 I'm the Pro Director for Teaching and Learning here in SOAS and it's a pleasure to welcome you all here this evening. Now whenever I speak to a new group of people I do always say I have got a stammer I'll get stuck on words and please just bear with me when that happens. We're here tonight with the South African Higher Commission in London to celebrate the centenary of the birth of anti-apartheid politician and revolutionary Oliver Reginald Tambo. We would like to very much add a special thanks to Brand South Africa for the support that has been provided for this event. Brand South Africa play a key role in promoting positive messages about South Africa across the world. Now why here at SOAS? As many of you will know, SOAS is celebrating its centenary, so it's our 100th anniversary and since the mid 1930s we've offered courses in a number of African languages including Zulu and Kosa and in 1938 SOAS added Africa to its name in recognition of our teaching and research in 1965 the centre of African studies was founded and since 1991 the centre has had formal responsibility for co-ordinating study, research and discussion on issues to do with Africa in the university. So that's the past, I wanted to give you three glimpses of the way that we work on South Africa and in South Africa presently and we can see these as part of our 100th anniversary celebrations. SOAS and the University of Fort Hare in collaboration with Canon Collins hosted an event with the chairman of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Professor Njibulu Ndebele earlier this year and the event took place at the University of Fort Hare entitled Constituting the Nation Beyond the Constitution a South African Future. We also hosted our annual residential school in Cape Town and the programme was organised by the SOAS centre of African studies in association with the South African Department of Trade and Industry and it was supported by the Moe Ibrahim Foundation and the aim of that residential school is to build skills to develop talent and to enable African citizens to improve the quality of governance in their countries. A third thing we had the pleasure of doing last year we hosted Albi Sacks, the world renowned campaigner for social justice and human rights and a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and that event marked the 20th anniversary of the new South African Constitution and was entitled South Africa, is this the country I was fighting for? So three glimpses of the work we do both here in the UK as well as in South Africa. Back to this evening's event, Oliver Reginald Tambo as many of you will know was president of the African National Congress from 1967 to 1991 and it's particularly fitting that the event takes place this week. South Africa on the 27th of April will celebrate Freedom Day and that day commemorates the first post-apartheid elections held in 1994. It's also the 24th anniversary of Oliver Tambo's death who sadly never saw the day that Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa as he died on the 23rd of April 1993. Tonight's panel will debate retracing O.R. Tambo's path towards liberation and the dawn of democracy in South Africa and it will take us on a journey through his journey which played a major role in the end of apartheid. So I'll now pass you over to Richard Dowden who is director of the Royal African Society who will say a few words before introducing tonight's speakers. Thank you and I hope you enjoy this evening's event. Thank you. I had imagined that I would be talking to lots of young, so our students at this meeting and trying to convey what it was, how different the world was in those days but I noticed that there are one or two people here with hairs almost as gray as mine and they probably don't need too much detail but I will just, I mean just a few of the shocking things that shocking in a good way or a bad way but one of them I was flicking through a book just to prepare for this and saw the picture of Nelson Mandela with a hair parting and thinking yes at that time many Africans not just in South Africa but in the rest of Africa really wanted to be to show that although they were black Africans they could still be lawyers or doctors or teachers but they dressed very much and spoke very much in a very British way and trying to be like white people and that has completely gone but I just thought when just seeing that picture it reminded me of many years ago where people, where many Africans were still trying to think if we can do what they do then we'll be equal and how much that has completely changed. 1948 and this again is shocking. A black man in a suit and tie walking is a lawyer, his name is Oliver Tambo, is walking down a street in Johannesburg and a white man spits in his face and hits him and drives him off the pavement. Again I mean that's almost in my lifetime and it's just amazing that that was his earliest moment of radicalization I think. After the arrest of Mandela and the trial he managed to get out and come and live in Lusaka and then would often come to London and I met him a few times and he was one of the kindest gentlest people you could imagine. On two occasions he'd say have you had tea and I said no and he said I will go and make you tea so you would get up and go and make tea and I mean he was that sort of man and he spoke very gently but very very strongly and he had a difficult time because not only was the ANC at that time certainly not welcome in Western capitals, it was supported by the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union so it wasn't welcome there but also there were other movements too when the black consciousness movement started with Steve Biko and it was all about identity politics and different to the ANC's take on things and it was it was Demetsman Tutu who brought all those people together after the great crackdown and after Steve Biko was killed and I in 1979 I went to South Africa as part of a church delegation and managed to talk to some of the black consciousness people there and I said well what do you know what's your message to the people who've gone to London and escaped and the unanimous verdict was tell them to join the ANC and that really was although it brought that black consciousness stream into the ANC that was a major coming together that I think really took off and changed and helped change South Africa. Our three speakers tonight I'll just introduce them one by one, Mr Brian Filling who's the South African Honorary Consul in Scotland and former anti-apartheid activist, he's been campaigning since he was a student at Glasgow University in the 1960s and was founder of the Scottish anti-apartheid committee in 1976 and served as its chair from 76 to 94 when he became chair of ACTSA Scotland. He's a member of the Executive Committee for Action for Southern Africa from 1994 to 2011 and is now the Honorary Consul for South Africa in Scotland and he was awarded the National Order of Companions of Oh Artambo, the highest award made to non-South Africans by the Republic of South Africa in 2012. And this is a badge. That's the badge. Brian. Introducing the others. No I'm going to do it one by one. And what are you asking me to say? I'd like to, okay, can you tell us about the anti-apartheid movement in Britain and how it, and in Scotland particularly, because I think the city of Glasgow declared itself, I can't remind us what the city of Glasgow did because I think you were a key part of that, just to give us a taste of the activism of that time. Maybe I should say as you have, Richard, partly answering your question was that I had to come to London to hear Oh Artambo and the early days of the anti-apartheid movement's struggle and I heard him often then. But then later, of course, he had to tour the world and wasn't as often in Britain as he was elsewhere, building international solidarity, and of course he had a house in London and Adelaide and the family stayed there, which I'm glad to see is now being commemorated. But he finally came to Glasgow in 1988. But that was in the back of the campaign, which, of course, again on since the inception of the anti-apartheid movement, which in the UK was in 1959, the boycott movement, first of all, and then it became a year later, the anti-apartheid movement, and I've seen some of the people here who were in the anti-apartheid movement. And then in Scotland, in the early days of the war, there were local anti-apartheid groups, student groups and so on, and activity. But it wasn't until 1976 that a Scottish committee was formed to coordinate these local groups and trade unions and local authorities and so forth. And although that was the year of Soweto, the Soweto uprising, which often with the anti-apartheid movement it depended on how high the struggle was in South Africa as to what happened in the UK. For example, I can remember a meeting where it was in a low point of the Scottish committee and there were three people at this meeting. And by two votes to one, we defeated the third person who was wanting the anti-apartheid movement to not just take up the issue of South Africa, but also take up the issue of Ireland. And much as we personally have views on Ireland, we knew that one of the key features of the anti-apartheid movement was that if you take up too many issues, then you will lose unity. And so we struggled. And at that time, of course, Ireland was a big issue as it continues to be, but it was very divisive in terms of the anti-apartheid movement. They were defeated and that was, as I say, a low point, it was only three of us there. Other points, of course, when O.R. Tambo addressed the rally in Glasgow Green to send 25 marchers to London to arrive on the day of Mandela's 70th birthday, the 25 were picked because it was one for each year of the years that Mandela had spent in prison. And there were some 30 or 40,000 people in Glasgow Green. So, although the anti-apartheid movement was very successful in the end, in terms of solidarity and mass support and so on, it did ebb and flow like the struggle didn't South Africa itself. But you mentioned Richard Freedom of the City of Glasgow to Mandela. Glasgow was the first city in the world to give freedom of the city to Nelson Mandela in 1981. And maybe I can just say a word about how this happened because it is now kind of part of folklore that this was all very positive and so on. Of course it was, but the lead up to it was less than positive. In 1979, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, an independent, the Lord Provost of Glasgow invited the then South African ambassador to lunch. We held a picket at the city chambers with Placards saying such things as having lunch with the South African ambassador is like eating poison. If Beco knew what you were doing, how would he feel now? Beco, of course, had been murdered by the apartheid regime. This Lord Provost then came out and made a statement to capture the atmosphere of the time. He made a statement which was along the lines you can't expect people just to come out of the jungle and form a government. This was in reference to Zimbabwe. There were plenty of people then who supported apartheid and who thought like that. But this didn't go down well. Not just with us, but it didn't go down well with the Labour group. They threw them out of the Labour group. At the next election, Labour was re-elected. At incoming Lord Provost, we then put under a lot of pressure to compensate for this embarrassment that had happened. Finally, we got agreement that the freedom of the city would be awarded and was in 1981. On the day of the award ceremony in the city chambers, the one we had been picketing with the previous Lord Provost, the Vice President of Nigeria at the time, Alex Sekoumi, accepted the word Mandela's behalf from him. Mandela was still in prison. He was accepting for Mandela in absentia. The Lord Provost was astonished when 16 high commissioners from the Commonwealth came to the ceremony. Separately from that, we had approached the Vice President to see if he would do a particular meeting with the anti-apartheid movement, which he agreed to do because he couldn't do this in the ceremony really, which was to explain why Nigeria had nationalised British petroleum in Nigeria at the time in response to BP-busting sanctions against what was then Rhodesia. So he was very happy to come to an anti-apartheid meeting to explain this. The Lord Provost, when we invited him, said, we had another engagement. And it was only when he heard that the Vice President was coming that the other engagement fell away, or as they say, it was overtaken by a better offer. And he then came to the after lunch, after ceremony, anti-apartheid meeting. Now, at the ceremony, he had, and his officials, had kept me to the side with Ruth Mumpatty, who was then the ANC chief representative, and who, I should say, worked in Tambo's office. And I learnt a lot about Tambo from Ruth Mumpatty. Ruth Mumpatty and Mende Misemang both worked in the Mandela Tambo law practice, which only existed for a few years, and both Mende and Ruth later became chief reps in Britain. And Mende was the first High Commissioner after 94. However, Ruth and I were taken aside because I was arguing that she should be in the platform as the ANC chief representative. But the Lord Provost was unhappy about this, so his officials kept ANC off the platform. That was mainly because they, although they'd been pushed into agreeing that apartheid was a terrible thing and that Mandela should be given the freedom of the city under this mass pressure that they had come under, they still didn't want to be associated with the armed struggle. And so it was a big resistance. And so this Lord Provost then mentioned nothing about the armed struggle at the lunchtime after the ceremony. However, during it, and Alex Iquemi said, is it okay if Brian Filling agrees if I can invite this audience to come and hear me talking about Nigeria's support for the armed struggle and the nationalisation of BP. So our meeting later in the day, the Lord Provost came to it. And then at the banquet in the evening given by the vice president of Nigeria, Ruthma and Patti and I were now at the top table, which was like this, we were above everyone else. And remember earlier in the day we'd been sitting in an interim arguing. And here the Lord Provost in his speech said, and anyone who doesn't support the armed struggle doesn't really understand what a party it is like and why it is necessary to support the armed struggle. And may I just say that in the course of this, of course Oliver Tam will became Commander-in-Chief of Omkonto Wesee's way, the armed wing of ANC, replacing Nelson Mandela because he's in prison. So the kind, gentlemen polite, courteous gentlemen that you talk of, which I agree he was very considerate, very interested in people, very persuasive, very polite, was a Commander-in-Chief of the armed wing. You can't imagine him picking up a gun though, could you? Well, most of the people who lead armies don't pick up guns. You tell many of the American generals who let alone presidents. So he was a normal Commander-in-Chief, which is you do the thinking and the leading, and he did it extremely well. But one has to remember that as well as the kind, considerate, polite gentlemen, as he was described in Western particularly British terms, he was a revolutionary. And that's the bit that they didn't like. They'll put up with you if you're polite and considerate and so on. But a revolutionary, that's a different thing. And of course Western business, given that support for a party and the regime didn't like the ANC until eventually they had to deal with it. So just to finish