The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 5 , African Solidarity Part 2

 

Foreword

Part 2 of Volume 5 of this important Road to Democracy series of books seeks to complete the presentation on the role and place of African Solidarity on South Africa’s advance to democracy. A large part of the account about this African Solidarity is covered in Volume 5 Part 1.

The then Chairperson of the Board of the South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET), responsible for the compilation of this Road to Democracy series, Dr Essop Pahad, wrote the foreword published in Volume 5 Part 1. His is an important foreword which contains many valuable observations about the historically important matter of the role and place of the African Solidarity at issue. This foreword can therefore only be supplementary to Dr Pahad’s.

In this regard, I am pleased to join him in thanking all the contributors to this Part 2, recognising the enormous effort it took them to complete the seven chapters of this book. The story these chapters tell enriches our understanding of both the depth of the solidarity extended by all the peoples of Africa to their South African sisters and brothers, and the complex international setting in which this solidarity was organised and expressed.

I am certain that both Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 5 convey a moving testimony to the strength and steadfastness of the passionate commitment to human solidarity as demonstrated by ordinary Africans over a number of decades, as they supported the South African liberation struggle.

I speak here especially of the ordinary Africans within reach of the apartheid forces of repression. Though these Africans knew the price they would have to pay, and actually paid, for demonstrating this human solidarity, including death, they did not waver or retreat. These were the fellow Africans in such countries as Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and Tanzania, including their governments.

But I also speak of other fellow Africans much further afield in the African Diaspora and in such countries as Algeria and others in North Africa, Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana and others in West Africa, Cameroon, the Congo’s and others in Central Africa, and the Indian Ocean island states. All these Africans, despite their distance from the actual theatre of combat in South Africa, showed no less a determination to help free all Africans and the rest of humanity from apartheid’s crime against humanity. This is to say nothing about the bonds which united those of us involved in the liberation struggles in Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Southern Africa.

The peoples of Africa share a deep seated desire to achieve the historic twin objectives of Africa’s renaissance and African unity. Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 5 tell the moving story that, as they acted together in solidarity with their struggling South African, fellow-Africans, the millions of the African masses demonstrated, in a very practical manner, their resolve to realise these objectives.

Indeed, there is no doubt that nothing succeeded during the twentieth century, and since, to unite in action the African masses as much as did the shared challenge to defeat and destroy the system of apartheid. Hopefully the rich account in this Volume 5 Parts 1 and 2, will inspire the now one billion Africans, building on what was achieved at great cost, to accelerate the advance towards accomplishing Africa’s Renaissance and Unity.

To energise us in this regard, this volume, in both its parts, informs all of us that as recently as towards the close of the twentieth century, the millions of the African masses succeeded to act in unity for a protracted period of time, together to determine our common destiny as Africans.

Thabo Mbeki
Patron

Contents
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Figures and tables vii
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Notes on contributors xix
Sponsorship and donations xxiii
List of acronyms xxv

Part 2

Chapter 14

The Western superpowers and the subversion of African solidarity: The complicity of ‘Francophone’ countries
By Azaria Mbughuni

Chapter 15

Swaziland’s contribution to South Africa’s struggle for independence: Charting the maze and straddling contradictions
By Hamilton Sipho Simelane, Nhlanhla Dlamini and
Jabulani Sithole

Chapter 16

African leaders and the national liberation struggle in Namibia
By Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu
Contents

Chapter 17

Chapter 17 Mozambique’s solidarity with the national liberation struggle in South Africa
By Alda Romão Saúte Saíde

Chapter 18

Angola and the liberation of South Africa
By João Pedro Lourenço, Júlio Mendes Lopes and
Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu

Chapter 19

‘The ties that bind’: Weaving continental and international cultural fraternities
By Bhekizizwe Peterson

Chapter 20

The 2010 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in South Africa: ‘Ke Nako! Celebrate Africa’s humanity’
By Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu