DEAR Editor,-
The current and yester generations are members of a relay team. The run was started by the generation of Sidney Bunting, Ivon Jones and Bill Andrews. It is an irony of history that it was a section of oppressor nation that brought to South Africa the theoretical weapons for the ultimate liberation of the oppressed.
The baton was taken by the generations of Alfred Nzula, ET Motsenyane, Moses Kotane, Josiah Gumede, Braam Fischer, JB Marks to hand over to the generations of Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Nelson Mandela, Michael Hummel and others. The above-mentioned generations were responding to the 1910 union constitution, which marked the formal creation of a single oppressor white nation, unifying the oppressor English, Afrikaner nationalities. General Jan Smuts, who was instrumental in this process, saw it precisely in these terms as well. The whole meaning of union of South Africa is this: we are going to create a nation-nation which will be of composite character, including Dutch, English, German and Jew and whatever white nationality seeks refuge in this land – all can combine, all will be welcome.
Two years after the consolidation of the oppressor nation in South Africa, the scattered African ethnic groups and tribes came together on January 8, 1912 to forge their own nationhood, expressed organisationally by the ANC. The ANC aimed at ending national subjugation and regaining political and economic independence. It was a national movement aimed at amalgamating various ethnic groups into a nation by creating a political inter-relationship among them, giving them a single political language against oppression, educating the new person in the spirit of respect for members of another ethnic group, so that they could jointly strive for national self-determination. They instilled discipline and hard work; the revolutionary recognised that the work is the struggle and that, if the enemy is to be destroyed, one must struggle – work hard. It means perseverance in studying, in working among the masses, in organising them, in doing political work. They taught us that the revolutionary goes and works where the difficulties are greater.
In 1969, the ANC became an august movement; it adopted strategy and tactics. Its strategy was crafted by figuring out which purposes are both worth pursuing and capable of being accomplished. They analysed the concrete condition of South Africa and oppressed nationalists. The ANC recognises that the national question must be treated not merely on a historic basis, but on a class basis, the socio-economic base of national oppression and the solution to the national question, not in reformist but a revolutionary way.
The liberals – DA and its fellows, to whom any thoughts of a class struggle is either strange or abhorrent, forget that this national liberation struggle, fought many years with 1994 suffrage rights, is only the first stage, only the preliminary part of a social revolution that will end in the victory of the working class.
They forget that a social revolution cannot be a single battle but goes through a series of stages, tackling all sorts of democratic and economic problems, but crowned ultimately by the expropriations of the bourgeoisie.
This perspective of speedy progression from the first stage of national question to genuine emancipation is made more real by the existence in our country of a large and growing class whose consciousness complements national consciousness. Its political organisation and unions have played a fundamental role in shaping the advance of our cause. Furthermore, it is the need to ensure that the ANC contains a strongly organised working class that constitutes the principle reason behind the alliance of the ANC and SACP. The ANC has to live in order to achieve its revolutionary objective within this century.
To celebrate its ingenuity, we will ensure that we go out to reach our people and explain to them the achievements of our democratic government led by the African National Congress. The history archives have no record of a country on this planet that has made such tremendous achievements within the short period of 20 years of its transition to democracy.
The baton is carried by the current leadership to the greatest satisfaction of yester generations.
Halala ANC on your 102 years’ celebrations.
MJEQEZI
SACP
