South African History Online

14 December 1990

Comrade President,
Comrades, members of the National Executive Committee
of the ANC,
Comrades leaders of the South African Communist Party, COSATU and
the UDF,
Your Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Distinguished
guests,
Comrades and compatriots.

It is a signal honour for me to be addressing you on the occasion of the
first ANC conference inside the borders of South Africa after 31 years. I am
particularly moved because this conference also marks a reunion on our home
ground with you Comrade President, a distinguished leader of our people and a
close comrade in arms with whom I have shared many a historic trench.

Tribute to President Tambo

I want to begin my remarks today with a personal tribute to the brilliant
contribution you have personally made to the arrival of this day; a day on which
the ANC once again firmly plants its standard on the soil of our country as one
of the principal actors in determining the future of South Africa.

Comrade Oliver Reginald Tambo, President of the ANC for the past 23 years,
deserves a special place in the annals of our struggle for liberation both
because of the longevity of his service in the ranks of the ANC and for his
outstanding stewardship during the most difficult and trying phase.

In 1967, when our late President, Comrade Albert Luthuli passed away, our
movement was in grave difficulties. The underground headquarters of our movement
had been uncovered four years earlier in Rivonia. The leaders of that
underground were spending their fourth year in prison after their arrest. The
second layer of the underground leadership had been tracked down and imprisoned
in 1965. Hundreds of our movement's activists had been rounded up, subjected to
harrowing tortures before being condemned to lengthy terms of imprisonment.

Those were indeed hard times for any person to assume the reins of the
presidency of the AN0 The road ahead looked dark and daunting. What
communication there was between the movement abroad and the home-base was
slender and irregular.

You took up the challenge boldly and creatively. From that winter of 1967,
under your guidance and unwavering leadership, the ANC rebuilt its strength.
From the crippling reverses our movement had sustained in the early 1960s you
laboured to rekindle the fighting spirit of our people. Today our people are
ready as never before to use their organised strength to destroy apartheid,
thanks to you and the team of men and women you led.

The reconstruction of the weakened organisational capacity of the ANC and its
underground from the few scattered units that existed in 1967 rates as no less a
feat. The countless unsung heroes and heroines who painstakingly undertook this
task will one day have the opportunity to tell their story. Many others, equally
courageous and unmindful of the risks to themselves, made their contribution but
have not survived to tell the tale. Some fell in the field of battle facing the
enemy; others perished at the hands of their torturers and tormentors in the
regime's security police. Building on these many years of bitter and extremely
costly experience, it was under your personal supervision that we carried out
the formidable task of slowly re-assembling our internal organisation, the most
recent example being "Operation Vulindlela", which despite the arrest of its
leading personnel, will always rank high among our many efforts to build an
effective and secure underground of the ANC.

1967, the year in which you took the helm also marked the baptism in fire of
the combatants of our people's army, Umkhonto we Sizwe. Those battles are in the
best tradition of the ANC, which since its birth has fought the enemy, in deeds
and not in mere words. It is a matter of pride that many of the commanders and
rank and file fighters who served in that campaign are still in harness and are
among the seasoned MK veterans who trained and inspired later generations of
combatants. The building, maintenance and constant improvement of the ANC's
military capacity, for three decades has been a matter close to your heart.
Under you, as the Commander-in-Chief of MK, the enemy was repeatedly challenged
in combat. During 1967, in battles along a front that stretched from the Wankie
Came Reserve in the west, to Sipolilo in the east, the combatants of the Luthuli
detachment proved themselves skilled and determined fighters. In an escalating
offensive which began in 1976, inside our country, the armed actions conducted
by our fighters played a key role in providing the inspiration for the political
upsurge which developed with increasing intensity during the decade of the
1980s.

It is thanks also to these qualities of leadership, your statesmanship and
your wisdom that you became universally recognised as the most outstanding
spokesman of the struggling people of our country, highly respected by friend
and opponent alike. In the councils of the OAU, the Frontline States, the UNO,
the ILO, the Non-Aligned Movement and other international bodies where we sought
to marshall, international solidarity, your thoughts and opinions were highly
valued and sought after. This external pressure played a vital role in deepening
the crisis of apartheid and forcing the regime to move towards dialogue.

In paying tribute to our Comrade President, I am addressing not only the
unrivalled qualities and achievements of the individual, Oliver Tambo, I am
addressing also the man as the crystalisation and personification of what the
ANC is and became under his leadership. When we assess the processes that
brought about the watershed events of February 1990, we should never underrate
the great importance of the individual personality in determining the pace at
which matters moved to that turning point.

