ANC-SACP Alliance

Oliver Tambo

This declaration of solidarity by the President of the ANC with the South African Communist Party and socialist movements around the world was delivered at the 60th anniversary meeting of the SACP in London on July 30, 1981.

Let me commence by thanking you, Comrade Chairman, and the South African Communist Party (SACP) for inviting the African National Congress to be a party to this occasion and in particular, for the opportunity of sharing a platform with the Communist Party of Great Britain, represented here by the General Secretary Gordon McLennan and with the Communist Party of Ireland, represented by Comrade Michael O'Riordan.

These are our allies:  they are part of the international movement of solidarity which gives us strength and confidence in the certainty of our victory.  These parties, together with other communist and workers' parties around the world, are parties which we can always appeal to for solidarity in the conviction that they will respond.

It is a great pleasure for us, a great honour to participate with them on an occasion of great significance in our struggle in South Africa ...

We congratulate the SACP on this occasion particularly for the dedication and commitment of its leaders and cadres that has ensured its survival these 60 years, despite intensive repression and desperate attempts to destroy it.

We applaud your achievements, for the SACP has not only survived, but is today stronger, and increasingly makes more significant contributions to the liberation struggle of our people.

The ANC speaks here today, not so much as a guest invited to address a foreign organisation.  Rather we speak of and to our own.  For it is a matter of record that for much of its history, the SACP has been an integral part of the struggle of the African people against oppression and exploitation in South Africa.  We can all bear witness that in the context of the struggle against colonial structures, racism, and the struggle for power by the people, the SACP has been fighting with the oppressed and exploited.

Notwithstanding that it has had to concentrate on thwarting the efforts to destroy it, cadres of the SACP have always been ready to face the enemy in the field.  Because they have stood and fought in the front ranks, they have been amongst those who have suffered the worst brutalities of the enemy, and some of the best cadres have sacrificed their lives.

And so, your achievements are the achievements of the liberation struggle.  Your heroes are ours.  Your victories, those of all the oppressed.

The relationship between the ANC and the SACP is not an accident of history, nor is it a natural and inevitable development.  For, as we can see, similar relationships have not emerged in the course of liberation struggles in other parts of Africa.

To be true to history, we must concede that there have been difficulties as well as triumphs along our path, as, traversing many decades, our two organisations have converged towards a shared strategy of struggle.  Ours is not merely a paper alliance, created at conference tables and formalised through the signing of documents and representing only an agreement by leaders.  Our alliance is a living organisation that has grown out of struggle.  We have built it out of our separate and common experiences.  It has been nurtured by our endeavours to counter the total offensive mounted by the National Party in particular against all opposition and against the very concept of democracy ...

COMMON OBJECTIVES

Today the ANC and SACP have common objectives in the eradication of the oppressive and exploitative system that prevails in our country:  the seizure of power and the exercise of their right of self-determination by all the people of South Africa.  We share a strategic perspective of the task that lies ahead.

Our organisations have been able to agree on fundamental strategies and tactical positions, whilst retaining our separate identities.  For though we are united in struggle, as you have already pointed out Comrade Chairman, we are not the same.  Our history has shown that we are a powerful force because our organisations are mutually reinforcing.

It is often claimed by our detractors that the ANC's association with the SACP means that the ANC is being influenced by the SACP.  That is not our experience.  Our experience is that the two influence each other.  The ANC is quite capable of influencing, and is liable to be influenced by others.  There has been the evolution of strategy which reflects this two-way process.

In fact the ANC was quite within its right to tell the SACP that we are sorry we cannot release Comrade Moses Mabhida from his tasks in the ANC -- find another comrade to be General Secretary.  Yet we agreed he would make a good General Secretary for the SACP.  He was not grabbed.

This kind of relationship constitutes a feature of the South African liberation movement, a revolutionary movement, a feature of the SACP which helps to reinforce the alliance and to make it work as it is working.  It is a tribute to the leadership of the SACP.

We are therefore talking of an alliance from which, in the final analysis, the struggle of the people of South Africa for a new society and a new social system has benefitted greatly.

Within our revolutionary alliance each organisation has a distinct and vital role to play.  A correct understanding of these roles and respect for their boundaries has ensured the survival and consolidation of our co-operation and unity.

As stated in its programme, the SACP unreservedly supports and participates in the struggle for national liberation led by the ANC, in alliance with the South African Indian Congress, the Congress of Trade Unions, the Coloured People's Congress and other patriotic groups of democrats, women, peasants and youth.

The strategy of the African National Congress sees the main content of the South African revolution as the liberation of the largest and most oppressed group:  namely the black population.

And by black I do not mean what our enemy have elected to designate as black -- namely just the Africans.  By black, we mean all the oppressed, those who were formerly called non-whites and whom we prefer to call black.

Of course it does not suit the enemy to club all the oppressed and exploited together.  It is better for the enemy that this vast majority be split up into what they call blacks and then Indians and coloureds.  That fits their strategy -- serves the interests of their strategy best.  But I am talking about the oppressed population as the blacks.

Whilst concerned to draw in and unify all progressive and democratic forces in the country, including those amongst the whites, our priority remains the maximum mobilisation of those who are the dispossessed, the exploited and the racially oppressed.

That is only a priority, for we recognise that victory requires that we build up maximum unity of the forces for progress.  Indeed we need to break up this white racist clique, win friends from among the ruling class and isolate the fascists.  Then a united people of South Africa can deliver the final blow, crush the colonialist structures and move to a new South Africa.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

The ANC has received and continues to receive international support and solidarity from a variety of sources.  We must today acknowledge especially, with appreciation, the very significant support we receive from the socialist countries.  You have mentioned many of these countries -- all of them without exception have given freely by way of supporting our struggle and meeting our demands.

We appreciate in particular that they and some African countries have not hesitated to deliver weapons to people fighting for their liberation.  The enemy likes to squeal that we have been fighting with either Soviet made weapons, or communist made weapons.  It does not matter what weapons they are.  But we are glad to have them, and shall continue to use them if they are effective -- and they are.

This support has been given during the liberation struggles in southern Africa and the rest of Africa, and has been extended to the independent states that have been forced to defend their own victories.

On an occasion when we are observing the 60th anniversary of the SACP, we are bound to give some thought to struggles, many of which have arisen since the SACP was established.  Today, in the anti-imperialist struggle, we have won new allies like the struggling people of Palestine.  We have thrown up new enemies of peoples, like those who murder civilians in Beirut.  We have seen the unutterable brutalities of the junta in El Salvador -- the ruling fascists in Guatemala.

We have seen how the US has sought its allies among these enemies of freedom and democracy and progress.  And we send out on this South African day, our greetings, our solidarity and our support to those whose struggles place them in the same trench that we occupy.

We greet Polisario and Fretlin.

But finally, let us once again greet our South African Communist Party

LONG LIVE THE SACP!

LONG LIVE THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE ANC AND SACP!

LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF ALL PROGRESSIVE AND DEMOCRATIC FORCES IN OUR COUNTRY AND IN THE REST OF THE WORLD!