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Advance to Power - 75 Years of Struggle Introduction ADVANCE TO POWER - 75 YEARS OF STRUGGLE INTRODUCTION ADVANCE TO POWER 75 Years of Struggle Introduction South Africa is a land of extreme wealth for the privileged white colonial population, and extreme poverty and destitution for the oppressed black majority. Whites, 17 per cent of the population, receive more than 70 per cent of all income. The poverty that prevails in our country is the direct result of apartheid - the result of white greed and military strength. When we talk of struggle against apartheid we talk of what operates, for the vast majority of South Africans, as a police state. Apartheid is not merely racial discrimination. Its central feature is not the segregation of public amenities. Apartheid means not only inequality, racism, national and racial oppression and exploitation of the black majority in our country, but also the means necessary to enforce it, to defend it and to guarantee its survival in the face of powerful forces of resistance fighting to defeat it. Apartheid is a form of violence that operates, every moment of every day, against our people and the other peoples of Southern Africa, to perpetuate a white monopoly of political and economic power. Apartheid is everything progressive humanity opposes, and as such we call on all peace-loving people to make common cause with us to ensure its total destruction. Since the townships were invaded by Pretoria's soldiers in 1984, thousands of people have lost their lives, many more have been injured and maimed, tens of thousands have been detained, while many have simply 'disappeared'. Lives have been lost ever since the colonialists came to our country. The formation of the African National Congress on January 8th, 1912, created a people's organisation which transcended tribal, religious and class barriers in the fight for freedom in the land of our birth, an organisation which continued, under the new conditions prevailing, the anti-colonial struggle of our people. Our struggle is fundamentally a national liberation struggle to rid our nation of the colonial oppressor. South Africa, a country of some 30-million people, is being run as two countries, the one colonising the other, the white country of 4.5 million people colonising the 27-million black majority, and maintaining control through force and international support. Mass meetings, deputations, demonstrations, protests, passive resistance and strikes were the hallmark of the half-century of peaceful struggle waged by the people of South Africa. Every avenue of non-violent protest was met with violent repression on the part of the regime, culminating in the banning of the ANC after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, and the declaration of a state of emergency. The regime turned South Africa into an armed camp. The ANC went underground, determined to find new methods of struggle. 1961 saw the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, our people's army, our striking force for final liberation. The violence of the regime was now to be met by the revolutionary violence of the people. Since http://web.archive.org/web/20080625034421/www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/75years.html (1 of 14)1/25/2011 7:09:45 PM ADVANCE TO POWER - 75 YEARS OF STRUGGLE INTRODUCTION then, the ANC has combined political and armed struggle to defeat apartheid. Our aim is a war fought by the entire people - in strikes, demonstrations, resistance to forced removals, as well as in the field of armed struggle. Our call, to make apartheid unworkable and South Africa ungovernable, has resulted in the severest crisis the Pretoria regime has yet had to face. The African National Congress stands for a new South Africa, a South Africa in which racism shall be a thing of the past, where human dignity and equality shall prevail in the life of the country and its people, where the goals enshrined in the Freedom Charter shall be transformed into a living reality. Before that day dawns, many lives will be lost. Our people will suffer great hardship. But we are prepared to meet this challenge; to make whatever sacrifices are necessary for achieving freedom in South Africa. Pre-1912 - ORGANISATIONAL HISTORY OF THE ANC On January 8th, 1987, the African National Congress commemorates the 75th anniversary of its foundation. It was the first African nationalist political organisation in South Africa, and indeed on the continent of Africa. Many political organisations of neighbouring countries, now independent, can trace their origins to the ANC. Since its modest begin-nings in the form of the regional Native congresses during the first decade of this century, the ANC has grown from strength to strength, sparing no effort to fulfill its goal of a united South African nation free from the chains of imperialism and racism. It has succeeded in uniting African, Coloured, Indian and democratic whites of South Africa under one, forward-marching body in the struggle for freedom. The formation of the ANC in 1912 signified the birth not only of the ANC, but also of the South African nation. The ANC was assigned the task of midwife in this process of national rebirth and regeneration. The formation of the ANC meant the creation of a loyalty of a new type, a non-tribal loyalty, a loyalty which was inherently anti-colonial. It was an act of national salvation, a continuation - under new historical conditions - of the anti-colonial struggle of our people which had begun with colonialism itself. South Africa was conquered by force and is today ruled by force. Whether in reserve or in actual employment force is ever-present. This has been so ever since the colonialists came to our country. As time has progressed, force in the fascist mould, has been implemented in greater and by more terrifying methods. Children, women, youth and the aged are subjected to brutal and systematic violence comparable only to that perpetrated under Nazi tyranny. In order to fully appreciate the political and social significance that the ANC, as the liberation movement of oppressed South Africans, expresses, and the necessity for the type of organisation we have today, it is necessary to look at the past. European settlement in South Africa dates back to April 6th, 1652. Because of the intrusive, predatory and aggressive policies of the invaders, disputes, which soon led to war, ensued. In the Cape alone, nine wars of resistance against colonial encroachment were waged. Our people fought courageously and heroically and, in fact, were at no time ever conquered by the Boers. It was the arrival of the British military forces in South Africa which marked a qualitative and quantitative change in the resistance struggle. Immensely strengthened, the forces of colonisation and oppression, with their overwhelming superiority in arms and numbers of well-trained men, were able, after grim and bitter battles, to eventually subdue all military http://web.archive.org/web/20080625034421/www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/75years.html (2 of 14)1/25/2011 7:09:45 PM ADVANCE TO POWER - 75 YEARS OF STRUGGLE INTRODUCTION opposition. Effectively, the defeat of the Bambata Rebellion in 1906 brought to a close this first, 250-year phase of resistance and set the stage for the handing over of the administration of the country to local white settlers by British imperialism. Defeated militarily and totally disarmed, robbed of their land by foreign invaders, denied any say in the governing of their country, our people realised that new ways had to be found to continue the struggle. Old forms of organisation and methods of struggle were proving inadequate to meet the new conditions. The people were looking for new forms of organisation, and learning new methods of struggle; they were learning the ways of mass meetings, demonstrations, deputations, protests, passive resistance and strikes. The ANC was born out of the lessons learnt from the past. The need for African unity in the face of the common enemy and common problems, a need long recognised by far-sighted African leaders, was forcibly brought home with the promulgation of the Act of Union in 1910, when General Louis Botha moved to consolidate white hegemony within the system established by the South African Act of Union, passed in the British House of Commons in l909, uniting the formerly embittered feuding sections of the white minority. These underlying factors led to the formation of the ANC on January 8th, 1912. There was full recognition of the need for the strength achieved in unity - unity of purpose and unity in action. Furthermore, the far- sighted founders of the ANC recognised the urgency for united action to oppose the imminent Land Act, due to be implemented in 1913, which was to further rob the African people of their land, reducing their territorial rights to a mere 13% of South Africa. The formation of the ANC was not an accident of history. It was a logical development of history, a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle of our people which began with colonialism itself. There were many factors that led to the formation of the ANC. The introduction of Christianity in South Africa led to the emergence of black Christians who later rejected the white Christian values, formed their own independent churches with new concepts and values. The first of these black converts to form an independent church was Nehemiah Tile, who played a significant religious and political role. He formed the Tembu Church in 1883 in the Transkei. The founding of the Ethiopian Church by Rev MM Mokone on the Witwatersrand in 1892 was tantamount to widening the battlefront started by Tile. This period saw the emergence of young African intellectuals who came from mission schools established throughout the country.
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