I call upon you all Comrades, to please join me in a salute to this great son
of our people, Comrade Oliver Tambo, President of the ANC!

Viva Comrade President Tambo, Viva!
Viva Comrade President Tambo, Viva!

None of these achievements would have been possible had our President not had
at his side a team of very able and talented colleagues and lieutenants. It was
this remarkable group of men and women, which contained comrades of the calibre
of J.B. Marks, Yusuf Dadoo, Florence Mophosho, Moses Kotane and Duma Nokwe all
of whom are no longer with us - that held together our movement during those
difficult times and kept the final goal in clear focus despite the odds. Our
movement owes a great debt of gratitude to these departed comrades and also to
the other serving members of the National Executive.

Undaunted by the burdens it imposed and the deprivations it visited upon
their peoples, the newly independent states of Africa gave their unstinting
support to our struggle for all those years. The price the Pretoria regime
exacted for this solidarity can be counted in the infrastructure destroyed and
devastated in punitive cross-border raids; in the economic and trade sanctions
South Africa imposed against the countries who demonstrated their commitment to
the destruction of colonialism by supporting our struggle; and in the thousands
of their citizens killed and maimed by both the SADF and its surrogates
operating in these countries. Thirty years in the life of a young nation is a
long time. Much as the people of South Africa bled for freedom, the Frontline
States bled in equal measure so that we might meet in this manner today. Words
cannot express our profound appreciation for the solidarity, succour and support
we received and continue to receive from the sister nations of Africa.

February 1990 - A Political Watershed

Comrade President,

February 1990 marked a political watershed in the history of our country and
our struggle. Beginning with his opening of parliament, the leader of the
National Party, the architects of apartheid who had misgoverned and abused the
people of South Africa for 42 years, was compelled to admit failure. Through
decades of hard-fought struggle we had forced that party whose political
platform was outright racism, to face the truth that its policies had led our
country into a profound crisis for which they had no prescription.

Viewed strategically, the events of February constitute a defeat for the
policies of apartheid, national oppression and colonialism. From that moment on,
the forces of race domination, as represented by the National Party and all the
political formations to its right, have been placed on the defensive by the
advances registered by the forces of national liberation and democracy. While
recognising these momentous changes wrought by the struggle, we should not
forget that the February events, though of decisive importance, do not in
themselves imply that apartheid has surrendered. Indeed many of the government's
actions since February, are designed to limit the damage inflicted on its
policies. Many more battles still lie ahead of us before we can say that the
seal of permanence has been placed on the processes of ending race domination.

Removing Obstacles to Negotiations

After consultations, the ANC accepted the need to enter into discussions with
the National Party government with a view to insisting on the removal of the
obstacles to a negotiated end to apartheid. We went to Groote Schuur in May 1990
to set in motion procedures which both sides had come to accept as necessary.
From that summit there arose joint government-ANC working groups, charged with
translating various elements of the Groote Schuur Minute into legislative
measures. Even before the respective working groups had completed their tasks,
the ANC sought and secured the August 6th Summit in order to accelerate the
pace. As a token of our commitment to exploring every opportunity of achieving a
peaceful transition to democracy, the ANC entered that August Summit ready to
declare a suspension of all armed action.

The decision to suspend armed action before all the obstacles to negotiations
had been removed was not taken lightly by the ANC. We resolved to pursue this
path in order to exploit all reasonable possibilities of keeping the peace
process on course.

The Pretoria Minute, the outcome of the second summit, includes a series of
solemn undertakings made by the government, to ensure that by April 1991 all
political prisoners and detainees are freed; all exiles are in a position to
return home and that the host of repressive laws on the South African statute
books are repealed. The processes leading up to this final date were to commence
as from September 1st.

Related to the ANC's suspension of armed activity, the Pretoria Minute also
includes provision for a working group to define the modalities of its
execution.

Since the signing of the Pretoria Minute, we have come to recognise that our
own commitment to see the process move along as swiftly as possible, is not yet
matched by that of the government. It is becoming increasingly clear that, in
spite of our initiative, the government is dragging its feet in carrying out its
undertakings to clear away the obstacles in the path to real negotiations.