this little anecdote, the Lord Provost then demanded of the audience the support of the armed struggle. So we thought as the anti-apartheid, we are in here. So we then had the Lord Provost invited by the UN Special Committee against apartheid to launch the worldwide Lord Mayor's petition for the release of Mandela, which was done later that same year. Eventually a couple of thousand mayors, Lord Mayor's and Lord Provost signed the petition. Then he was on a roll by this time. He was now, you know, he'd been at the UN Special Committee in New York. He had done this. And now he was easily persuaded to read Emma Street in Glasgow, which is now Nelson Mandela Place. And it was very opportune that this street should be renamed because it was St George's Place. The stock exchange was in St George's Place. Remember what I said with Western business supporting apartheid, so we had chosen it particularly. But it was even more pertinent because on the fifth floor of the stock exchange was the South African apartheid embassy, where we picketed off them. So the South African apartheid consulate had to look out on the street names Nelson Mandela Place. They refused to use the address and used a post office box. Can you imagine? You know, South African apartheid consulate, South African consulate Nelson Mandela Place, they didn't like that. So they then set up a Scottish South Africa Society and a Scottish South Africa Club to try and counter this. They took councillors, Tory councillors, by the way, to South Africa to prove that the tricameral parliament was set up where there was white parliament, colour parliament and other parliament, you know, but no Africans. And of course the white still had a majority, so this was a kid-on move to our democracy which they tried to sell to the West, including to some of our councillors. And of course they eventually decided they had lost this struggle and closed the consulate. And now that for a number of years I've been on reconciled, I've been campaigning, you know, to reopen this consulate, but budgets don't alert. But that's maybe enough of their Glasgow. Thank you very much for that. Our second speaker is Ken Keeble, who's author of the book London Recruits, a former anti-apartheid volunteer. And yes, tell us about your book. And yeah, looking back on it, the role that played in bringing apartheid to an end. Okay, when I hear that, I always think a bit about Spike Milligan, his book about World War II. Spike Milligan, his book about World War II is called Adolf Hitler, My Party and His Downfall. So we didn't play that much of a part, but we played a part anyway. This is all right for volume. Can you hear me up there? After 1964, when the Rivonia trial came to an end, almost all the ANC members who were not in jail, along with Mandela, had to leave the country to evade arrest and torture. And so they were faced with the problem, how are they going to carry on their liberation struggle when they couldn't go into the country. And the leadership group led by Tambo in exile came up with the brilliant idea of recruiting white, non-South African English-speaking people who could enter South Africa without arousing any suspicion. I was one of those people. I'm very glad to say we got two more of them in the audience. I didn't know this was up to the public. I would have crossed it more along. But we got Bob Newland over there who did a sterling work and spent a lot of time in South Africa, did a lot more than I did, in fact. We got Stuart Round down here who smuggled large quantities of weapons into South Africa in the late 1980s. Can you put your hand up? Give us a wave. So they sent a leadership group to London. This is a four-man group consisting of Joe Slovo, Dr Yusuf Dudu, the leader of the Indian National Congress of South Africa, Jack Hodgson, and the young Ronny Casarals, who was in his 20s at that time and the others were all much older. And Ronny Casarals was given the job of contacting people. They wanted young people because they wanted people with no family responsibilities and no dependents. Of course, if they got arrested, as indeed three of them did and suffered for it. And they wanted people who were politically committed and had to be white people. And of course, if you were one of the South African police or secret police and you're looking out for dangerous people entering the country to do some ANC work, you wouldn't look for someone like me with a white face, a British passport and London accent. That was our disguise. Now, there were two ways in which Ronny went about recruiting people. First of all, he enrolled as a student at the London School of Economics, a lot of left-wing activity going on at the time. And he joined the Socialist Society and he picked people from there who he thought he asked them and they said yes. And he got some marvellous results and marvellous people. Some of them were people of no particular political label, just ready to do the job. Others, a small group of them were members of the International Socialists, which was the predecessor of today's Socialist Workers Party. The other way he found people, and this was the great majority of the people he recruited, was from the London District of the Young Communist League. There was a meeting held between Ronny Casarils and Joe Slavo, on the one side and on the other side was John Gollum, the general secretary of the Communist Party and the international secretary, Jack Waddis. And they agreed that the job of selecting suitable people would be given to George Bridges, who was the London District Secretary of the Young Communist League at that time. And when he retired from that job, his successor, Bob Allen, from Hull, took over the responsibility. I was the second person selected through that method. I was a member of the Young Communist League, having been born into a Communist family. And so George approached me in 1967 at the London District Congress of the Young Communist League and asked me very cautiously if I was willing to do something and so on. And then I went to South Africa and I very cautiously said, eventually said, I've got my final exams coming up at the City University in January. When they're out of the way, yes, I'll be willing to go. So I went to Johannesburg in April of 1968 and I smuggled in 1,200 letters in a false bottom suitcase that were addressed to members of the Indian community from Dr Dudu and did that successfully. And then in 1970, I was asked to go again to find someone to go with me. I recruited my friend Pete Smith, who turned out to be much better at it than I was and went on to work intermittently for the ANC for the next 20 years. And he went for training in the Soviet Union and in Cuba. And he was kind of personal assistant to Ronnie Casarils over a period. And we went to Durban in August of 1970 and we set off some leaflet bombs and a street broadcast. The leaflet bomb was invented in Britain and tested on Hampstead Heath and elsewhere as a device for distributing leaflets without getting caught, basically. And it did it very successfully. It never harmed anyone. It wasn't a bomb in that sense. It was totally not an anti-personal weapon. It was just for distributing leaflets and getting away with it. And the street broadcast was an amplified cassette player. And I'll never forget. We set out all together at the same time at a place where lots of African people had just come home from work in Durban in the whites only city and were gathering ready to go to buses and trains back to the townships where they lived. And so they were all gathered together in one place in Russia. And I'll never forget the opening remarks on the broadcast which went off about the same time as the leaflet bombs. It said, this is the African National Congress. This is the African National Congress. This is the voice of freedom. And that was