It was during Chief Albert Luthuli’s presidency that the ANC national conference adopted the Freedom Charter as its programme in December 1956. That was a nodal point in a process of internal transformation the ANC had undergone since the 1946 African mineworkers’ strike. As historians have observed, that strike cemented a strong relationship between the left and the nationalist movement. The Freedom Charter, in many respects, was the distillation of the mutual influence these two currents of liberation politics had on each other.
The strategic alliance between the black labour movement, the Communist Party and the ANC was institutionalised during Luthuli’s watch. He himself became so committed to it that he lent his voice to trade union mobilisation, virtually instructing ANC branches to take an active interest in the unions.
From the day it was adopted, the Freedom Charter became the focus of an acrimonious internal dispute that led to the exit of a fundamentalist nationalist faction, who called themselves the Africanists and who later constituted the Pan Africanist Congress.
Luthuli had inherited the ANC presidency at a decisive moment, when the Defiance Campaign had placed the ANC on a new trajectory that would lead to increased and escalating clashes with the apartheid government. Through the 1952 campaign, the ANC had redefined itself as a mass national liberation movement, willing to employ all the means necessary to attain freedom.
Though it is not a programme for socialism, the Freedom Charter envisaged the seizure of economic assets in the land, the mines and monopoly industries. In a seminal article published in 1957, Nelson Mandela explained that the purpose of such state intervention would be to undo the monopoly over the country’s economic assets that the white minority had acquired through a policy of deliberately stripping the African, coloured and Indian property-owning classes of their wealth.
State ownership had been variously employed in many parts of the world before 1955. Churchill’s government had used it to wage the war against Nazi Germany more effectively; in virtually all the colonies the state had assumed responsibility for significant economic sectors where business was reluctant to risk its own capital; in South Africa the racist National Party-Labour Party Pact had used it to establish a reliable electricity supply and to assist white farmers with fertiliser. Though anti-Communists and others on the right used advocacy of state ownership as a device to red-bait the ANC and its leaders, Mandela’s prescription was unexceptional.
At the end of a week that witnessed the announcement of major acquisitions by black-controlled corporations, one could be forgiven for thinking that the problem Madiba had sought to address in 1957 had now been attended to. But even a cursory examination of the relevant data reveals that, despite the inroads a handful of blacks have made into the corporate environment, the economic dominance of the white minority remains undisturbed.
After the banning of the movement in 1960, the person who became the symbol of determination to fight for freedom was Nelson Mandela. Thus when Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) was established in 1961, he was named its commander. One of the ironies of that year was that the first armed actions of MK occurred within days of Luthuli receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
At the end of the winter of 1967 the death of Luthuli, in what was reported to be a train accident, once again uncannily coincided with the incursion into then-Rhodesia by MK guerrillas.
The Wange Campaign highlighted the central dilemma of the ANC after its illegalisation and the Rivonia arrests: the underground structures established under Mandela’s guidance after 1961 had effectively been dismantled by the apartheid regime. Even had the MK fighters managed to reach South Africa, it is doubtful that there was an underground organisation that could have received, integrated and concealed them.
Reconstructing the ANC as an organised presence inside South Africa devolved on Oliver Tambo, who took over the reins after Luthuli’s demise. Working with a corps of leaders who had joined the movement during the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was Tambo’s mission to sustain an international campaign to isolate the apartheid regime, while simultaneously building an effective military wing. The unfavourable international environment taxed his leadership qualities as he strove to keep together a movement compelled to operate both inside and outside South Africa, with its exiled membership spread over a host of countries in Africa and beyond.
By the mid-70s the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and other leaders had become the focus of an international solidarity campaign that elevated Mandela to an iconic figure, expressive of the plight of the oppressed majority.
Under Tambo’s leadership the ANC not only built an effective fighting force, capable of spitting fire at the pride of the apartheid regime’s installations like Sasol, but also reconstituted an underground responsible for extensive mass mobilisation inside South Africa. After the tricameral elections of 1984, a sustained insurrectionary climate demonstrated even to the regime’s allies that apartheid could not survive except through massive repression. The convergence of internal and international pressures precipitated a revolt among Afrikaaner intellectuals, formerly a key source of legitimation for the regime. The result was the Dakar conference that opened up the path to negotiations.
Few realise or remember that Madiba was once portrayed as the quintessential “terrorist”. After 1990, both his self-evident humanity and international acceptance saw his image being remade into that of a transformative figure who offered South Africa a chance to redefine itself through reconciliation among the former antagonists.
Though Tambo passed away before he could witness it, April 27 1994 was the crowning moment for his generation of ANC leaders, the founders of the ANC Youth League. It was they who had piloted the 1949 Programme of Action through the ANC branches to the annual conference; it was they who had led the Defiance Campaign of 1952; it was they, too, who were the principal defendants in the 1957 Treason Trial. The task of transforming a legal ANC into an effective underground movement also had devolved on them as had elaboration of the strategy to wage an armed liberation struggle. When the moment was right, they led the way in seeking a negotiated settlement.
Having accomplished their principal mission, it was not surprising that they stepped down in favour of a generation that had grown up under their tutelage and guidance, in a smooth and well-managed transition.
Despite the esteem in which he was held, Chief Luthuli had always insisted on the tradition of collective leadership and responsibility in the ANC. Though he was known to be a man of peace, when the ANC leadership, in his absence, took the decision to wage armed struggle, he submitted to the collective decision. A devout, practising Christian, Luthuli refused to distance himself from the communists in the ANC leadership and castigated as McCarthyites those who sought to exclude the leaders of the communist party. His warm relationship with Moses Kotane — facilitated by mutual respect — is legendary.
Tambo’s personal modesty and repudiation of any form of ostentation made him a highly respected and loved ANC president. An exceptionally approachable person, he was nonetheless a very demanding taskmaster who elicited a high-quality performance from his organisation. His style of leadership was eminently collective and he was never loath to delegate responsibility to even junior members of the leadership corps. As the person charged with reconstructing a movement shattered by relentless repression, he worked with and sought the cooperation of actual or potential allies of all hues and sizes.
Nelson Mandela, to the despair of many an interviewer, always insists that his achievements are attributable to the collective with whom he served. Unfortunately, he assumed the presidency among a generation who were not his peers, but two to three generations younger. The ANC tradition of primus inter pares (first among equals) was consequently subject to severe strain during his incumbency.
As the ANC prepares for its national conference, these are some of the lessons we may derive from its historical experience. By nurturing the best of its traditions the ANC has outlived many younger movements. But the movement’s resilience and capacity for self-renewal has ensured it remained relevant over the decades despite the massive changes in national, regional and international politics.
Pallo Jordan is a member of the ANC national working committee and national executive committee