Plague of Violence

We have seen a plague of violence descend upon the PWV region and spread like
wildfire in all directions so that no part of our country is now safe from this
scourge. We cannot count it as coincidence that the week during which this wave
of violence began, was scheduled for the launching of a number of ANC branches
in the affected townships. It is necessary for us to understand and correctly
characterise this plague so that we may grasp the motives behind it.
Conventional wisdom, served up in our media everyday, holds that the violence is
the outcome of political rivalry among the organisations of the oppressed. While
such rivalry accounts for some of the violence, it is our firm conviction, based
on a study of the facts and a close monitoring of the events, that such rivalry
accounts for a tiny fraction of the carnage. The massacres of commuters on the
trains in Johannesburg; the raids on the hostels in Sebokeng; the massacres in
the East and the West Rand and the most recent spate of killings in Bekkersdal,
Zonk'izizwe, Phola Park and other squatter settlements are neither the outcome
of political rivalry nor the expression of political intolerance among the
oppressed.

This endemic violence is a continuation of the bloodletting that has already
decimated our people in Natal for the past four years. These are all examples of
in orchestrated campaign of counter-revolutionary violence which has a
predetermined objective. As it has unfolded and taken hold over the past three
months, it is evident that it is targeted at the ANC. It is our members,
including Youth Leaguers, whose homes are systematically attacked. It is our
supporters who are systematically being singled out for murder. Even when, as it
often does, assume an indiscriminate character, the mayhem is conducted with the
ANC in its sights. Its clear purpose is to destroy our capacity to provide
leadership to our people in struggle. The authors of this carnage count on the
outcome being a loss of mass confidence in the ANC and its leadership. They hope
by these means to create a political vacuum into which their political allies
could be manoeuvred.

Let there be no mistake! We have through our struggle stripped the apartheid
state and its repressive organs of their former capacity to repress the mass
movement by detentions, jailings and executions. The number of our supporters is
such that it has rendered these conventional methods ineffective. In response,
elements within the apartheid power bloc, who are opposed to the peace process,
are resorting to acts of widespread terror and carnage against the people. These
killings have a dual aim: To weaken the ANC and to discredit the concept of
disciplined mass action.

Needless to say, anarchy and a scenario of random murders accompanied by
retaliatory killings will not be conducive to any sort of negotiations. Its aim
is to force those at the receiving end of the violence, to become more amenable
to authoritarian rule.

Pretoria's Double Agenda

What is being played out is the double agenda pursued by elements within the
South African government. While De Klerk and his colleagues have had to accept
and go along with the ANC's initiative for a peaceful solution, there is a
simultaneous attempt taking place whose purpose is to destabilise, undermine
and, if possible, crush the ANC and its allies. It is disturbing that the most
senior ministers of government, including participants in the Groote Schuur and
Pretoria summits, have misrepresented both the content of those meetings and the
minutes arising from them.

At neither the Groote Schuur nor the more recent Pretoria Summit did our
delegation agree to the circumscription or proscription of the political
activities of the people. Indeed, we rejected out of hand all government
suggestions that we make such an undertaking. The stated purpose of both
meetings was to explore the means of removing the obstacles to negotiations.
These obstacles were identified as the State of Emergency (then still in force),
the continued incarceration of political prisoners; detention without trial, the
continued exile of thousands of patriots and the presence of repressive laws on
the law books of this country.

The distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies that have been spread
are designed to create the impression that the ANC surrendered the peoples'
right to engage in normal political activity. The purpose of these lies is to
win moral support for attempts to illegalise and curtail perfectly acceptable
political practices.

The democratic alliance, comprising the core of the forces of national
liberation as represented by the ANC, the SACP and COSATU, has also been
viciously attacked by both government spokesmen and a section of the mass media.
Those who imagine that they will cause a rift among us have understood neither
the character of this alliance nor its historic role in our struggle for
freedom. The ANC, like its allies, remains fully committed to the preservation
and the strengthening of our alliance and no amount of pressure will shake our
resolve.

The People's Right to Struggle

We have repeatedly made it plain that in the eyes of the 83% of the South
African population who were born Black, this government and its predecessors
since Union, based on the will of a minority, have no moral claim on authority.
That being the case, it is our absolute and inalienable right to employ every
legitimate device to ensure that they transfer power to the people as speedily
as possible. The ANC shall under no circumstances compromise this universally
recognised right of our people.

More insidious are the attempts to extend the meaning of the ANC's
undertakings regarding the suspension of armed actions so as to cast us in the
role of a surrendering belligerent. Ceasefires, whether bilateral or unilateral,
are by their nature temporary measures. There is a recognised right, in
international law, of belligerents to maintain their forces in combat readiness
and to replace any wastage in personnel and material. To enhance the prospects
of peace, we voluntarily gave up our right to re-equip and resupply our forces
inside South Africa. The time is long overdue that the government gave some
recognition to these concessions we have made instead of reading them as signs
of weakness to be exploited for its short-term advantage.

