Part 3
A resource-book for educators on
O R Tambo
[03 Tambo and Segal]
O R Tambo and Ronald Segal on their way to London in 1960
The 1960s
O R Tambo left the country in April, 1960, with Ronald Segal, and proceeded
from Bechuanaland, with the help of Frene Ginwala who was in Dar-es-Salaam, and
also with Indian diplomatic assistance, to London and then to the United
Nations in New York.
The ANC was now banned inside the country, and was to remain so for nearly 30
years, all of which time passed under the ANC Presidency of O R Tambo, at first
as Deputy President, and then, from 1967 following the death of Chief Albert
Luthuli, as Acting President. In 1985, at the Kabwe conference, he became
President-General.
Tambo's task was not only to hold the ANC together, but also to mobilise
international opposition to Apartheid. More than that, it was his overall task
to ensure that the ANC would return intact to South Africa, and achieve a
victory over the racism regime. All of these things came to pass.
The Tambos settled in Muswell Hill, North London, with their children Thembi
and Dali, in what remained their family home until 1990, although O R was often
away. Adelaide worked as a nurse, and in due course became a senior manager.
ANC efforts to work in a united front with the PAC failed, but other
developments in the 1960s laid down structures upon which the ANC was able to
rely all the way through to the 1990 unbanning and on to the democratic
breakthrough of 1994.
These structures were the launch of the people's army Umkhonto we Sizwe on 16
December 1961; the establishment of the ANC Chief Representative system in many
countries of the world, as an unprecedented liberation-movement diplomatic
corps, and a means of keeping the organization together; the growth of the
Anti-Apartheid Movement and the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern
Africa, in close co-operation with the ANC; and the beginning of educational
initiatives by the ANC.
All of these things grew and flourished under the careful husbandry of the
ANC's then Acting President, Oliver Reginald Tambo. Of course there were many
other leaders in the ANC, as well as in its allied organisations, the SACP and
SACTU, which had also established themselves in exile. There were strong
personalities and outstandingly gifted individuals, many of them famous up to
today, but they all respected the leadership of O R Tambo. He held them all
together.
[03a Tambo]
Conditions were often rough, and varied widely in the many different countries
that gave hospitality to the ANC comrades.
In 1969, the ANC held a consultative Conference in Morogoro, Tanzania, which
adopted the famous "Strategy and Tactics" document of the ANC. The outstanding
personality in that conference, the unifier, is always recognised as being
Oliver Tambo. With its "Strategy and Tactics" now understood and accepted by
the movement as a whole, the slogan "Victory is Certain" was confidently
adopted, as much as everyone knew that the struggle would be long.
There was no "lull" in the 1960s. On the contrary, it was in the 1960s that the
timely groundwork was done, under the leadership of O R Tambo, which determined
the shape and the extent of the victory that was achieved more than two decades
later. If that groundwork had not been done, the activity that grew inside the
country from the early 1970s onwards and through the 1980s would not have been
channelled and united in the way that it was, under our liberation movement,
the African National Congress. And without that unity in action, it would have
failed.
One of the organisations that came onto existence in the 1960s was Umkhonto We
Sizwe ("MK"). Other organisations that grew up during the time of O R Tambo's
leadership of the ANC in exile will be described in Parts 4 and 5, below.
Umkhonto We Sizwe ("MK")
[MK Symbol]
MK was launched on 16 December 1961. One of the founders was Nelson Mandela.
Another was Joe Slovo. From the beginning, MK accepted the political leadership
of the ANC. In 1963, most of MK's High Command of was arrested at the Rivonia
farmhouse North of Johannesburg. Most of them were convicted, including
Mandela, in the subsequent "Rivonia Trial".
With Tambo in charge of the ANC, MK was re-established in exile, and it
contributed in an indispensible way to the return of the ANC to the country,
long before the legalisation of the ANC in 1990 (See, e.g. "Cooking the Rice
Inside the Pot" by Jabulani Nobleman Nxumalo, a.k.a. "Comrade Mzala").
Oliver Tambo not only led the ANC after its banning and exile, but he brought
it home. Towards the homecoming of the ANC, Umkhonto We Sizwe was the most
important material factor. Oliver Tambo understood the importance of MK and
gave it his wholehearted support and leadership from its beginning, until his
death, nearly 32 years later.
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