rewarded with victory for the cause of justice.
The reactionary forces in Latin America - in El Salvador, Guatemala and elsewhere - receive the same sort of United States Administration support. United States-trained Somozistas, relics of one of the most bloody dictatorships of recent times, are being pushed into Nicaragua, while counter-revolutionary invasion is also being threatened against the courageous people of Grenada. Cuba, beacon of liberty, is under constant siege.
In East Asia the story is the same: the people of West Timor, under the leadership of FRETILIN, are engaged in a courageous and bitter struggle for the liberation of their country.
In southern Africa, the effective role of the United States Administration has been to inspire and encourage the Pretoria regime to resort to more violent repression in South Africa and commit new and unprecedented acts of aggression and destruction in neighbouring States, and has blocked the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 435.
Pretoria's Record of Barbarism
The catalogue of racist Pretoria's crimes against the people of southern Africa is a grisly record of invasions, assassinations, massacres, destruction of the economic infrastructure of countries, attempted coups d'etat and general destabilisation. It is also a record of barbarism.
The children of tomorrow, living in freedom and peace - black, brown and white together - will learn with shocked disbelief that the apartheid regime, claiming to have the largest army in Africa, decided in 1982 to invade, and subsequently subject to economic torture, not Nigeria, but a small country, a small, peace-loving and singularly courageous nation - Lesotho, which, completely surrounded by South African territory, is at a greater geopolitical and economic disadvantage than any other opponent of apartheid domination in the world. It is this natural weakness which brave and militarily mighty Pretoria is delighted to exploit. How incredible!
It is the challenging task of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe and the masses of our people, by the intensity of the struggle within South Africa, to compel withdrawal of the fascist occupying army from the People's Republic of Angola, from Namibia and from its campaigns of murder, terrorism and destruction elsewhere in southern Africa. But equally the international community, not least the peoples of Africa, should spare no effort to ensure that every single racist soldier has been driven out of the sovereign State of Angola and out of Namibia, particularly by providing massive material assistance for SWAPO's liberation war, and that the Pretoria regime is deterred from continuing in its crimes against African independent States.
In the Indian Ocean, we see Pretoria is deeply enmeshed in conspiracies against the Seychelles, in pursuance of the regime's expansionist and aggressive designs against Africa, and in aid of imperialism's global strategy for war. The ANC adds its voice to those of Mozambique and other littoral States in demanding that the Indian Ocean be declared a zone of peace - free of foreign military and naval bases, nuclear arms and other instruments of war that endanger peace and security.
Exploitable Hinterland
Comrades, when imperialism held unquestioned sway over southern Africa, it constructed within our region a subsystem of exploitation, with its centre in racist-ruled South Africa. Within this subsystem Mozambique, Angola, Lesotho and other countries were assigned a special place as an exploitable hinterland from which the centre could draw human and material resources while not obliged to give anything in return. The legacy of under-development against which the Mozambican people have been mobilised, resulted from a grand design imposed upon the whole region by our common enemy. Mozambique's struggle to conquer under-development has thus opened up a vital new front of struggle, with a significance going well beyond the borders of this country. All the peoples of southern Africa, united in our common effort to create a new regional order based on relations of equality amongst nations and mutual cooperation for mutual benefit, form part of the worldwide struggle by the peoples of the developing countries to shape a new international order, free of the restrictive and exploitative practices of imperialism.
The States of southern Africa have taken a number of positive steps to pool their strength to resist the pressures emanating from the racists. We have recently seen the birth of a dynamic new association, SADCC, whose express purpose is to break out of the constraints imposed by dependence on the racist economy. The ANC and all the democratic forces in South Africa look forward to the day when our country, liberated at last from apartheid-colonialism, will join SADCC, as an equal among equals, cooperating for mutual advantage. We are confident that the sound beginning already made lays the basis for broader areas of cooperation and mutual assistance.
The Vision of Peace
Comrades, one of the many visions which unite all our peoples is the vision of peace; peace so that we can grow food, peace so that we can study, peace so that we can build hospitals and schools instead of spending our resources on weapons of destruction and war. And yet the daily experience of our whole region is one of violence, of continuing episodes of the unceasing war that we have lived with ever since imperialism sent its first soldiers to our soil. Our land was taken from us by war, our independence was destroyed by war, and when we peacefully asserted our claims to the most elementary rights, we were gunned down with the instruments of war. Now, when our peoples have answered the brutality of the racist and colonial regime with spear in hand, when the goals we seek are supported by the whole organised international community, we are attacked as obstacles to what is called a peaceful settlement of the South African problem. There is only one source of war in our region, and that is the racist and fascist regime. Apartheid is synonymous with war; it makes war on the people of our country; it shoots down children in the streets, it murders trade unionists and others in prison, and wages undeclared war against African independent States.
Pretoria Attacks to Destroy Freedom
As we have repeatedly stated, the Matola and Maseru massacres had nothing to do with the existence of military bases in either Mozambique or Lesotho, for there are none. The regime's practice of displaying weapons taken from its own stores but presented to the press as captured in mythical ANC bases is patently and notoriously cheap. And Ruth First was a social scientist of international repute - not an ANC military base! Neither were the victims of racist assassination in Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Lesotho.
But these and others, are countries in which the people breathe the air of freedom, in which they are judged by their work, their integrity as human beings, their courage and patriotism, and not by the colour of their skin. It is for this reason that the Pretoria racists have placed them under siege, that they have recruited, trained, equipped, financed, transported and commanded bandits to wreak destruction, to kill, to mutilate, to destroy food and shoot up buses and trains. The bases from which these countries are attacked are to be found in Northern Natal, the Orange Free State, the Eastern Cape and the Eastern and Northern Transvaal. It is in these bases that officers of the racist South African army train their murder battalions, it is from these bases that operations against all the Frontline States are directed, that supplies are sent, radio communications maintained and military instructions given. The bandits emanating from these bases are nothing more than an extension of the racist South African army, bribed with the promise of one day being the gauleiters of conquered territories. Their hope is to crush the Mozambican revolution, to set back the gains of independence and to turn this country into a bantustan. Even the briefest acquaintance with the ongoing struggle here shows that, as FRELIMO has so clearly pointed out, the only choice facing the Mozambican people is between defending the revolution and becoming a bantustan, between building a new society based on revolutionary principles or going back to being a backyard brothel for the delight of the racists.
Let us Reveal a Secret
We are going to reveal a secret that is no secret at all, we are going to reveal where our military bases really are. Gentlemen of the press may take note: our bases are in a country not far from here, where members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, military wing of our organisation, and spearhead of the struggle against apartheid can be found. Our bases are in South Africa itself, our bases are among the people of our country, our bases are everywhere, in the cities, in the mountains, near the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station in the Cape, a thousand miles from any border, near the SASOL petrol tanks in the heart of the country, and, yes, right in Pretoria itself, close to the Voortrekkerhoogte military headquarters, which we have successfully shelled. The regime cannot find these bases. Therefore it invents mythical bases in neighbouring territories. For, it is easier to massacre refugees in their beds or to send bandits to murder teachers and health workers in Juham than it is to stop the revolutionary process inside South Africa itself.
This is why we have war in southern Africa, and why we will never have peace in our zone as long as apartheid exists. And this is the greatest pledge we can make to the people of Mozambique, as represented here at this Congress: we will spare no effort to increase our blows against the apartheid system, to unite the broadest sections of the South African people in concerted action against it, and to destroy once and for all the most direct and pressing source of oppression and war in our zone.
Our Future in South Africa
The defeat of Portuguese colonialism by the people of Mozambique under the leadership of FRELIMO gave a great impetus to our own struggle in South Africa. The victory ushered in an unprecedented growth of mass action by all classes and strata of the oppressed people of South Africa, and witnessed the soaring prestige and influence of the ANC as it led the oppressed and exploited people in the struggle to destroy the system of racist exploitation and tyranny.
We in the ANC and the revolutionary alliance which we head, have never considered freedom to be the substitution of black for white faces in the corridors of power, while leaving unchanged the exploitative economic infrastructure from which racism receives its sustenance. We have always understood that the uprooting of the oppressive system must necessarily entail the seizure of the key centres of economic power - as stipulated in our Freedom Charter - and their transference to the common ownership of the people. The radical restructuring of the economy will also require dismantling the white minority's monopoly over the best agricultural land, and its redistribution among those who work it.
We envisage a totally new State system in which the army, the police force and the judiciary serve the interests of the people as a whole and not those of an exploitative minority.
Finally, we conceive of our country as a single, united, democratic and nonracial State, belonging to all who live in it, in which all shall enjoy equal rights, and in which sovereignty will come from the people as a whole, and not from a collection of bantustans and racial and tribal groups organised to perpetuate minority power.
We in the ANC already live according to the principles we espouse. The embryo of the new nation is already maturing in our ranks, in the underground struggle, in the prisons, in our cultural activities. It is a nation forming itself on a large scale, pushed ahead by the struggle of the masses of our country. The objective conditions of the new nation have existed ever since the creation of a single and highly integrated economic system. The subjective conditions are being achieved by common sacrifice in a common struggle.
The ANC and the People's Struggle
Combining illegal and legal methods of struggle, the ANC has been able to draw into mass action millions of oppressed people of South Africa. Defying harassment, imprisonment and other acts of intimidation, our workers have organised themselves into militant, independent and democratic unions - a powerful and growing detachment of the national liberation struggle - struggling for full trade union and democratic rights.
At the same time the intensification of our armed struggle has led to an important qualitative development in our struggle for national liberation and social justice. The heroic actions of our combatants inside our country have heightened the mass upsurge that has become a permanent feature of our struggle. Despite being banned for over twenty years, the ANC has been able to impose its own legality in the country. The Freedom Charter has become the rallying point for all democratic forces in South Africa.
The ANC reaffirms its solidarity with the valiant struggle of the Palestinian people, led by the PLO, the struggles of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, fighting to restore democracy and defend the revolutionary gains already registered in their continent. We salute also the peoples of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and East Timor, who are waging courageous struggles to liberate their countries.
While recognising and reaffirming that the primary responsibility for the liberation of South Africa rests with the ANC and the people of South Africa, we nonetheless wish, at this Fourth Congress - itself a product of the victorious struggle of FRELIMO and the Mozambican people - to acknowledge with deep gratitude the internationalist support, and encouragement our liberation struggle enjoys from the countries lying within striking distance of the fascist regime's aggressive army, from the rest of Africa, and from our allies and committed friends across the seas, so many of them represented at this most historic event.
This support has not been given in vain. The ANC wishes today to assure its reliable ally and comrade-in-arms, the FRELIMO Party, and to pledge to all our supporters, that as June 26th follows June 25th, so will South Africa, in the fullness of time, be transformed, like the People's Republic of Mozambique, into a liberated zone of humanity.
Long live the heroic Mozambican people, who never flinched in the face of attacks by the colonial fascists who occupied their country!
Long live the Mozambican people, who are showing the same steadfastness and wisdom in the face of attacks by the racist regime of Pretoria!
Long live the unity of the thirty-five million people of South Africa and Mozambique!
Long live the Fourth Congress of the Party FRELIMO!
A Luta Continua!
A Victoria e Certa!