ANC statement on expulsion of 8 members

23 January 1976

At its September session, held in Morogoro, Tanzania, the National Executive Committee of the ANC unanimously decided to expel 8 members from the ranks of the organisation.

This decision was made unanimously and after a prolonged period during which attempts were made to dissuade the expelled members from pursuing factional activities within our liberation movement.

However, these 8 members continued their disruptive factionalist activities based on reactionary racial grounds by seeking to bring about the exclusion from the ranks of the ANC, trusted and tried revolutionaries, merely on the grounds of their race or membership of the South African Communist Party. This is the identical problem that led to the split from our ranks of elements who subsequently formed an organisation known as the Pan Africanist Congress. The ANC has consistently endeavoured to unify within the fold of the national liberation movement, not only all oppressed national groups but also all other progressive and democratic forces, thereby strengthening the just struggle of the African people and other oppressed sections of the South African population.

In conformity with this long-standing policy, the African National Congress has the revolutionary task of removing from its ranks any individual or group, which defects from and actively campaigns against the policy and programme of our organisation regardless of whatever position or responsibility such persons may have occupied in the past.

It has now come to our attention that certain elements present at this 26th session of the Liberation Committee are spreading lies and calumnies of a so-called "split" within the ranks of the ANC, stooping to use and distribute press comments from the reactionary South African press, which significantly appears as the main evidence of this "split". These disruptive elements at this meeting have gone further to suggest that the ANC (SA) delegation attending the current session represents the so-called "faction within the ANC".

Though we are certain that delegations here would not succumb to the disruptive propaganda emanating from Pretoria regardless of the agency that chooses to disseminate it, we wish to assure them that the removal of the counter-revolutionary elements has consolidated and unified the ranks of the organisation.

The 8 members expelled, none of whom held positions of responsibility at the time of their defection, are:

1. Alfred Kgokong Mqota
   
2. Tennyson Makiwane
   
3. Jonas Matlou
   
4. Ambrose Mzimkulu Makiwane
   
5. George Mbele
   
6. Thami Bonga
   
7. Pascal Ngakane
   
8. O. K. Setlhapelo

(Sgd) Alfred Nzo
Secretary General, ANC of South Africa
Lourenco Marques,

(A detailed political document on the factional activities of the 8 ex-members of the ANC has been issued and will be made available to all African States and Liberation Movements).