Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Oliver Reginald Kaizana Tambo, political and professional partner of Nelson Mandela , was the leader of the African National Congress (ANC) during its 30–year period in exile, from 1960 to 1990. Tambo became renowned for maintaining the unity of a broad liberation movement, consisting of many tendencies, during a long Cold War period of vicissitudes, changing circumstances, and shifting strategies. He nurtured its far-flung members and military cadres as the movement steered its way between international diplomacy and armed struggle while also maintaining its mystique inside South Africa. When the ANC was reestablished in South Africa, Tambo delivered an organization “bigger, stronger, intact” – more skilled and sophisticated, acknowledged and acclaimed throughout the world and at home. Tambo was born in 1917 in the remote village of Mpondoland, on the east coast of South Africa. Half a century later, Tambo recalled the seminal influence of his rural childhood. The traditional homestead, his three mothers, and his polygamous father's ability to create harmonious relationships in the large, extended family fostered an ability to commit himself to collective values; the little boy had to share his mother with many others. Embedded in this way of life were values imparted by the homestead economy. Even young children were economically active: Tambo was scarcely 3 years old when ... log in or subscribe to read full text