Oliver Tambo

Oliver Tambo (1917-1993), South African political leader, who, while in exile from 1960 to 1990, led the African National Congress (ANC), then an illegal organization. Tambo, along with other black leaders of his time, opposed the South African government's restrictive racial policy known as apartheid. Born in Bizana, Transkei, Tambo received a scholarship to the University of Fort Hare, from which he earned a B.S. degree in 1941. Tambo stayed at Fort Hare to earn an education degree, but was expelled in 1942 for leading a student strike.

Tambo and Nelson Mandela were among a small group of political activists who founded the African National Congress Youth League in 1944. Tambo taught for several years at Saint Peter's Secondary School in Johannesburg and joined a law firm in 1948. Four years later he and Mandela founded the first black law practice in South Africa. In 1956 Tambo was arrested on charges of treason and released the following year. Tambo became the ANC's secretary general in 1955 and the deputy president to President-General Albert Luthuli in 1958. The government declared the ANC an illegal organization in 1960, and Tambo went abroad, later settling in Zambia. While in exile, Tambo became acting president of the ANC after Luthuli's death in 1967, and later he became its president. Illness forced him to relinquish the presidency in 1991 to Mandela, who in 1990 had emerged from more than 27 years in prison as the acknowledged leader of the ANC. Tambo's speeches and writings were published in Oliver Tambo Speaks: Preparing for Power (1988).