ADDRESS BY PREMIER
Comrades,
Today, December 16, 2001, marks the 40th anniversary of our glorious people's army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, the spear of the oppressed black people of our land.
This year as we look back with pride over 40 years of glorious struggle, let us be reminded that the need for the majority of our people, led by the ANC, to embark upon the armed struggle arose only when all other avenues to resolve legitimate grievances were closed down.
For close on to half a century, the ANC had used all peaceful means of struggle to convince the governments of the day to negotiate the future of our country to no avail.
As we celebrate this year's anniversary we pay tribute to those who paid the supreme price in the service of our country, its people, democracy, peace and justice.
In this regard the ANC dips its banners in memory of Thomas Mahlangu, Portia Shabangu, Sithuli Hleza, Nokuthula Simelane, Sidney Choma and many others who laid down their lives so you and me can stand here today.
Let us bow our heads in memory of our late Chief of Staff Chris Hani, Moses Mabhida, Khayinga, Mkhaba, Mini, Mosololi, Tele Mogoerane, Monty Motaung, Solomon Mahlangu, Ben Moloise, and other heroes who laid down their lives in Matola, Maseru, Frontline states and in many other operations in the country.
I know, as you well do, that the spirit of those brave combatants who have fought it out to the last bullet or hand-grenade, comrades such as the Silverton heroes, Thami Makhuba, Wilfred Madela and Fani Mafoko, Linda Jobane – is here with us.
That is why it is proper to dip our revolutionary banners as we recall and salute Barney Molokoane, who died with Victor Khayiyana and Vincent Sekete during a daring bid to attack SASOL once again with rockets.
These comrades, and many more courageous combatants to the last, were prepared to welcome death in order that our people should be victorious in the end.
They have been immortalised by our revolution, their deaths gave meaning to life, their deeds inspired our army and our people for all time.
Born of the people, combatants of Umkhonto we Sizwe pledged themselves in our Manifesto to complement the actions of our national liberation movement by means of organised revolutionary violence.
In the clarion call of our Manifesto we declared that "the time comes in the life of any nation when there remains only two choices: submit or fight" and that South Africa's rulers had left us with no alternative but to "hit back by all means within our power in defence of our people, our future and our freedom".
We knew then, as we stated in our Manifesto, that we were "striking out along a new road for the liberation of the people"; that once we took that road there would be no going back; a road that was going to necessitate total dedication,
self-sacrifice and a determination that knew no surrender; a road along which the commitment not to submit but to fight would have to be transformed into the uncompromising warrior pledge - Victory or Death!
Let us cast our minds back to those days, 40 years ago, to understand the immensity of that decision and the courage of those patriots who founded and participated in the early actions of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Not since the Bambata Uprising in 1906 had patriots taken to arms in an organised form. The people's reaction to State violence had continued down the years.
With the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe we were gathering together in an organised form all the best fighting traditions of our past in order to stride into the future along the path of the seizure of power by the majority of the people.
We knew then that anger alone would not bring victory. We knew then that our people had been deliberately deprived of the skills of modern warfare and denied access to weaponry.
We knew then that our terrain presented its own special problems which could not be answered from the classical textbooks of guerrilla warfare.
We knew then that despite the sweep of the African revolution, we would have to develop the armed struggle without the advantage of rear bases in the neighbouring States.
We knew then that we faced a formidable foe underpinned by imperialism. If this was the reality that confronted us with so many disadvantages, how were we to move forward?
Above all else, we knew too that our strength lay in the masses; that in striking out along a new road for liberation nothing would count as much as our faith in the masses; we knew that Umkhonto we Sizwe, born of the people, had to be rooted in the masses and strive with the people.
Despite the immensity of the odds, but immersed in this faith, those early combatants took to battle. With homemade bombs and explosives taken from the enemy we blazed a glorious trail.
Those early exploits struck fear into the hearts of the enemy. Not since the battle of Isandlwana in 1879 had our rulers been so shaken by our fighting formations.
They could not understand what moved giants like Vuyisile Mini, Mkaba and Khayingo to go singing defiantly to the gallows rather than trade their lives for the life of a fellow combatant by giving evidence for the State.
