Watching implosion of ANC, Tambo, Mandela legacy across the fence!
Michael Dingake | Tuesday April 25, 2017 16:57
It’is also the month in which the ANC under the presidency of Nelson Mandela of the Madiba clan led the ANC to its historic victory after 84 years of the freedom struggle that grew from humble petitions to political authorities in loco, and deputations to colonial overlords sitting in Westminster. The ANC liberation struggle is recognised as the longest of the African struggles. Besides starting at low gear it slowly gathered speed as it climbed up the mountain ridge; one marvelous thing about the ANC was it spread its wings across the colonial borders. The High Commission Territories (HCT) the British Protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland were full members from the onset. Dikgosi/amakhosi/chiefs and their subjects joined en bloc.
From the handwringing petitioner, through the Native Representative Council (NRC), until exposed by firebrand Paul Mosaka, as a ‘toy telephone,’ through the cap-in-hand deputations across choppy seas to London, the ANC developed into an organisation of all seasons, that repaid the rising fury of the enemy’s viciousness with compound interest. Racial discrimination initially known as the ‘colour bar’ reflected in ‘passes laws’ and night curfew for Bantu, drastically assumed alarming proportions in residential segregation, Immorality Act, Bantu Education Act, and Bantu homelands with all-white Parliament inciting whites outside to hate and terrorising blacks. Dr Malan quizzed his audience whenever he opened his public rally speeches: “Waar staan ek (where do I stand)? When they roared back that he was standing on speaker’s platform, he’d correct them, “Nee, ek staan op die kaffir se nek (no, I am standing on the kaffir’s neck)!”
It was in the context of these developments in the evolution of the apartheid policies that the meek ANC grew into a formidable and militant organisation when the Youth League adopted the Programme of Action of defiance of unjust laws, deliberately courting imprisonment by their actions. Tambo, Mandela, Sisului. Lembede, Mda and others, moved and shook the apartheid structure by staying the distance by adapting their strategy and tactics as the situation demanded, leading and inspiring the oppressed forward. Eventually when the ANC driven by the malicious ban, it was they who led the ANC by devising and reviewing strategy and tactics. The armed struggle phase that dispersed militants into: exile, prison and early grave, boasted their input.
Tambo led the liberation war from exile. He moved the previously passive international community from passivity to active participation in his war programme until they dubbed apartheid, a crime against humanity! Through speech and document at UN, OAU, broadcasts through Freedom Radio from exile the underground in the country was stimulated; infiltrated trained cadres organised and mobilised the masses in resistance and revolutionary struggle inside the country. Through his leadership-in-exile the United Democratic Front, COSATU and the Mass Democratic Movement were born; liberation theology took hold and produced men-of-the-cloth who identified with the liberation struggle to render apartheid unworkable and apartheid state ungovernable.
Tambo died a fulfilled man, however, after handing the baton to his law partner, youth league colleague and unswerving comrade-in-arms, Madiba. Madiba on the other hand marked his time in Robben Island Prison, the notorious former leper colony outside Cape Town doing hard labour and denouncing his imprisonment at every opportunity prison authorities or international visitors showed up. One needs psychological and physical strength to come out of 27 years of imprisonment whole and sane. It was a feat for Madiba to emerge out of that hellhole to lead South Africa triumphantly into reconciliation and a new beginning. Mandela acted in all he did in the name of the ANC. He wanted the ANC to stay the course of its liberation mission to the end. To him the ANC was the be-all and end-all of his life. He pledged to organise a branch of the ANC in heaven if he found none there!
Paradoxically it was Madiba who advised all South Africans, that in future, if the government of the ANC does to them what the apartheid government did to the ANC/them, they should do to government of ANC what they did to the apartheid government! Where are those who understood and agreed with Madiba?
Step forward, not down! Are you fake ANC members who flinch when the going gets tough? Watching events from across the fence , the scene looks weird, ominous and spectacular. Oh the legacy! Jacob Zuma alone cannot be responsible for the current ignominious situation alone!