MESSAGE OF SUPPORT AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE OF THE LATE ADELAIDE TAMBO BY THE
PRESIDENT OF COSATU WILLY MADISHA, 4 February 2007
Programme Director, the Tambo family, the President of our movement
and the Republic, the First lady, leaders of the Alliance, the
Women's League, the Youth League, leaders and members of our
Movement and honoured guests
The workers of SA, organised under the banner of COSATU, rise to
join the nation in mourning the passing of Mama-Adelaide Tambo.
For many decades during our struggle for liberation, we have known
her as our mother, who together with our father O.R. Tambo, led
tens of thousands of liberation fighters in horrible conditions
of exile, whilst at the same time managing to keep alive struggle
activism on the home front.
Mama Tambo sacrificed the milieu of comfort and warmth of a home,
which many did, albeit under the erstwhile apartheid conditions.
A revolutionary in her own right, she refused to play second fiddle
to the role played by that renowned father of the South African
revolution, comrade O.R. Tambo. Thousands of our comrades and
leaders today, be it those in parliamentary politics, state institutions
and other spheres of transformation, passed through her hands
and parental guidance when they arrived and lived in those harsh
exile conditions.
As workers of SA, we are left with no doubt that if she was not
there to lend the monumental support she did to the late father
of our liberation struggle, OR Tambo, then the freedom of our
people could have been postponed. Workers are convinced that
O.R. could not have succeeded to build and hold the ANC together
for more than three decades without her support and guidance.
We, who are leaders today in structures assigned to us by this
liberation movement, know how difficult it is to spend quality
time with our families, but that can never be compared to what
mama Adelaide and the Tambo family went through, all because
of their quest to deliver freedom to all the people of SA.
For all this we thank her, and this country's workers know already
that a chapter on her contribution already appears in the struggle
history of our people. For the fact that she refused to stay
at home until she passed on, and enjoy the fruits of liberation
she helped deliver and chose to continue working for the poor,
and in particular the disabled children, is proof enough of her
dedication to the total attainment of freedom for all.
Today, SA is free, our people are united, we are respected beyond
our seas and by different peoples of the world. All these because
of her and her generation of leaders.
She passed away when we needed her the most, when we were looking
forward to her guidance as we address momentous challenges of
transformation, unemployment, poverty and disease. Those are
challenges which if not addressed successfully, will reverse
all gains achieved for our country by mama Tambo and those who
passed before her, either through the hangman's noose, bullets
or torture by the erstwhile apartheid state, or unbearable exile
conditions.
The passing of mama Tambo is yet another indication that our country
is gradually and sadly being robbed of a generation; a generation
of dedicated, dignified, unified and disciplined cadres; cadres
who were dedicated to the attainment of indivisible freedoms
for which they were prepared to die. That is a generation that
ensured that the ANC grew to this age of being almost a century
old, the oldest on our continent.
Today, many of us, thousands of whom are in leadership positions,
do not know the real founding principles of this movement. We
do not know innumerable policies adopted in hundreds of structural
meetings and conferences this passing generation convened. That
is why we can even distort some of the information policies and
resolutions they adopted. Because some of them are still alive,
they must not abandon us, but we too must seek facts from them.
The question usually asked by hundreds of liberation movements
on our continent and the entire globe is, how did the ANC manage
to survive for almost a century. The right answer which they
have always been given is that the generation of mama Tambo believed
in unity of the movement.
They subscribed to a milieu of respect of the movement structures
and its leadership; that generation believed that differences
are addressed within the movement structures, that open debates
must be allowed and we must protect those whose points of view
we differed; that comrades must not lie in order for them to
attain their selfish ends; that they must not destroy others,
on whose shoulders they will stand in order to be popular, that
they must never play victim so that they forever can be in the
limelight.
The question we now must ask is whether those who remain have the
capacity to keep the ANC together. I don't believe we can, unless
we copy from Mama Tambo, that for this movement to reach another
hundred years, we must remain united, stop lies and respect ideas
of others.
We must not meet in corners of darkness and say who we destroy
so that we can emerge. Equally, we must defy as a movement those
who want to use their knowledge attained in their privileged
positions given to them by this movement, to stop others from
engaging, or ridiculing them for being "ignorant".
If we do all these, we will undo all the good work mama Tambo
and her generation fought for.
There are times when some of us feel ashamed of being leaders in
circumstances such as todays and this must be corrected.
Workers hope that she will rest in peace and once again we thank
her for all she sacrificed and gave to our nation.
Amandla!!!
