Speaking on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the SACP 30 years ago in London, President OR had this to say about the alliance:

“To be true to history, we must concede that there have been difficulties as well as triumphs along the path, as, traversing many decades, our two organizations have converged towards a shared strategy of struggle. Ours is not merely a paper alliance, created at conference tables and formalized through the signing of documents and representing only an agreement of leaders. Our alliance is a living organism that has grown out of struggle. We have built it out of our separate and common experiences. It has been nurtured by our own endeavours to counter the total offensive mounted by the National Party, in particular against all opposition and against the very concept of democracy. It has been strengthened through resistance to the vicious onslaught against both the ANC and the SACP by the Pretoria regime, it has been fertilized by the blood of countless heroes, many of them are unnamed and unsung.”

This message is relevance to the alliance today, more than ever before. If one feels there is something wrong or inadequate in the alliance one have a duty as part of it to consolidate and advance its interests. There is no room for armchair revolutionaries in this movement. These are people whilst part of the alliance, see everything wrong with the alliance and instead of correcting those, they throw tantrums like spoiled babies.

We need to behave like true revolutionaries whose purpose in this world is to change the world for the better. There are no quick fixes. Like the road to social progress, it is always under construction. If we cannot be the best then be amongst the best. This means conviction to our cause of building a developmental state; it means selfless sacrifice to ensure that through our contribution amongst others, we propel our nation to high planes of social progress.

To be a revolutionary, as Che Guevara said, means sacrificing not only in heroic ventures but sacrifice all the time. It is about learning to help even in small tasks where your fellow comrades and compatriots are involved in. It is also about being jealous in ensuring that we invest in all our children but particularly ensuring the African child has a place in the future’s sun. Less disruption in her education today means less disruption to her life tomorrow. To this extent, the opposite is also true.

There cannot be any better life for any nation without education. We need to continue to play our role as part of the revolutionary movement, whose spearhead turns 100 years in less than three months. We have to remind ourselves that there were scholars before us, who put progress of an African top in their agenda. We have got to drink in humanity’s fountain of knowledge in order to overcome today’s challenges.

Let us fully grasp the essence of our forebears (like Pixley Ka Isaka Seme) thoughts on Africa and her regeneration. From that point we then measure our standing today against such perspectives. If we do that we will realize that these were no demagogues. They were not spitting fire to fan the flames for conflict and disunity in society, let alone in the movement. They stood for unity. Theirs was to stimulate and lead the national intellectual discourse with no temptation nor desperation to attract headline news.

Those who spit fire to fan the flames for conflict and disunity do so in order to be seen as more revolutionary than anyone else, when in fact they are empty-phrase-mongers. Perhaps Shakespeare put this perfectly in the play Macbeth, when he says: “A tale told by an idiot full of sounds and fury but signifying nothing.” No, not with the pioneers of our struggle.

The example would be when Pixley Ka Isaka Seme won the Columbia University’s highest oratorical honour, the George William Curtis medal, on 5th April 1906, speaking on the subject “The Regeneration of Africa.” He displayed his genius under this topic to a congregation of students and professors of this University as he stated:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have chosen to speak to you on this occasion upon the regeneration of Africa. I am an African and I set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion. Many have tried to compare races on the basis of some equality. In all the works of nature, equality, if by it we mean identity, it is an impossible dream! Then search the universe, you will find no two units alike. The scientist tells us there are no two cells, no two atoms, identical.”

Nyambose continues:

“I would ask you not to compare Africa to Europe or to any other continent. I make this request, not from any fear that such comparison might bring humiliation to Africa. The reason I have stated, a common standard is impossible… The giant is awakening! From the four corners of the Earth, Africa’s sons, who have been proved through fire and sword, are marching through the future’s golden door bearing the records of deeds of valour done.”

I want to end this seminal work with this quotation:

“He has refused to camp forever on the borders of the industrial world, having learnt that knowledge is power, he is educating his children. You find them in Edinburgh, Cambridge and in the great schools of Germany. These return to their countries like arrows, to drive darkness from the land. I hold that his industrial and educational initiatives and his untiring devotion to these activities must be regarded as positive evidences of the process of regeneration.”

Through this work, Seme was outlining the tasks of the newly-formed African middle class. A generation that never betrayed its national duty. In his book titled: “The wretched of the Earth” Frantz Fanon makes this point even clearer when he says: “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”

Education is a means of promoting good citizenship as well as preparing people of our land for the need of a modern economy in a democratic society. When we educate people we arm them with the intellectual and cognitive tools and means not only to understand the world and their lives’ social experience, but also to change it. We can only succeed to achieve these things if only we remind ourselves that we are revolutionaries.

In knowing that, it means remembering that organization plays a key role in the life of a revolutionary. But it also lies in knowing that revolutionaries are not an abstract entity from nowhere, and are no super human beings. They are part of a revolutionary movement as our late President OR pointed out. This is so because without organization, ideas after some initial momentum, start losing their effect. They become routine, degenerate into conformity and end up simply in memory.

As we prepare for the Centenary Celebrations of our movement, we need to do so without being distracted by a lot of noise from empty vessels. Let us stick to what we know best, principles that have stood the test of time. These amongst others are: unity, humility, revolutionary honesty, discipline, democratic centralism reigning supreme.

Let us walk on the footsteps of giants like President OR Tambo with his unassuming character which was not based on raw and uncontrollable desire for power at all cost. People talk about themselves these days, people nominate themselves for positions in the movement these days, and this must be uprooted within our movement.