The Department of Military Veterans

The Department remembers Oliver Reginald Kaizana “OR” Tambo

27 October 2020

On this day, the Department of Military Veterans joins South Africans, as they commemorate what would have been the 100th birthday of Oliver Tambo, one of the country’s most important revolutionary leaders. The Department is also celebrating Tambo’s significance contribution to the country’s transition from apartheid to democracy.

The Department brings attention to OR Tambo’s combined exceptional leadership quality, and total dedication to make South Africa a better country through education. He was renowned for his fair, inclusive and embracing leadership. OR’s record of revolutionary leadership underpinned values of humility, selflessness and foresight.

In 1960, after the Sharpeville massacre, then ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli instructed Tambo to leave South Africa as an international diplomat of the ANC. His task was to mobilize a worldwide economic boycott. The military wing of the ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe was launched a year later and within two years leaders of the ANC were facing charges of treason in the Rivonia Trial. Tambo’s task was to alert the world to the horrors of apartheid South Africa, and to seek assistance and support from newly independent states in Africa.

Tambo was directly responsible for organizing active guerilla units. Along with his comrades Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, and Walter Sisulu, Tambo directed and facilitated several attacks against the apartheid state. In a 1985 interview, Tambo was quoted as saying, "In the past, we were saying the ANC will not deliberately take innocent life. But now, looking at what is happening in South Africa, it is difficult to say civilians are not going to die."

When he returned after his time in exile he received much support. Some of that support even came from old rivals. However, because of his stroke in 1989. It was harder for him to fulfill his duties as President of the ANC, so in 1991 Nelson Mandela took over as president of the ANC.

It was Tambo himself who asked Reggio Emilia to mint Isithwalandwe Medals, the greatest of the freedom fighters honors. OR’s grave was declared a National Heritage site in October 2012.

In 1985 he said “We have succeeded to mobilize and unite millions of people to reject the legitimacy of the apartheid regime, to unite behind the organized democratic forces of our country as their authentic representatives and to accept consciously the perspective of a united struggle for a free South Africa, refusing to be misled by false promises of reform and gradual adaptation or amendment of the apartheid system.

South African political icon and the second Commander in Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe Oliver Tambo, embodied the values of unity, sacrifice, humility, honesty, discipline and mutual respect.