followed by a singing of and Causes the Galleri Africa, the ANC Anthem by a choir of London Exiles. Now, I didn't do any more work for the ANC after that my personal life took over. In 1990, we all developed a deeply ingrained habit of never speaking about it. And only very, very few, very close members of my family knew that I'd been to South Africa. And the same with all the others who did similar things. And we all kept it very, very quiet as a duty. In 1993, Ronnie Casarals published his book Armed and Dangerous, My Undercover Struggle Against Apartheid, which is a very good book. I recommend everyone to read it. It's not just about South Africa. It's about the world and about Africa and its place in the world and about the Cold War and so on. Very thrilling book, too. And there's one chapter in that called London Recruits. And that's where we got our name. And he... But he gave a very limited account of what had happened. He didn't put any names into the public domain that weren't already there. And he told only a fraction of the story, actually. I think he was being very careful. But in 2005, I had my 60th birthday and I asked myself the question, what have I got to do before I die? And when I'd asked that question, I knew the answer. I must write the story of what I'd done in South Africa. Nobody knew about it. And it would be like it never happened. So I sat down and started. I'd done quite a bit of writing for publication by that time. And I sat down and in three days I wrote the whole thing and all the memories came flooding back. Things I hadn't thought about for years. And then when I'd written that, I thought to myself, no, I won't just publish that. I'll try and contact the other people who were involved with similar things and get them to write their stories and put them all in a book. And whatever happens is bound to be an interesting book. But I had only a very, very limited idea. In fact, I had no idea of the extent of the operation. I now reckon there were about 66 people who could be classified as London recruits and did a huge variety of things. But the main thing is that between 1967 and 1973, the London recruits did some kind of agitational work inside South Africa at least once a year, every year. In those years, 67 to 73. And from 67 to 71, we hit five cities simultaneously. So it hit the headline. It really hit the headlines in South Africa. And it astonished the authorities because they just banged up all the leading ANC members and banished the rest abroad. They thought the whole ANC movement was finished. But there we were letting off leaflet bombs and street broadcasts in five cities at the same time. And that really did knock them. And I wanted to mention that we've got... This is the book, as I've said. All royalties from this book go to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, which is a very good South African charity. And it's being made into a film. And the director of the film, Gordon Main, is up there. I didn't know if he was coming, but he is the fellow with the hair. And he's doing a terrific job. He's done some wonderful research. The film, which comes out in due out about January next year, is going to be a lot more than just the film of the book because of all the research that he and his team have done. There's also a couple of websites about it. There's a website which we started off in 2013, I think it was, Londonrecruits.org.uk. And then there's another website for the film and the trailer and so on, The Progress. That's Londonrecruits.com, and you can look at that. My ambition for this book and for the film is that they will inspire people to fight for a better world. That's the important thing. And I think you can do that. I think it has great educational value. I want to say something else as well. I think the story of the apartheid system and the struggle against it and consequently the life of Tambo and the story of the Londonrecruits can only ever really be properly considered in the context of the Cold War. The fact is that the United States and its allies supported the apartheid regime, not in words but in deeds. The Soviet Union and its allies supported the ANC. That's the fact of the matter. There's a film coming out shortly called Mandela's Gun, which you should look out for. And in that film, there's a CIA agent who openly admits that the CIA told the apartheid regime where they could find Nelson Mandela so that they could beg him up for life. And he justifies it totally in Cold War terms. He said that if the ANC came to power, South Africa would become an ally of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. It would get access to the diamonds and the gold. They couldn't have that. So that's the side they were on. And that's a very important thing to understand. I'm always glad to come and meet people, especially students, and talk about the story. And I think it's an inspiring one. And I'm looking forward to answering questions about it later on. Thank you very much, Ken. So we've heard from the activist who brought political pressure in Britain. We've heard from the harmless leaflet bomber. But now we're going to hear from someone who did actually do some real fighting for South Africa. And his name is Archie Sibeko. But he has another name, too. A nom de guerre zola zembe. And he first fought for freedom as a trade union leader in the 1950s. That he was imprisoned. And faced with a long prison sentence, he managed to flee the country in 1963 as a commander of Mkhonto Isizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, and worked in Tanzania and Zambia. And during the 70s and 80s, he lived in Britain becoming the Western European coordinator of the South African Congress of Trade Unions and traveling widely to get support for the anti-apartheid activities. He went back to South Africa in 1990 and got involved again in union and ANC work, becoming vice-chair of the ANC and the Western Cape. That he's now returned to Britain because he has an illness, sadly. And his wife will come and speak on... Right, okay. So would you like to... have you got another microphone? I'll tell you what, come and sit where I'm sitting and I will stand up so you can sit here. Thank you. Good evening. I'm wearing the head of... Archibald Sibeko. I think it's an honor to present his... view, knowledge of Oratambo. And I'm not going to add anywhere from what he has given me. I'm not going to edit. I'm not going to subtract and so forth. But maybe just before that, because I'm the first to get this speech from Archibald. No one has seen what is written here. But in a short note, this was also the case in my lifetime from 1982. I was the first person to hear what Oratambo says on January 8th until 1991. So it is in privilege also to get this message from him. It goes as follows. I'm very happy that tonight we are celebrating our late president, Oratambo. And that I've been invited to take part. Probably many of you who knew him will agree with me that he was a greatest leader of our movement has ever had. I was lucky enough to have known him for many years and to have worked closely with him from time to time. It was always good to work with him. He was a man who showed respect for other people and listened to them. He was democratic and tolerant. Not only to try to impose his views on others, but trying to move forward by concessors. No doubt these ways of working were what made him so successful in both his international and ANC work. In my view, his three greatest achievements were one, making the armed struggle possible by persuading certain governments to shelter us, to train us, and to provide us with arms. Creating wide support for our liberation struggle throughout most of Africa and many other parts of the world. Keeping the ANC together during long difficult periods in exile when the struggle seemed to be making little progress. Myself, I met OR in December 1956 in Fort Prison, Johannesburg, during a treason trial. 