President Cyril Ramaphosa hails Oliver Tambo a hero of the Struggle as a new statue of the liberation movement icon is unveiled at OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg
Johannesburg – The government and the ANC have hailed the lasting impact and legacy of the party's longest-serving president and one of the anti-apartheid Struggle’s most revered leaders, OR Tambo.
On Monday, leaders of various spheres of government, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, held various commemorative activities in Gauteng and at Tambo’s Eastern Cape home as they marked his 103th birthday.
Tambo, who led the ANC from 1967 to 1991, belonged to the pioneering generation of anti-apartheid revolutionaries, which included Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, and has been credited with keeping the ANC together during the most turbulent period which saw many of its leaders being incarcerated.
Ramaphosa described Tambo as one of the finest leaders in the liberation Struggle.
“We pay tribute to him because of who he was and the contribution that he made towards creating the SA that we now live in today. It is true that we cannot talk about SA today in terms of what we have achieved and where we are without inserting in bold letters the name “OR Tambo”, a man who dedicated his life to the people of SA and to the achievement of our democracy,” Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa led the unveiling of a statue of Tambo at the OR Tambo International Airport before leading a wreath-laying ceremony at his grave site in Wattville, Ekurhuleni.
This was the second statue of Tambo being unveiled at the airport after the first one, which is inside by the airport near the international arrivals section, was unveiled in 2017.
Ramaphosa credited Tambo with steering the liberation movement through the darkest days during the fight against the apartheid regime.
“He spent the three decades in exile working tirelessly to forge international support against apartheid and in support of the anti-apartheid struggle. To the work, OR Tambo was the voice of SA’s liberation movement and that is why it was important to rename this airport to be OR Tambo.
’’Being the largest and the busiest airport in our country, it was important that he should be the symbol of SA to the world," he said.
In the Eastern Cape, Premier Oscar Mabuyane led a separate wreath-laying and cake-cutting ceremony at Tambo’s Nkantolo home village.
ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe was expected to deliver the OR Tambo memorial lecture.
Political Bureau