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It is time for intensified mass action against the racist structure in our country. The heroic youth and masses in many parts of our country have stood against brutal massacre and defied police bullets in a sustained offensive against oppression, exploitation and racial humiliation, for political and economic power, for human dignity in a South Africa liberated from the white minority regime. They have attacked many accessible instruments and symbols of domination.
Demonstrations and acts of resistance in Soweto and other parts of the country are therefore not riots by anti-social elements but blows for liberation by an oppressed people. They are not passing disturbances by adventurous and misguided students but an integral part of the continuing and irrepressible liberation struggle of our people. Our youth have raised this struggle to new heights. They have enriched our revolution. The struggle continues...
There can be no going back. The offensive must be broadened, deepened and generalised to encompass the whole country and involve every section of our people and all social groups with whom we share the common objective of a non-racial democratic South Africa.
New fronts of action against the common enemy must be opened immediately, by sustaining, intensifying and sharpening the attack on the white power structure.
Vorster must find no rest. The role of the workers in the struggle is crucial. The African National Congress hails the great three-day strike by the militant black workers resident in Soweto. It is a mighty blow against racism, a demonstration of power and a fitting tribute to the valiant martyred in the past two months.
We warn employers against victimising the Soweto workers either by dismissal or by withholding any portion of their meagre weekly wages on the grounds of absence during the days of the strike.
We call on the workers in the rest of the country to mobilise and use their organised strength in countrywide stays-at-home and other industrial actions. United power of labour is unchallengeable.
The time to finally bury the counter-revolutionary bantustan programme of the apartheid regime is NOW. The masses of our people in the bantustan reservations must join the general attacks.
The regime with all its allies cannot defeat the united might of the workers, the youth and the rural masses.
1976 is, and must be, the year of decision.
Amandla! Matla!
Power to the People!
1 From: Press release of the ANC Office in London, August 26, 1976. The press release indicated that this message had been conveyed through Radio Freedom, the voice of the ANC, beamed to the country on the External Services of Radio Tanzania, and would be issued by the underground movement inside the country.