By Norm Dixon
Just two weeks after the terrible murder of Chris Hani, the South African liberation movement has suffered another tragic loss with the death of long-time African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo.
For almost 50 years, Tambo stood at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid and played a crucial role in the growth and development of the movement. He was in the vanguard of a generation of young African leaders who emerged in the '40s to transform the ANC into a radical mass liberation movement. During 30 years in exile he built a powerful international movement in solidarity with the people of South Africa.
Oliver Reginald Tambo — "Comrade O.R.", as he was affectionately known by millions — was national chairperson of the ANC when he died of natural causes in Johannesburg on April 24 at the age of 75. He was one of the ANC's most respected and most loved leaders.
It was no coincidence that the ANC Youth League chose his birthday for its historic relaunch in 1991. ANCYL posters saluted umnumzana (the master) "for making us realise our role in the struggle ... Your unequalled role in the struggle is a source of inspiration to all the 'Young Lions'."
Tambo was born on October 27, 1917, in the rural town of Bizana in eastern Pondoland, Cape Province. He was educated in several mission schools in Bizana and then in Johannesburg. In 1941, he obtained a bachelor of science degree from Fort Hare University.
While studying for higher qualifications, he was drawn to the democratic movement. He led a class boycott in support of the demand for a democratically elected student representative council. Expelled, Tambo taught science and mathematics at a high school in Johannesburg and then studied law.
He was a founding member of the ANC Youth League in 1944 and its first national secretary.
The radical ANCYL activists, who included Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Robert Sobukwe and Anton Lembede, were unhappy with the ANC leadership's political direction. They argued that the ANC should be a campaigning movement mobilising people through mass actions involving civil disobedience, strikes and boycotts. The Youth league urged that more attention be paid to the mass of uneducated and unskilled black workers.
These positions were encapsulated in a document, the Program of Action.
Tambo helped draft this important document. The young activists fought for the ANCYL's policy throughout this period. In 1946, Tambo was elected to the ANC Transvaal executive and in 1948 he and Sisulu were elected to the ANC National Executive Committee. The Program of Action was adopted as ANC national policy in 1949.
In 1952, Tambo and Mandela set up a legal partnership which defended many against unjust apartheid laws without a thought of recompense. With Mandela, Tambo led the Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws, courting arrest by deliberately flouting apartheid laws.
Tambo became ANC secretary general after Walter Sisulu was found guilty in the mass trial that resulted from the Defiance Campaign and required by the regime to resign his position. Tambo immediately busied himself with organising the historic 1955 Congress of the People which drafted the Freedom Charter, the basic document of the democratic movement to this day. As a result, he was among the 156 accused in the marathon Treason Trial in 1956.
Following the banning of the ANC in the wake of the dreadful massacre of peaceful protesters by police in Sharpeville in 1960, Tambo, now ANC deputy president, was spirited out of the country in order to establish the ANC's international missions and mobilise international public opinion against apartheid. He escaped to Botswana and then Ghana in an aircraft
provided by Ghana's radical president, Kwame Nkrumah.
The liberation movement's decision to launch armed struggle after all other options were closed off by the belligerence of the apartheid regime required Tambo to secure the support and cooperation of many African governments in providing training and facilities to the fighters of Umkhonto we Sizwe. In 1967, after the death of ANC president Albert Luthuli, he became acting president; he was elected president unanimously by the ANC Morogoro conference in 1969 and re-elected in 1985.
Comrade O.R.'s courage was illustrated by his decision in 1982 to visit Lesotho, a tiny country completely surrounded by South Africa. A cross-border raid by Pretoria on the capital, Maseru, had killed 42 people, 30 of whom were ANC members. Tambo insisted, against the advice of many of his comrades who feared South Africa would shoot his plane down, that he attend the funeral. Tambo's bravery was calculated to counter any demoralisation caused by the atrocity.
Under his guidance, between 1960 and 1990, ANC missions were established in 27 countries. They contributed greatly to mobilising a powerful worldwide movement against Pretoria which, combined with the powerful struggle within South Africa, forced the regime to unban the ANC and enter into negotiations with the liberation movement.
Tambo was quick to seize the initiative when negotiations were placed on the agenda. He steered the ANC's proposals on the negotiations process through the Organisation of African Unity, which adopted them in the form of the Harare Declaration in August 1989. The United Nations adopted a resolution based on the OAU document in December 1989.
In December 1990, having just suffered a mild stroke, he returned home to a hero's welcome after 30 years in exile. While in his later years, Oliver Tambo figured less in the ANC's day-to-day leadership, being elected ANC national chairperson in 1991, he lost none of his authority.
"He was my brother, my comrade, my friend and my colleague", Nelson Mandela said on April 24.
Gertrude Shope, president of the ANC Women's League, said, "In addition to overseeing and successfully completing the mammoth task of building the ANC into the mass people's movement it is today, with its vision of a non-racist, non-sexist democracy, Comrade O.R. played an important role in promoting the emancipation of women.
"From as early as the 1940s, he was one of the leaders pushing for the formation of the ANC Women's League as an autonomous body. This gentle giant of a leader ... was the first of the ANC leaders to recognise the battle against gender oppression as a vital link in the struggle for national liberation. He declared in the early 1980s: 'There can be no national liberation without women's emancipation'. Comrade O.R. subsequently never made a public address without reference to the downtrodden economic and social status of women, and always ensured the gender component was present in all the policy-making decisions in which he was involved. He was the head of the Women's Emancipation Commission of the ANC until his death."
His passing, coming before he was able to see the goal he had fought for all his life and coming hard on the heels on the murder of Chris Hani, will galvanise South Africans to struggle even harder for a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa.