Amandla Ngawethu

One of the reasons I joined the Young Liberals as a teenager in the mid-1970s, was the party's stance on South Africa and the condemnation of that stain upon humanity, apartheid, ironically pronounced "apart-hate" in Afrikaans.
I remember the charismatic leader of the Stop the Seventy Tour Campaign, a young man, a Young Liberal, called Peter Hain.

One of the things I learnt about was the African National Congress, its struggle for survival and its resistance to the whites-only regime.
I learnt to admire people like Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Mac Maharaj, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Bram Fischer, Steve Biko, Trevor Huddleston, Miriam Makeba, Alan Paton, and of course Hector Pieterson whose dying body being carried by a fellow student became the iconic figure of the Soweto Uprising.

Today in 1912, the ANC was founded with a vision of a non-racial South Africa, a vision that took more than eighty years to realise.

One of the reasons the apartheid regime took so long to fall was the succour it received from parties abroad.
One of those was the Conservative Party of Mrs Thatcher, or more correctly the Federation of Conservative Students who used to sport "Hang Mandela" badges.

What a bunch of neanderthal idiots.
Actually I apologise for that last remark. It's an insult to Neanderthals.

So Happy Birthday ANC, and Mayibuye-i Afrika.