Watvile, Benoni, Sunday 26 October 2008
Dali Tambo and the entire Tambo family, Comrades, Friends and Citizens of the World, we stand here before you to raise the banner to a couple that could have chosen to live in the bosom of the riches of any city in the world, but instead chose to identify themselves with the lowest of the low and the poorest of the poor. President Oliver Reginald Tambo and Comrade Mama Adelaide Tambo were a humble couple, yet towered like no other and raised the flag of our liberation amongst all the nations of the world.
We stand here today on these hallowed grounds to declare, first and foremost, that the tombstone that we unveil here today belongs to the one of the greatest pair of leadership that has led our organization, the African National Congress. As they made their vows that until death do them part, they made the same vows when they voluntarily joined the ANC, to part with the ANC only upon death, despite the challenges that they faced as they carried the struggle of our people on their shoulders through the longest span of ANC Presidency by any of our leaders.
For this we remain indebted and inspired by their selfless struggle, because through their lives, we came to learn the practical meaning of the solemn pledge we take when joining the ANC, that we do so voluntarily and not for material gain! Despite the political lull from time to time, in the intervening years of the epic battles against the apartheid regime, President Oliver Tambo and Mama Adelaide Tambo never gave up on the hope that one day the slogan "freedom in our lifetime" will become a reality.
The biblical Moses stood on top of the mountain and saw what he called the promised land. Martin Luther King Jr's euphemism of standing on the mountain top, where he declared that he could see the promised land and that he would not get there himself, but that we as a people shall get there, also mirrored the passing on of President OR Tambo, who passed on in 1993 on the steps of our freedom in 1994.
Comrades, Friends and Citizens of the World, we stand on these grounds to proclaim for all the world to know, that these grounds of Wattville in Benoni, have the unique honour of interning within them the remains of a couple that symbolized all the values and traditions that have kept our movement alive and well during our hardest and most trying times.
Here in these very sacred grounds, lie eternally the bodies of two stalwarts, who selflessly glued us together in exile, and for but a short time, inside our country, from all of our walks of life as cadres of the African National Congress - a diversity of people and classes who are captured eloquently by Comrade Pallo Jordan, in his Foreword to "Oliver Tambo Remembered" when he says:
"There were people who were drawn to the ANC because freedom from apartheid offered them the opportunity to 'realise their dreams on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange'. Yet others joined and supported it because freedom would open up the chance to rise to the heights to which their talents could take them. Others sought the restoration of the right to the land that had been seized or from which they had been driven by racist laws. Others hoped to restore the dignity and grace of African culture. The movement counted amongst its supporters members of the middle class, the working class, the rural working poor, aspirant capitalists and entrepreneurs, as well as militant socialists and communists."
We speak here today of the leaders that were sent to galvanize international support for our movement when it was imminent that it was under seige, as it was to be banned. Throughout the years of the ANC's banning, the Tambo's mobilization acumen led to our movement having more diplomatic representation internationally than the system that had banned it - the apartheid system. It is to this mobilization of international support that a liberated South Africa can claim to be friends of all of the world, and enemies of none.
As the African National Congress, we stand with pride yet with humility, at honoring through this unveiling of the tombstone of stalwarts, who selflessly turned rivulets of sympathizers into oceans of support for our struggle, who transformed hamlets of ignorance about the plight of our people, to suburbs of die-hard contributors, and who changed the course of simple trips of anti-apartheid gatherings to journeys of antiapartheid rallies all over the world. President OR Tambo became the embodiment of the triumph of the human spirit against the odds of savagery and race inspired greed and violence.
We speak today of a couple that never wanted to use a podium for selfish ends and shied away from the grandeur of accolades, because they simply considered themselves the servants of the people. However great or small, or well and poorly attended, every stage to them was an opportunity to talk about the needs of all our people, Black and White, to assume their rightful place in the families of nations as equal and dignified people.