The Minis, like many before them and many more since, emblazoned with their lives into the emblem of Umkhonto we Sizwe the uncompromising motto: Victory or Death!
Let us, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of MK, salute these heroes for their commitment to the justness of our cause and for imprinting on the history of our struggle a standard that we must live up to.
Let it be recorded today that this has been our standard from the first days of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Even in those early days by what cruel twists history sought to underscore both our mistakes and the immense difficulties that our revolution faced.
Within less than a year our first commander, Comrade Nelson Mandela, was captured by the enemy.
Within two years of our birth the cream of our leadership was captured at Rivonia farm, brought to trial with Comrade Mandela, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
In his statement to the court Comrade Mandela, confronted with the prospect of the gallows, defended the justness of our cause and defiantly proclaimed that for these actions "I am prepared to die".
By the end of 1964, with the imprisonment of Wilton Mkwayi and others, it appeared as if the guns of MK had been silenced for all time.
Unprecedented State repression and enemy conduct which violated every norm of humanity combined to smash our network within the country. Even the courage of our masses appeared to have cowed before the tyrant's might.
Comrades, this is not the place to record every effort, to recount every ingenious means with which we pursued this goal. Let it be sufficient to note that we traversed many countries on foot and by other means.
Every failure to reach home became a spur to further efforts and greater daring. We sought to go by land, by sea and by air. We even had comrades traverse our country to reach Lesotho. Our umgwenya never gave up hope and never spared their efforts.
In that phase of our history we lost many comrades, among them Comrade Flag Boshielo, member of the NEC of the African National Congress and commissar in Umkhonto we Sizwe.
In Portuguese-ruled Mozambique we joined forces with our brothers-in-arms, FRELIMO, to probe our way into our country. But the true epic of that period belongs to the effort we made in 1967 when, as a combined force of ANC and ZAPU fighters, we crossed the Zambezi into the then Rhodesia in order to hack a path home and for our brothers to entrench themselves in their mother country.
That daring effort is known as the Wankie Campaign in which our combatants fought gloriously against the combined racist South African and Smith forces.
How the enemy forces were rendered panic-stricken by the relentless courage of our combined forces who, on the banks of the Zambezi, before they marched into the hostile territory of Rhodesia, were named, in memory of our great leader, the late President-General of the African National Congress, Chief Albert Luthuli, and who are known since then and for all posterity as the Luthuli Detachment.
In battle after battle the racist forces were overwhelmed by the courage and firepower of our gallant fighters. In instance after instance the cowardly enemy broke ranks and fled, abandoning their weapons, their injured and their dead.
Many members of that indomitable detachment fell in battle in Wankie and on the eastern front. Their names are inscribed on the roll-call of honour of our revolution.
The imperative of the armed struggle as the key component of our revolutionary way forward, which underlay the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, was burned into the minds of our youth by the savage massacres perpetrated by the racist soldiers and police!
The brutal gunning down of 13-year-old Hector Petersen turned the protesting youth of 1976 into the warriors who flowed into the ranks of Umkhonto we Sizwe, giving fresh impetus to our armed activities.
Almost overnight the Soweto generation finally enabled us to breach the barriers by which the enemy had sought to separate us from the masses.
The enemy, which by design and fortuity, had deprived us of the generation of the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, now unwittingly threw into the ranks of the revolution an army of youth whose anger and courage knew no bounds.
Within the ranks of Umkhonto we Sizwe and under the tutelage of the umgwenya they proudly absorbed the heritage of struggle that resides in the various formations of our national liberation movement and were awarded the title of the June 16 Detachment.
The 80s saw the swelling of the ranks of the glorious army of the people – an army born of the people. It was at this stage that our army and the people became one – making it impossible for the racist regime to fight back.
To defeat MK they had to lock up every single progressive and patriotic man, woman and youth. And so it came as no surprise when in 1994 our people voted for the only organisation they know – the African National Congress.
As we move into a new year, let us remember that we owe it to all those who laid down their lives to ensure that indeed we built a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa.
Only in that way can we give an assurance to our heroes that their struggle was not in vain. Let us together fight hunger, poverty and homelessness. But above all let us wage war against HIV/AIDS, women and child abuse and all other crimes.
I thank you.