Oliver Tambo

Oliver Reginald Tambo ( born October 27, 1917 in Mbizana in the former Mpondoland, † April 24, 1993 in Johannesburg ) is a South African anti-apartheid politician and a central figure in the African National Congress was ( ANC).

Life and work

1940 were expelled for participating in a student strike from the grounds of the College of Fort Hare Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela. 1942 Tambo returned back as a teacher of science and mathematics to his former high school in Johannesburg.

Oliver Tambo in 1944, along with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, one of the founding members of the ANC Youth League and its first secretary. The Youth League suggested a change in tactics in the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC had previously tried to put forward his concerns with actions such as petitions or demonstrations. The ANC Youth League found that these actions were not sufficient to reach their goals and proposed their own action program. This program advocated tactics such as boycotts, civil disobedience, strikes and refusal of collaboration. 1948 Oliver Tambo was elected to the presidency of the ANC. In 1952 he founded, together with Mandela in Johannesburg, the first led by blacks law firm in South Africa.

1955 Oliver Tambo Secretary General of the ANC after Walter Sisulu was provided by the South African government under house arrest. In 1956, he was accused in the Treason Trial with 155 other defendants of treason, but was released. In 1958 he was the deputy president of the ANC, before he was placed in 1959 by the government for five years under house arrest.

Tambo was sent abroad by the ANC to form an international opposition to apartheid. He was the front part in the formation of the South African United, that the exclusion of South Africa from the Commonwealth of Nations reached in 1961.

In 1985 he was re-elected as president of the ANC. In the same year he was present at the official opening ceremony of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania. After 30 years in exile, he returned on 13 December 1990 back to South Africa and was elected in July 1991 as Chairman of the ANC.

Tambo had a first stroke in 1989 and died in 1993 in a second.

Honors

• A situation created on 6 December 2002 South African Orders, with the South African President distinguished foreigners who have rendered outstanding services to the country, is called the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo.
• On 27 October 2006, the Johannesburg airport was renamed in memory and in appreciation of tambos merits in the struggle against apartheid in OR Tambo International Airport.
• On March 21, 2010 Oliver Tambo was awarded posthumously the second-highest Order of the Republic of Namibia as part of the 20 -year-old Namibian independence day. His son took the Eagle Order 1st class.