156 of us were kept there for at least a year in one big cell. There were many lectures, discussions, and debates, and we got to know our national leaders well. The next time I saw OR was in 1960. The national leadership had decided that ANC needed an external mission and that he should secretly leave the country to establish it. He passed through Cape Town on his way and met the local leadership to explain what was happening and to say goodbye. Then he became a chauffeur and drove Comrade Ronald Seagal, whose car it was, over the border into Botswana. Three years later, I was one of the first contingents of Ume Konto Weizsizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress, to be sent out for military training. And when we reached Tanzania, OR tambo met us. He arranged various places for our training and we soon moved on, me going to Moscow. That was for my USSR. After a year, we returned to Daesalam and proceeded to Kongwa, where OR tambo had persuaded the Tanzanian government to allow us to have a training camp. Later, OR called me and some others to give us new assignments to open up a joint front while the Zimbabwe Liberation Movement was on the Zambaisi. I was given the responsibility for the crossing of the first MK and Zambaisi joint detachments over the mighty river Zambaisi. OR paid great attention to the details, insisting on coming across the river himself on the reconnaissance the day before the detachment went over, making suggestions to improve safety. He was there too the following morning when they crossed. When the apartheid regime strengthened the buffer zone they had created around South Africa, it became almost impossible for any numbers of us to reach home. And this stalemate led to frustration in our camps. Umkwontowe Ciswe Kedas became desertified and angry and demanded change. OR responded to this not by imposing discipline on mutinias but by agreeing to a conference in Morogoro, Tanzania, where there was thorough discussion of problems by delegates from Umkwontowe Ciswe and from all sections of ANC in exile. Solutions and consensus reached and many changes in the leadership were made. This was how Oliver Tambo did things. I move on to trade union solidarity work and did not see much of OR again until April 1982. I was in Maputo, Mozambique, organizing a conference when OR arrived on his way to Maseru in Lisutu for the funerals of the victims of a South African raid which had bombed an area where ANC families and local people were living. He insisted on me going with him. We flew in a Lisutu airplane a six-seater. It flew very low over South African territory casting its shadow on the ground below looking like a giant mosquito. It struck me that when we were sitting we were a sitting target for the enemy but we got there safely and I was able to speak giving condolences on behalf of Sato which was the South African Congress of Trade Unions to the large crowds at the funeral. This was the last time I was able to spend my lengthy time with this great man. What a loss it was to the movement that he did not survive in good health to contribute to the events of 1994. May we all, and particularly the ANC leadership, long remember him and aim to live up to the example that he set us. Achi Siweko or Zola Zembe as known to many, Umkonto Wesiswe and outside South Africa. Thank you. That was a wonderful presentation and an understanding of... who would like to ask some questions? Sorry, did you want to...? Can I... This country is very cold, I know. I'm sure it is cold. I'm Gula. I don't speak any other language. I'm sorry. I'm short. I think that we should be proud to talk with our languages. I would like to say that this is an English-speaking country. I want to thank the ambassadors when they are already 100 years old. I would like to thank the ambassadors when they are already 100 years old. I would like to thank Delayo, the second one. I'm also thankful to you. The first time I saw Utambo, Utambo, I don't speak any other language except Ongoven. These are... and others, I repeat what they said here because it would be nice coming from me. These are the kings of South Africa. Even in Ongoven, whatever you do, you think about them. Is it right that I'm doing it? Is it wrong? Because they won't do things that is going to destroy A and C. Of course, all of them Utambo is number one. That is what I wanted to say here. If Utambo was not around us at that time, we would like Amazon to start another one. I do start trouble sometimes. But it's good, you see. People talk. It's very, very important. Probably, if we're not talking, it wouldn't be here today. It's very, very important indeed. The first time I saw, that's what I was saying, in 1956, I've never seen them before. Some of them are coming from trans guy, trans guy, trans guy, trans guy, trans guy. All of them, if you look at them, in Kokiri's Congress, all of them look, check, where do, where do they come from? It is those people. All of them, a lot. Now, I just wanted to thank the ambassador to do this thing. And I was told, he's in South Africa, in something else there. And he, he comes like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, Most democratic leader of our country, those who have seen him before, he doesn't afraid to discuss with anybody whether the young boy, whether the old boy, no, is never afraid or fed up and so on. Just discuss. And even when we're crossing for the first time a wangi, he was, I belong to those who are looking around all my soldiers. What happened somewhere tonight? I'm a soldier, I see, because I flunked a little on to my soldier. My dear, I haven't seen him before, working on the Ipali and Ipali land. I wish it would be brilliant if he would be able to launch it at the start of later. Thank you very much, people. You've given us a hard act to follow. But we have some time for a few questions, but we'll have to make them fairly quick. So who would like to ask a question? Yes, the lady up there. Hello, my name is Ifi, I'm from Belgium, and Belgium has a totally different story. I'm half Beninese, half Belgium, and I'm almost 40 years old. We learned about apartheid in primary school. It was like a fairy tale, like all the poor Africans were, finally the apartheid is over and those poor Africans, this typical Belgium attitude, like this very Catholic thing. And it was never actually really explained how awful the system was, but what I am interested in is how long does a system like this, like apartheid, apartheid, it's a Dutch word, I speak Dutch, how long does it linger in the subconscious of people, the mental apartheid, I mean, because it's a great monster, I think, also maybe even 5, 10, 20, 30 years later, and how many generations does a country need to decolonize? Would anybody like to respond to that? The question for South Africa did not for us to answer. No, I just, last year I was in South Africa and somebody called me boss, and I said, why do you say that? And he said, because I don't know you, and I'm not sure. So it lingers on, it lingers on in some places. Yeah, another question, or another statement here. This question really, when you gave your... Can you hear at the back? Is that... Sorry. Yeah, okay, yeah. That's all right, yes, if you... Yeah, there's a mic there. When you gave your introduction, Richard, you mentioned the, eventually the amalgamation of the black consciousness movement with the wider liberation movement in South Africa, and I think you attributed some of that to the intervention, the good offices of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Now, I have great respect for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and I wouldn't want to take away anything from his illustrious record, but if you have