The renaming of Johannesburg International Airport to Oliver Reginald Tambo International Airport (ORTIA) would increase its global competitiveness and its class as a world airport, Airports Company South Africa CEO Monhla Hlahla said on Friday. With every arrival and departure the name of Oliver Tambo would live on, Hlahla said.

The renaming took place on October 27, the 89th anniversary of Tambo’s birth on October 27, 1917.

Friday’s event, held at hangar eight at the airport, was attended by President Thabo Mbeki, Ekurhuleni mayor Duma Nkosi, Cabiner Ministers Jeff Radebe and Pallo Jordan, former president Nelson Mandela and the Tambo family.

Unveiling of Ortia signage and the bust of the late OR Tambo took place simultaneously.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mbeki declared that “if we do not retain our memory of ourselves, encapsulated in such inspiring lives as that of OR Tambo, we will fail properly to redefine ourselves as a new nation.

“And yet, even today, not everybody in our country agrees that OR Tambo, this great son of our people, should serve as such a national reference point,” Mbeki lameneted.

Tambo, a freedom fighter in South Africa’s struggle for liberation, founded the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League in 1944, together with Mandela and the late Walter Sisulu.

After a five-year banning order was served on Tambo following his acquittal in the Rivonia treason trial in 1959, he fled South Africa the next year in order to set up the ANC's mission-in-exile and to mobilise international opinion against apartheid.

Tambo spent many years as an ANC office bearer, becoming secretary-general in 1955, deputy president in 1958 and president in1967.

He ended his 30-year exile in 1990 when he returned to South Africa on December 13.

However, he died a year before the ANC won the country's historic all-race elections in 1994.