We salute Mama Tambo, who could have been content with being a celebrated wife of a hero of the people's struggle, but who, in her own right picked up the spear and fought the struggle as a Mother and a Woman alongside her husband, establishing in the wake of her illustrious struggle the Pan African Women's Organisation, and got academic assistance for our young comrades both internally and in exile through the International Defence and Aid Fund.
We speak of an exemplary woman leader, who, as a young woman, could have chosen not to give her hand in marriage to a man who was facing a Treason Trial, whose outcome could have been worse, and who could, by a single stroke of the Apartheid Justice System have been rendered a widow.
We speak of an exemplary leader, who could not be intimidated against lending her hand in marriage to President Oliver Tambo, even when the bride, the groom and their best man, were thrown into a police van on the day of their wedding, for transgressing pass laws. It was only three years later that all the 156 leaders were found Not Guilty. But that in itself did not bring a joy that a normal family would live as the call of exile came at the instruction of the movement.
Our movement again wishes to reiterate that no township is too small to produce a leader, as the Top Location in Vereeniging did when it produced for the movement one of its illustrious women leaders in the name of Mama Tambo.
No mountain is so high as to hide a leader whose time had come, as the Ingeli Mountain in Mbizana Pondoland, failed to hide President O.R. Tambo from a South Africa and the world, that were waiting for his brilliant and decisive leadership.
Indeed, as struggle songs were composed, and are still being composed, and slogans were chanted, and are still being chanted, about the Tambos across the length and breadth of our own country, the notion of a remote place as unworthy of mention in the records of a people's struggles is rendered null and void.
After serving our movement as the longest serving President in our movement's history, from 1967 to 1990, Comrade Oliver Tambo was so unconcerned about his own health that he soldiered on regardless of the consequences of a pacemaker that had been inserted in his body.
When the long queues of our people zigzagged like a proverbial snake into the many voting stations of our country on 27 April 1994, our people were inspired by the examples of struggle left by President OR Tambo and they knew they owed this to the struggles and the selfless dedication of President O.R. Tambo and Mama Tambo, even though President Tambo could not live long enough to vote in the democracy that he had fought so gallantly and selflessly to achieve.
As we meticulously plan to return by an overwhelming majority our movement back into the Fourth Parliament in the elections next year, it is both correct and appropriate that we call on the spirits of President O.R. Tambo and Mama Tambo, to cast an approving eye on those queues that will snake up again to the various voting stations to complete the revolutionary struggle that death robbed them from seeing to completion. As these stalwarts of our struggle lie here, they depend on us still alive to further the struggle that would ensure the fulfillment of the vision of the Freedom Charter in its entirety.
It was on this very same grave-site, that MaTambo earnestly cautioned us, in the wake of the leadership challenges facing our movement, that let it not be said that the struggle failed with us! Let it not be said that the ANC died at our hands! Your wisdom that sought no gain, popularity or any selfish ends, will continue to inspire us to defend the integrity of the ANC, its traditions, culture, policies and history! We declare to you Mama Tambo, that we will not let the ANC of OR Tambo, John Langalibalele Dube, Chief Albert Luthuli and many other stalwarts of our movement, to die in our hands!
As we will turn our backs on this grave and go our separate ways, we will not be turning our memory against President Tambo and Mama Tambo's noble and selfless deeds, for which we shall forever be indebted. Here we laid down a tombstone at the site of your mortal remains, President Tambo and Mama Tambo, believing this shall forever be a reminder throughout the passing of time of the great struggle of our people which you led to enable our freedom and democracy. We will continue to visit this site from time to time, because by so doing, we will be putting into practice the adage with which we swear, that the spirits of President Tambo and Mama Tambo will forever live in us! When faced with whatever adversity, in our movement, in our country, in our continent and in our world at large, that you never gave up on our struggle and our people, will always be our source of inspiration to soldier on!
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF COMRADE O.R. TAMBO LONG LIVE!
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF MAMA ADELAIDE TAMBO LONG LIVE!
AMANDLA!
I thank You.