141144 A moment of self-reßection The Morogoro …

1 573 NHLANHLA NDEBELE AND NOOR NIEFTAGODIENThe Morogoro conference:A moment of self-reflection141414 The Morogoro Consultative Conference, held from 25 April to 1 May 1969,was a watershed in the history of the African National Congress and its part-ners in the Congress movement . According to an official statement, the confer-ence was attended by more than 70 leaders and delegates representing ANCbranches, units of Umkhonto we Sizwe, leaders of the Indian and colouredpeoples and of the revolutionary working class movements .1 Delegates assem-bled in the Tanzanian town to review the policy, strategy, leadership structureand style of work of the movement .2By the end of the conference, a numberof resolutions had been passed on strategy and tactics, as well as on the struc-ture of the taken at the conference were designed to concentrate thealliance leadership in Africa; to pare down the National Executive Committee;create a Revolutionary Council to integrate both the political and military com-ponents of the struggle; and to restrict ANC membership for alliance membersin exile to Africans only.

2 This reflected the seriousness of the issues that hadarisen prior to the conference and the determination of the leadership of theCongress movement to unite its cadres behind a common programme. The conference took place at the close of the most difficult and challengingdecade for all South Africa s liberation movements. Nine years earlier, the ANCand PAC had been banned. Since then, thousands of activists had been incar-cerated or forced into exile. The state s brutal crackdown had rendered themovement largely ineffective inside South Africa, despite heroic efforts tokeep the flames of resistance burning. By the end of the Rivonia Trial in 1964,many of the key internal leaders of the ANC and PAC had been sentenced tolong terms in prison, and leadership of the liberation movements shifted deci-sively to the incipient exile structures.

3 The launch of militant groups such asMK, Poqo and ARM marked another decisive turning point in the liberation1 Communique, nd, Mayibuye Archives, Simons Papers, p , University of the Western CHAP 12, 13, 14 22/4/04 3:39 PM Page 573struggle. The turn to armed struggle was a response to the violence of theapartheid state, but was premised on a fundamental reappraisal of the charac-ter of the freedom struggle itself. The stresses and strains engendered by thesefar-reaching changes profoundly affected the functioning of the liberationmovements, especially as they tried to reconstitute themselves in exile. It was in this context that a number of critical issues arose within the ANCand between the Congress movement allies.

4 Matters that dominated the Moro-goro conference had been festering within the ANC since it was banned: inte-gration of diverse ethnic groups into the organisation; coordination of thepolitical and military elements of the struggle; and building a new leadershipechelon, not only to replace those who had been imprisoned, but also to dealwith the internationalisation of the among the issues were the role of MK (which raised questionsabout the objectives of the armed struggle, as well as the relationship betweenmilitary and political strategy), the position of non-Africans in the ANC(which posed the question of commitment to a non-racial struggle) andwhether the leadership should be located in Africa or in Europe.

5 Inextricablylinked to these questions were the role of the South African Communist Party,the lifestyle and operating procedures of the exiled leaders, the relationshipbetween the exiled and internal sections of the movement , and the influence ofpan-Africanism on the ANC s policies and operations. A number of attempts to deal with some of these issues had been madeprior to the 1969 conference. In October 1962, the ANC convened a consulta-tive conference at Lobatse in Botswana, which was attended by activists fromSouth Africa and in exile. The main objective was to consider the measuresrequired to give a new impetus to organisational work in pursuance of thedecision to make preparations for armed revolutionary struggle.

6 3 The externalleadership could not formally establish itself, as the internal leadership wasstill in office, albeit , being in exile was a wholly newexperience for the ANC, which did not yet have visible and viable internationalnetworks. The relationship between the internal and external leadership wasseverely hampered by the South African government s repression and growingpressure on neighbouring states to deny assistance to the liberation move-ments. Finally, exiles were scattered throughout Africa, Europe and the UnitedStates, which made coordination of activities a daunting task. Two more consultative meetings were held after Lobatse. The first, at Moro-goro in May 1965, was attended by the ANC National Executive and leading fig-ures from MK.

7 Convened in the wake of the Rivonia Trial, the meeting set itselfthe task of improving our machinery for vigorously pursuing the objectives ofour struggle, including, in particular, the movement of Umkhonto units to the574 THE ROAD TO DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AFRICA3 African National Congress, Directive on the Nature of the Forthcoming Conference, March1969, Mayibuye Archives, Simons Papers, p , Interview with Simon Makana, conducted by Sifiso Ndlovu, SADET Oral History CHAP 12, 13, 14 22/4/04 3:39 PM Page 574home front .5In November 1966, the ANC met with its alliance partners in Dares Salaam to discuss the role and status of members of these fraternal organi-sations in exile. Both these meetings were important attempts at organisation-al regroupment and political reorientation, but achieved only limited of the issues continued to simmer below the surface, and erupted intothe open in the aftermath of the Wankie and Sipolilo military by its most serious crisis in exile, the leadership initiated a process ofconsultation and discussion that culminated in the Morogoro 1955, the Congress of the People declared in its Freedom Charter that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.

8 However, the struc-tures of the liberation movement continued to reflect racial and ethnic divi-sions that seemed to be in line with the divide-and-rule strategy of theapartheid state. Africans had the ANC, Indians the South African Indian Con-gress (SAIC), coloureds the Coloured Peoples Congress (CPC), and whites theCongress of Democrats (COD). Only the South African Communist Party(SACP) drew its membership from across racial and ethnic boundaries. When the ANC went into exile, a core consideration was how to combine itscommitment to the principle of non-racialism with the necessary emphasis onthe fact that the African majority lay at the centre of the quest for the ground, the organisation had to address mounting pressure to open itsranks to coloured, Indian and white activists, while retaining an African lead-ership.

9 This was not the first time that the ANC had to face this issue. A state-ment of policy in the ANC s annual report of 1958 reaffirmed its commitmentto a non-racial ( multiracial ) society and acknowledged that it was essentialto work with all forces that are prepared to struggle for the same ideas .7 Nev-ertheless, membership remained closed to all but Africans. At the time, the fol-lowing arguments were made to justify the fact that the ANC was an exclusive-ly African organisation:Oppression of sortsNobody can doubt that however other racial groups may be oppressed,Africans are oppressed in special ways. As a result, the immediate griev-ance, aims and outlook of Africans, their daily needs and aspirations, arenot identical with those of other racial groups in South Africa, howeveridentical their long-term aim of liberation might be.

10 Is it possible to imag-575 THE Morogoro CONFERENCE: A moment OF SELF-REFLECTION145 African National Congress, Directive on the Nature of the Forthcoming Conference, March1969, Mayibuye Archives, Simons Papers, p , Some parts of this section were written by Sifiso African National Congress, Annual Report, 1958, cited in Bernard Magubane, Sport and Poli-tics in an Urban African Community: A Case Study of African Voluntary Organisations,unpublished Master of Social Science dissertation, University of Natal, November 1963, p CHAP 12, 13, 14 22/4/04 3:39 PM Page 575ine, then, that the Africans will not be organised as a separate group withseparate group interests as long as their position remains?