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Unite! Mobilise! Fight On! – 1980

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This
message was Mandela’s call after the Soweto uprising of 1976. It was published
by the ANC on 10 June 1980, with an introduction by O R Tambo, President of the
ANC at the time.

The
African National Congress brings you this URGENT CALL TO UNITY AND MASS ACTION
by political prisoners on Robben Island to all patriots of our motherland.
Nelson Mandela and hundreds of our comrades have been in the racist regime’s
prisons for more than 17 years. This message by Nelson Mandela addressed to the
struggling masses of our country was written to deal with the present crisis
gripping our enemy and in the aftermath of the Soweto uprisings. It was
smuggled out of Robben Island prison under very difficult conditions and has
taken over two years to reach us. None the less we believe the message remains
fresh and valid and should be presented to our people. His call to unity and
mass action is of particular importance in this Year of the Charter – 25th
anniversary of the Freedom Charter. The ANC urges you to respond to this call
and make 1980 a year of united mass struggle.

Oliver
Tambo: President, ANC

MANDELA’S CALL

RACISTS
RULE BY THE GUN!

The gun
has played an important part in our history. The resistance of the black man to
white colonial intrusion was crushed by the gun. Our struggle to liberate
ourselves from white domination is held in check by force of arms. From
conquest to the present the story is the same. Successive white regimes have
repeatedly massacred unarmed defenseless blacks. And wherever and whenever they
have pulled out their guns the ferocity of their fire has been trained on the
African people.

Apartheid
is the embodiment of the racialism, repression and inhumanity of all previous
white supremacist regimes. To see the real face of apartheid we must look
beneath the veil of constitutional formulas, deceptive phrases and playing with
words.

The rattle
of gunfire and the rumbling of Hippo armoured vehicles since June 1976 have
once again torn aside that veil. Spread across the face of our country, in
black townships, the racist army and police have been pouring a hail of bullets
killing and maiming hundreds of black men, women and children. The toll of the
dead and injured already surpasses that of all past massacres carried out by
this regime.

Apartheid
is the rule of the gun and the hangman. The Hippo, the FN rifle and the gallows
are its true symbols. These remain the easiest resort, the ever ready solution
of the race-mad rulers of South Africa.

VAGUE
PROMISES, GREATER REPRESSION . . .

In the
midst of the present crisis, while our people count the dead and nurse the
injured, they ask themselves: what lies ahead? From our
rulers we can expect nothing. They are the ones who give orders to the soldier
crouching over his rifle: theirs is the spirit that moves the finger that
caresses the trigger.

Vague
promises, tinkerings with the machinery of apartheid, constitution juggling, massive
arrests and detentions side by side with renewed overtures aimed at weakening
and forestalling the unity of us blacks and dividing the forces of change –
these are the fixed paths along which they will move. For they are neither
capable nor willing to heed the verdict of the masses of our people.

Tuesday 14 June 2011 13:58

Our march to freedom is long and difficult. But both within and beyond our borders the prospects of victory grow bright

THE
VERDICT OF JUNE 16!

That
verdict is loud and clear: apartheid has failed. Our people remain unequivocal
in its rejection. The young and the old, parent and child, all reject it. At
the forefront of this 1976/77 wave of unrest were our students and youth. They
come from the universities, high schools and even primary schools. They are a
generation whose whole education has been under the diabolical design of the
racists to poison the minds and brainwash our children into docile subjects of
apartheid rule. But after more than twenty years of Bantu Education the circle
is closed and nothing demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of apartheid as the
revolt of our youth.

The evils,
the cruelty and the inhumanity of apartheid have been there from its inception.
And all blacks – Africans, Coloureds and Indians – have opposed it all along
the line. What is now unmistakable, what the current wave of unrest has sharply
highlighted, is this: that despite all the window-dressing and smooth talk,
apartheid has become intolerable.

This
awareness reaches over and beyond the particulars of our enslavement. The
measure of this truth is the recognition by our people that under apartheid our
lives, individually and collectively, count for nothing.

UNITE !

We face an
enemy that is deep rooted, an enemy entrenched and determined not to yield. Our
march to freedom is long and difficult. But both within and beyond our borders
the prospects of victory grow bright.

The first
condition for victory is black unity. Every effort to divide the blacks, to woo
and pit one black group against another, must be vigorously repulsed. Our
people – African, Coloured, Indian and democratic whites – must be united into
a single massive and solid wall of resistance, of united mass action.

Our
struggle is growing sharper. This is not the time for the luxury of division
and disunity. At all levels and in every walk of life we must close ranks.
Within the ranks of the people differences must be submerged to the achievement
of a single goal – the complete overthrow of apartheid and racist domination.

VICTORY
IS CERTAIN !

The
revulsion of the world against apartheid is growing and the frontiers of white
supremacy are shrinking. Mozambique and Angola are free and the war of
liberation gathers force in Namibia and Zimbabwe. The soil of our country is
destined to be the scene of the fiercest fight and the sharpest battles to rid
our continent of the last vestiges of white minority rule.

The world
is on our side. The OAU, the UN and the anti-apartheid movement continue to put
pressure on the racist rulers of our country. Every effort to isolate South
Africa adds strength to our struggle.

At all
levels of our struggle, within and outside the country, much has been achieved
and much remains to be done. But victory is certain!

WE
SALUTE ALL OF YOU!

We who are
confined within the gray walls of the Pretoria regime’s prisons reach out to
our people. With you we count those who have perished by means of the gun and
the hangman’s rope. We salute all of you – the living, the injured and the
dead. For you have dared to rise up against the tyrant’s might.

Even as we
bow at their graves we remember this: the dead live on as martyrs in our hearts
and minds, a reproach to our disunity and the host of shortcomings that
accompany divisions among the oppressed, a spur to our efforts to close ranks,
and a reminder that the freedom of our people is yet to be won.

We face
the future with confidence. For the guns that serve apartheid cannot render it
unconquerable. Those who live by the gun shall perish by the gun.

UNITE!
MOBILISE! FIGHT ON!

Between
the anvil of united mass action and the hammer of the armed struggle we shall
crush apartheid and white minority racist rule.

AMANDLA
NGAWETHU! MATLA KE A RONA!

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