a look at Mandela's own autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, you'll find in there that Mandela's own view was that the clinching factor was that this new generation of young black consciousness radicals and so on were coming into the South African prison system. By coming into the prison system, they were making contact in the very intense way that we know happened, and it became, in a sense, a sort of education, a sort of university, and that for Mandela, that was the key factor in achieving the unity that later was so successful. I think that... Yeah, I think you're right, I think that's true. There was a question or a statement here from the gentleman at that. General Mashobu, I'm one of the ex-Kontoese-Sizue soldier, and now a professional soldier in the South African National Defense Force. I'm a witness of the great leadership by Oliver regional Tambo, as he was the commander-in-chief. Maybe from the gentleman that has just posed the question of the youth that went into Robin Island. Indeed, the role played by OR, because most of them were M.K. Cardas that had undertaken operations in the country, and they would be caught and of course arrested and sentenced to different sentences, out sentenced to 20 years. Indeed, coming from the education by OR Tambo, because he was an educator, he groomed us, he educated us. If we talk about non-racialism, non-sexist South Africa, that is OR, he taught us coming from the rural areas, from the townships, with nothing, no politics, no education. We had abandoned education in 1976, but when he received us in the camps in Angola and wherever, he started us from the bottom to be commanders, to be educators, to go back and regroup and reach out and reproduce ourselves within the masses. And that's what we did. But going back, I wanted to also to commemorate Achille over there when he spoke about OR taking him from Mozambique, flying him with that big mosquito-sized airplane to Lesotho. His statement in that funeral, because I was ready to go to the front wanting to go and fight, because that happened on the 9th of December, he says if the enemy knew how much restraint we waited to struggle, that is OR Tambo. He also, I'm just going to quote him again, he says a nation that does not care for its youth does not deserve a future. Nelson Mandela in the funeral of OR, when he addresses us being shattered by the death of a leader, the falling of a leader, he says he did more than anyone could do amongst us. He did more than anyone could do. Yes, there's a gentleman here. Thanks. My name is Natalia Labia. I'd just like to make a quick comment that I think from my perspective it was a very inspirational message from Mr. Subeko, thank you very much. At this moment I think it's only appropriate for all South Africans in the effect of sort of diaspora as we are to take the incredible example of yourself and so many other South Africans for the work they did in exile and to continue it as the struggle continues for the soul of the ANC and for the country at large. And I think it would be great for SOAS and for the African society here to act as a forum for debate and for activism because there's definitely a role that those South Africans in London and elsewhere can play in broadcasting the message of what needs to continue happening back in South Africa. So I, for one, as a South African in London, very much hope to see that. Thank you. Any, yes, one, yeah, I'll put the back there. It's great to hear the role of British activists in destabilizing the regime in South Africa, but it's an unfortunate fact that the British establishment, the state apparatus and a lot of our other institutions were actually involved in popping up the regime. The TUC is a case in point that was involved in collaborating with the Secret Services in popping up the whole of the apartheid apparatus and destabilizing the ANC and other resistance organizations. Given the kinds of revelations that we receive all the time nowadays about the role of our agencies, we've had revelations in Ireland that the British Secret Services were actually involved in planting bombs and claiming them to be IRA bombs. Given all of that and Ken's suggestion that we need to be working towards a better world, how do we work towards questioning the role of our intelligence agencies? Because it seems to me that their defining apparatus is that they're forever able to convince the public that they work in the national interest. And I don't see in any which way how our state apparatus worked in our national interest in what they did in South Africa. Yes, OK. Do you want to quick comment on that? Yes, it's a big question. It was very difficult to answer in a word. But we're in the middle of an election campaign in which some of us are hoping to get a much better prime minister with a better foreign policy than we've ever had before. And I think that could make a difference. Also, we know, of course, the Secret Service will be up against Jeremy Corbyn as they are, as we speak, I'm sure. It's a big question, but we mustn't be defeatist about it. We can win. The reason is we are many, they are few. That's why the people can win against the state apparatus. Right. Oh, sorry. Excuse me, Richard. Yes. Yes, you've got the mic. Yes. And after that, John, about to speak. So I'm Suresh Khan, but I'm from an organization called Action for Southern Africa, which is a successor organization to the anti-parthite movement. And I was the vice chair of the anti-parthite movement towards the end of the period when South Africa became liberated. The comment I wanted to make partly in response to the question over there is I think the issue should be that we should be active. We should get involved. We should find out what's going on. And we should campaign against what is wrong. And that's what many of us did during the apartheid era. And I think ORTAMBO played a huge, huge role in galvanizing the international community. You've heard from the general about and from speakers up there about what OR did within South Africa and what he did in terms of being the commander-in-chief of the armed wing. But also what was very important. Remember, after the Rivonia trial in 1963, the leadership of the ANC was thrown into prison. And activism within the country was at a low end. Of course, in the end it was the activism of the people of South Africa itself, which liberated South Africa. We mustn't forget that. But what happened is our governments, the U.S. government and the United Kingdom government were collaborating with the apartheid regime. Our role within the anti-apartheid movement here was to galvanize support against the apartheid. And I would very much like to emphasize the role that OR had in going around the world in gathering support across the African states, across Europe and of course Eastern Europe and across the rest of the world. I was born in India and the first country to impose sanctions on South Africa was of course India, back in 1947 when India was formed. But OR went around the world to galvanize that support against the apartheid regime. And I'd like to know if any of the speakers would like to make any comment about that. I'll leave it. But of course the African National Congress took its name from the Indian National Congress. That was a very close collaboration then. Sorry, you would like to speak. I would like to fall on from that question about OR Tambo's role in terms of international solidarity because of course the boycott campaign which was launched of course by Lutuli, Chief Albert Lutuli who was a predecessor of Mandela and Tambo spread worldwide. But of course it then led on to the sanctions campaign which was a campaign to get states to impose sanctions and not just people to boycott. Margaret Thatcher, she said famously at the Commonwealth heads of state that she was the