Cyril Ramaphosa has responsibility of raising the galvanising torch carried by Tambo and clarifying the ANC’s position on many current, pressing matters

MANY will travel to East London for the ANC’s January 8 Statement (to be delivered on January 13 this year) with a wrong understanding of what the event means – that it is an extension of the festive season, a big humdinger of a bash.

And the media will, as it has always done, deride the event as one of a “fat cats’ meeting” to display their wealth. The media will be brutal in painting this important calendar date as a festival of crass materialism and conspicuous consumption.

Of course, all these negative narratives are aimed at sectionally demobilising society against the ANC.

But the reality is that even ANC members in their numbers have forgotten the meaning of this celebration which many people were imprisoned and killed for. It has lost meaning – like many of the important days we celebrate.

I felt that I should write to, in brief, discuss the meaning of this important ANC calendar date, to invoke the sacredness and deep gratitude with which we should observe it.

The ANC’s birthday on January 8 is – and has always been – an important annual event. Every year, the national executive committee releases a statement to take stock of its position, to give thanks for past support, to pay homage to the comrades who died, to award the bestperforming branches, to recognise the best-performing structures in its leagues, to articulate its vision for the forthcoming months, to expound in simple terms, on the political dynamics in the country, to articulate its understanding of the international balance of forces. And, echoing Chinese tradition, to proclaim a theme for the year.

During the apartheid era, the statement was released by the ANC president Oliver Tambo and it became a galvanising yearly highlight, linking its members in exile around the world with those on Robben Island – and activists and supporters elsewhere in South Africa.

I read that the tradition began in 1972 on the occasion of the organisation’s 60th birthday. This was a once-off event and it suffered a sixyear hiatus as the ANC reconstituted itself in exile. Then rejuvenated by the student uprisings, the opening up of frontline states and the beginning of MK’s low-key guerrilla insurgency, the tradition was resumed in 1979 – which the NEC declared: “The year of the Spear” in recognition of the central role played by the peoples weapon, The Spear – Umkhonto we Sizwe, Lerumo la Sechaba.

Radio Freedom was an ideal platform for the ANC’s January 8 Statement or address. Although the radio fizzled out after its 1963 launch and the Rivonia arrests, it revived to play an important role in the 1970s and 80’s in connecting the ANC leadership in exile and supporters back home.

At its height, Radio Freedom aired daily in five countries: Angola, Zambia, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Tanzania. The programmes, typically half-an-hour in length, consisted of a mix of news, music (freedom songs that were banned in SA) and commentary.

To ensure a wider reach, copies of the January 8 Statement were distributed through very sophisticated underground networks to spread the NEC’s message and raise the morale of the oppressed population.

I also read somewhere in the archives of our history that operatives used time-delay rockets to release showers of leaflets with the ANC January 8 Statement.

Thousands of copies would flood the streets of townships shortly after the event each year.

There is also a story of a certain man from Soweto by the name of Sipho, who described himself as a “human radio” because of his daily habit of recounting word by word the content of Radio Freedom broadcasts on his daily train journeys.

In 1980, after funding from Swedish organisations, 4 000 cassette recordings of the January 8 Statement were snuck into the country, followed by another 4 000 tapes with liberation messages.

The January 8 Statement was a dangerous speech, not only because of its incendiary nature but because possession of recordings or copies of it could land one in prison for up to eight years.

Despite attempts by legal defence teams in court arguing that possessing the material didn’t amount to activism, Thabo Moloi was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in 1983 after being found in possession of a cassette with a recording of one of Tambo’s January 8 Statement, and in 1985, 21-year-old Edward Ngobeni was sentenced to four years for playing the January 8 Statement to his friends.

Many others who were found in possession of this material were arrested and convicted.

By the mid 1980s the January 8 tradition was firmly established.