It must be understood too that the ANC's suspension of the armed struggle was
conditional.. We expected and continue to expect the government to deliver on
its undertakings. We will, therefore, constantly test the validity of that
option against the government' s actions.

The government has not done enough

The outcome of the government's attitude is that after seven months of
discussions, two summits and a number of smaller meetings, not enough has been
achieved by way of practical results. With the exception of the State of
Emergency, many of the obstacles we set out to remove in May remain in place and
the government seems determined to postpone their removal as long as possible.

This fact, combined with the carnage that has been unleashed, poses grave
dangers for the peace process and the future stability of our country. We sound
these warnings not to cause alarm, but rather to stress that, in the eyes of our
people, many of the government's actions appear to have no regard for the future
of South Africa. We shall hold the government fully accountable for any
breakdown in the peace process.

In the course of this year alone, some 3,000 people have lost their lives as
a result of the violence in which the governments own forces are deeply
implicated. In addition, 300 people have been killed directly by the
government's security services. Let us all rise in silent tribute to the
thousands of our people who have perished. (All rise and observe a moment's
silence).

We cannot accept the government's threadbare alibi for not apprehending and
prosecuting the criminals responsible for these deaths. It is evident that a
total disregard for the lives of Black people, which is of the essence of
apartheid, continues to hold sway at the highest reaches of the government.

The only response the government has thus far been able to muster against
these outbreaks of violence are cynical pleas of impotence and more repression.
The permissiveness with which it reacts to the provocative behaviour and
pronouncements of the White Ultra-right paramilitary formations also betrays a
continued commitment to racist double standards. The rallying call of the day,
to all our members wherever they are deployed is: remain at your posts!

Continuing pressure from the international community and the weight of mass
mobilisation at home remain key factors in compelling the government to honour
the agreements reached. These must be maintained!

The ANC once again and
unequivocally, commits itself to exploring every avenue to a negotiated solution
to our country's problems. We shall also endeavour to bring an end to the
carnage that has brought such misery to our people and we reiterate our
willingness to enter into discussions with any party or group that shares that
objective. Platitudes about peace will not assist this process. All that is
required is a genuine commitment and the will to act on that commitment.

Rebuilding the Legal ANC

The ANC is emerging from the shadows of 30 years of underground existence and
is engaged in establishing itself once more as a legal political movement. The
problems relating to this transition are innumerable. We have been obliged to
reconstruct an entire organisation from the smallest local branch unit to the
national leadership structures during a period of very rapid change and high
expectations in our country. That the process has been uneven should not dismay
or alarm us. That it is fraught with new and unique problems was to be expected.
That we do not all see the problems in the same light was inevitable given the
differing strands of experience that have shaped our membership, from its
leading bodies to the branch level.

There are at least four clearly defined groups of comrades who bring
different strands of experience to our effort to revive the legal ANC. Firstly,
we have amongst us those who have been steeled by years of combat experience and
sacrifice in the ranks of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

These are comrades who have served the cause of liberation selflessly for
many decades. They bring to their tasks an iron-clad discipline and sense of
duty of incalculable value.

Secondly, there are those of us who shared the harsh experience of long terms
in jail. Prison is itself a tremendous education in the need for patience and
perseverance. It is above all a test of one's commitment. Those who passed
through that school have all acquired a firmness, tempered by a remarkable
resilience.

Thirdly, there are the comrades who have been shaped by the experience of
exile. They have worked for many years outside their home environment but have
managed to keep a finger on the popular pulse. A number of these comrades
reached political maturity in exile, contributing in various capacities to the
continuity and survival of our movement. Exile afforded them the opportunity to
acquire skills and a high level of political training which the movement has
harnessed to great advantage.

Lastly, there are the comrades whose experience derives from work in the mass
democratic formations. These comrades are probably the most attuned to the
popular mood whose chief role was to discover the legal political spaces that
could be utilised in an overall context of repression. We are filled with
admiration for the creative manner in which they responded to and fended off
this relentless state repression, including multiple States of Emergency,
detentions, assassinations and other forms of harassment. It is to them that we
owe our demonstrated ability for mass mobilization.

These four strands of experience have the potential of enriching our movement
greatly, provided we recognise the value of each and work towards weaving them
into a robust cord so that they are mutually reinforcing.

Spirit of Democracy

The gravest danger to the movement and its capacity to grow is posed by
complacency. If we are to translate the evident mass support we enjoy into a
mass membership we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. We should neither take
our membership for granted nor can we forget that we must at all times hold
ourselves accountable to the people. This requires that we build, at every level
of our movement, a firmly rooted democratic tradition and practice. This spirit
of democracy must extend also to the manner in which we relate to other
political formations working within our communities and to our people. Coercive
methods might appear to yield easy and quick results but in the long term will
prove destructive and counter-productive. The ANC must, at every stage, earn the
title of leader of our people by its sensitivity to their aspirations and by
timeously responding to their needs and demands. We will achieve this by
building the ANC as an instrument of the masses' struggle for liberation. The
ANC will flourish or fail to the extent that the exploited and the oppressed see
it as their movement, championing their rights and as the embodiment of their
will.

The transitional problems we are encountering have at times been obstacles in
the way of full consultation and accountability. It is essential, especially in
the run up to the negotiation process we are working towards, that we involve
the masses of our people at all stages and give a regular account of our work
through report back meetings and regular consultations. The attempts by the
government, parties representing vested interests and others to exclude the
masses from the negotiation process must be firmly rebuffed and resisted.

Mass involvement requires us to locate negotiations correctly as an aspect of
our multi-pronged strategy. We must strike the right balance between
negotiations, as one of the numerous terrains of our struggle, and the others,
especially mass mobilisation. This should not be read as implying that there
will not be moments when one or the other assumes a higher profile. That is
inevitable in any struggle provided we exercise the requisite vigilance that
will ensure that we always proceed from the recognition that these various
aspects are inseparable.

Patriotic Front

The ANC has already begun building a broad-based Patriotic Front to draw in
actual and potential allies in the struggle for freedom. We have invited every
political trend among the broad anti-apartheid forces to enter into a dialogue
with us for this precise purpose. Ironically, we find that some of those who
shout the loudest their commitment to a united front have shunned such contact
and consistently turn down our invitations. We cannot compel anyone to take up
our invitations but we shall keep the door open in the hope that wiser counsels
will prevail.

In pursuance of this broad front, we have entered into a continuing exchange
with the authorities in all the so-called homelands, including the nominally
independent. We have at the same time made it dear that the ANC will not serve
as an umbrella to shelter discredited homeland administrations from the wrath of
the people. We have noted with satisfaction that a number of these politicians
have definitively parted company with the racist policies embodied in the
Bantustan scheme. The challenge that faces all those who became entangled in the
structures of the apartheid system is to transform themselves into patriotic
leaders, who not only identify with the struggle for freedom, but are prepared
to make their individual contribution to it. There is a golden opportunity for
them all to become part of the future instead of being forever associated with
the past. Homeland leaders, acting individually or collectively, could begin by
dismembering the repressive regimes they inherited from Pretoria and firmly
establishing basic democratic rights in the territories that they administer.

A Patriotic Front for freedom should draw to its ranks all political
formations, parties, organisations and bodies that are committed to the
eradication of apartheid. Such unity, in our view, can best be forged in the
crucible of united struggle.

A durable front will not be built on the basis of pious resolutions, though
these must be part of the process. The ANC shall continue to strive towards such
a front in order to isolate the apartheid regime and all those who are defenders
of the old order.

When this century dawned it found South Africa in the grips of a terrible and
costly war, waged by Britain against the two Boer Republics to determine which
section of the White community shall dominate our country. The first decade of
the twentieth century witnessed the erection of the basic institutions of racial
domination and colonialism, which form the basis of apartheid. At the end of
that decade, the Boers composed their differences with British imperialism and
gave their compact palpable form in the shape of the Union of 1910,
institutionalising racial domination in the constitution they imposed on our
country.

The Threshold of Freedom

We have entered the final decade of the twentieth century, and South Africa
once again stands at a crossroads. We now stand at the threshold of freedom. It
is the solemn responsibility of the most oppressed and exploited to lead South
Africa out of the morass and degradation of apartheid into a new era of freedom
and democracy for all its people. We extend our arms in friendship to our White
compatriots and call upon them to embrace the cause of democracy in their
thousands, as the only reliable guarantor of their future. The bright promise of
a democratic South Africa demands that they shed their fears and step forward
boldly prepared to build a country we can all be proud to call our home.

The ANC, founded by our forebears in response to the Union, shall and will
play a central role in that process of self-emancipation. As we begin our
conference let us turn to our tasks with a seriousness of purpose suited to this
~ion. We are aware that there will be differences amongst us. That is as it
should be in any democratic discourse. Let us take up our tasks with a dear
resolve to arrive at a consensus that will bind us all and serve as the basis
for our programme of action.