last to give in to the call for sanctions. And she said even her friend Ronald Reagan had to give in before her because Congress had moved. So Britain in terms of the British state was the last remaining supporter really of apartheid of the real consequence. Of course it was Israel and so on who also collaborated but it really reduced that where Britain was the key final supporter. It's interesting that the movement in Britain became so widespread in terms of the boycott and so deep rooted that the campaign for sanctions became a mass campaign. And I think it was one of the factors in terms of it's often referred to why did Mrs Thatcher get pushed out and it's often said it was about the poll tax but she had also lost in terms of the argument about apartheid South Africa because they supported the Tory government supported the apartheid regime for as long until it really became virtually impossible. And it does show about these mass campaigns and that's where Omar Tambo had a special characteristic which was that we talked earlier about Commander-in-Chief but also very kind, respectful, interesting people and so on. But he was much wider than has been explained. I mean he really had a deep love of culture for example and he saw how important culture was as a weapon in the struggle. His son Dali Tambo became a key figure in terms of developing a mandala which was the ANC Cultural Ensembler which toured the world explaining in terms of through culture the state of apartheid and the struggle against it. He also, Omar Tambo had a deep respect based on his non-sexism for women and their role in the struggle and he encouraged and promoted women and remember that South African society was deeply chauvinist and that I think is one of the great legacies about the role of women now in South Africa post-apartheid comes from Omar Tambo's understanding and of course he was a negotiator. He eventually concluded that we could not win the armed struggle against this regime. We could inflict blows on them but ultimately they had to be defeated by the underground struggle, the armed struggle, sanctions and international solidarity and Omar Tambo linked all of these in a fashion which was really I think quite incredible given that he was up against the whole of the West for so long and eventually moved there. So his role in terms of creating negotiations and so on is amongst one of his other great attributes and I think it has to be said that whilst Nelson Mandela became the worldwide revered statesman and figure one has to remember that it was Omar Tambo during the 27 years that Mandela was in prison it was Omar Tambo who led the ANC, united them, kept the leadership, won this world support and I think he's greatly underestimated in terms of the role he plays as an individual. I'm very pleased that when you fly into Joburg you land at Omar Tambo Airport and acknowledge him. Yes, there's a question. Yeah, John. Thanks, I'll stand if I may. John Buttersby from South Africa. Very moving address from Archie Seberg. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and to Richard for reading the first part. Brian Filling who hosted us when I was with Brand South Africa for the Commonwealth Games and Mandela Place and taught us, or told us about the amazing event of Mandela's visit to Glasgow. And Ken Keeble of course who was the inspired thinker behind this wonderful Ocon of the London recruits. I saw the trailer two nights ago and it looks like it's going to be a very exciting film. I just want to tell a short anecdote if I may. It's not nearly as dramatic, as exciting as a lot of what we've heard tonight. But I was a journalist based here in London for the South African Morning Group brand daily mail South African newspapers from 83 to 87. And I used to write a column in which I would share with the readers in South Africa what the ANC was saying over here as far as I was able to do so without censorship kicking in in South Africa the suppression of communism act and the anti-terrorism act and so forth. And I became more and more uncomfortable about this role that had been thrust into. And even with that fairly mild stuff most of the newspapers stopped using my column because they thought I'd fallen under the influence of international terrorism and so forth. But the editor of the Cape Times, Tony Hurt continued publishing this column and I then wrote a column saying I can no longer censor myself in what I can tell you about what the ANC is saying so I'm going to do an interview with Oliver Timber and if the editors want to censor it that's fine, that's their decision. But as a correspondent my duty to do that. So Tony Hurt picked up on this and he called me and he said hang on, hang on, I'm coming to London. So I said okay, I'm coming to London. And clearly he didn't say he was coming to interview Oliver Timber but that's what I gathered from it and a friend of Gidwalla who was my contact at the time said look you know we can set up an interview with Oliver Timber, we can do it. So Tony Hurt took out a long story very short because Tony writes about it in his book cut a long story short we arranged the interview through Franny, we went up to Muswell Hill to the Timber home and were very cordially received to myself, Tony Hurt and the photographer and we sat for three hours and Tony had his tape recorder on for the whole interview and he was very cryptic about the whole thing you know he said thanks very much for setting it up he didn't say what he was going to do with it and he headed straight back to South Africa got his secretary who had been sworn to see to transcribe the interview and the only other person he's told was his deputy editor because he was going to see the proofs of the paper that day anyway so he sort of briefed him on it. Peered the next day, 2,500 words interview the first time Oliver Timber had been heard in South Africa for 30 years so his image was one of a bloodthirsty terrorist totally demonised and we've heard today quite correctly about the two sides of the man, the gentle, polite diplomat and the revolutionary but South Africa's had another image of him and that was as completely and totally negative and the media image wasn't much better than the public image, in fact the media image of course formed the public image so the interviewer appeared Tony Heard was duly arrested, marched off to police headquarters and held for questioning his publisher gave him very little support and when it was more respectable to do so 18 months later fired him and that incident it turns out in retrospect when that interview was published in the first quarter of 1986 it was almost exactly the same time that Nelson Mandela had started to speak to the commissioner of prisoners in Polesmoor which of course led to the interview with Kubica Tseo the justice minister and eventually with P.W. Buerta so it was a fascinating kind of confluence of what was going on inside the prison and what was going on outside and that played itself out over the next four years so my memory of Oliver Timber is I have to say as an extremely an extremely impressive leader somebody who listened extremely carefully considered things extremely carefully and when he spoke it was with great although it was with a quiet voice it was with great authority and great gravitas and it was an honour to have known him I met him on several occasions but of course that three hours in Muswell Hill was a very special occasion and I think that that interview in its own quiet way there were no guns or shots fired but it was a bombshell in South Africa because having been completely demonised people were reading an absolutely rational reasonable account of why things had to change and they had to change very fundamentally and very quickly so that's my story, thanks I think on that note I think it would be difficult for anybody to