Avoid blind loyalty, warns Radebe

Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, who is also the ANC’s head of the national disciplinary appeals committee, has warned ANC members against blind loyalty, when members do not question anything in the party.

Radebe said although the former ANC president Oliver Tambo demanded loyalty from the former liberation movement, he despised blind loyalty.

“One of the cardinals that we learned from OR Tambo was that we must be leaders of unquestionable loyalty, but we must always avoid blind loyalty without questioning,” Radebe said.

Radebe, who was delivering the OR Tambo lecture to members of the ANC Midvaal Zone in Vereeniging yesterday, warned that members should evaluate the state of the ANC today against the values and principles that Tambo and many other leaders espoused.

He described the former ANC leader in exile as a “colossal figure” who had wisdom, a “selfless cadre”, a “man of integrity”, “loyal cadre” of the movement and a “leader who listened and valued even diverse opinions”.

“He was the glue that held all the various strands of the national democratic revolution together,” Radebe said.

As a visionary leader, Tambo was to anticipate the kind of challenges that the ANC was to face as a governing party, as opposed to a liberation movement.

“He wanted us to be ready for transition and confront the challenges of governance,” Radebe said.

“He sounded the alarm bells to the ANC cadres in Angola in 1977 that it would be more difficult to keep power than to wage a liberation struggle war.”