follow so and it is eight o'clock so I think we're going to have to call this meeting to a close thank you all very very much for coming it's been an absolutely fascinating evening I'm glad it's being recorded because I don't think there'll be very many more meetings like this well maybe but I mean this is I can see that this is not something that comes around every year this is an amazing occasion so thank you all very much for coming and thank our panellists yes please and now we have a a poem is that right, yeah Jesus yes please good, I'm so sorry but I don't I haven't got your name on my crib sheet that's alright I was told that so it's all done I was supposed to ambush the stage tonight so I was glad to do that my name is Leah Tom South African and I'm very grateful to be here thanks so much Brent South Africa the Embassy and of course maybe just as a quick anecdote five seconds a tumble for me I think one of the greatest things about him that I suspect might have been understated is his humility and much of the fact that Mandela became the global figure that he did was as a conscious decision that was taken collectively by the ANC to actually make Mandela the face of oppression so he could have ordinarily put himself forward as he was the leader at the time but he didn't and also somebody said to him you are the leader of the ANC and he said actually our leaders are in prison so he was always he tended to be more resident and very careful not to put himself too much at the forefront and I suspect that is a quality that I take away from his life and I'm grateful for it I will read something really short and precisely primarily because he was based in London and I'm glad that at the end it was the end of the discussion we came to the discussion around how Macritesha for example resisted imposing sanctions on South Africa and the paradox of Oliver Tumbler living in this country mobilizing the international community to put pressure on the South African government and at the same time living in a country that was seemingly a resistant to the idea of imposing sanctions over and above that this country had its own racial problems so I'll read this piece based on perhaps that speaks to how beautiful this city is and how this city primarily is built by the labor, the cheap labor partly of South Africans not withstanding of course slavery I titled it Clean Before You Pray The city is no place to begin prayers from trees buried under concrete with no crimes to their names we know how we built them and how we slaughtered the rebels oil and gold have a sauce so does civilisation fate arenas reverberate on national anthems god and savagery subliminally inseparable we are not taught but drenched in it the state of slumber and avoidance of truth tired roads the flesh of the dispossessed door handles of bolts bones of the dead the sight of a great city a brazen monument of untold mass graves left somewhere after a handshake a city maverick sprays a question on the wall and the mayor on Wall Street calls the fire engine with the riot squad they wash the blood off the walls the weapon is silence it is silence it is silence it is silence it is silence and it is in their hands the city's shiny museum thrusting its renovated facade into the sky an old church building still standing in denial the missing verses are still missing the scrolls on display and the paintings unveiling the extent of the scam the kids who leave the hip hop that went over the heads of kings of the limelight have no gathering place left to keep the intention provocative the olympic flame driving homelessness driving the homeless out of the city there are a million reasons to keep the city unspoiled to dispose of lives which inconvenience the good story of this amphitheater so we keep walking into buildings and this opium the same tale we inherit and hand over to the young we mean not to hum them but our complicity drowns them in the orchestrated silence that will start their own madness if we begin our prayers here the wave will bring down the towers which house the ring leaders of loan sharks the man who want to build us more roads and prisons all in the name of what is good for the people the good people living in the refuge of religious answers the norm of pathological patience is an actual fact and the rise of motivational books the cruelty of a diagnosis deferred ganja smokers in a city mounted with bill bought on steroid a beautiful city has been built and daily laborers must be thankful the alarm clock must keep ringing and amusement parks obstructing the space where broken faith can be seen and unhindered and unfiltered every addiction starts with a promise and the city no doubt also magnetic a drag will never tell you what it will do to you the city shifts the files and shows you what you're not looking for praying from a place like this is there a place in the body that is quiet in there something will speak and when we get off our knees there will be no tomorrow until the names of rebels and the broken are inscribed on the walls of this city that's been looking away from its doing generations of caregivers and cleaners are still without their due inheritance someone is paying the price for the long glass carrying the beautiful buildings and it's not those with the most to say about why the city must reach the sky now what did we do what did we do with the hands with which we would carry one another or the response that the rebel was hammering into a rock when he said no I do not I do not dream of ever making it on my own I dread the islands you make of people the smell of the old men's dead body finally pulls a neighbor to his door the note on the floor is a long letter the note is a long letter and what could is a long letter and what could open the human heart but who dwells on the echoes of a random dead and the city is always louder than reason recreational needles abused no less than the immunization of ourselves against everything thank you very much it's very moving thank you now I call on the South Africa High Commissioner to just give a some closing remarks thank you very much your excellencies diplomatic colleagues distinguished guests particularly the panel that is sitting in front of us that is engaged with all of us ladies and gentlemen thank you on behalf of the government of South Africa and its people I'm delighted that tonight we celebrated the legacy of our Tambo in a form of a lecture where speakers shared with us their experiences let me start by indicating that the year 2017 marks the centenary of the late Oliver Richard Tambo who played an integral role in the liberation of South Africa he dedicated his life in pursuit of equality and justice for all South Africans and was one of the founding fathers of our constitutional democracy let me extend my appreciation to the speakers who took all the effort to make sure that they honor our invitation to be part of the centenary celebration I would like to thank the audience you were fantastic it is highly appreciated that you also took time to attend this event to the school of Oriental and African Studies University of London thank you for working with us to prepare the event most of all for allowing us to use this magnificent venue to blend South Africa and the Royal African Society thank you once again to all of you for your contribution the event is one of the series of events that we are going to celebrate the legacy of our Tambo which means they still some more that will happen in the name of our Tambo please do watch the space finally let me thank you thank you for attending this event again I hereby invite you to the reception at the Brunei suit which is the venue above this auditorium I thank you all thank you very much High Commissioner and thank you SOAS as well and Brian Filling, Ken Keeble and I think Star of the Evening Archie Subeke