The short answer
Morogoro addressed how a banned movement operating across borders could organise a struggle inside South Africa. Its importance lies in specific changes to membership, coordinating structures and strategic thinking, not simply in a declaration that the organisation had become united or non-racial overnight.
Chronology
A timeline of the turning points
Prohibition and exile
Banning makes the relationship between external leadership and internal resistance more difficult.
A directive for reassessment
Tambo calls for a practical appraisal and more effective organisation.
Consultative conference
Delegates meet at Morogoro in Tanzania.
Membership and structures change
External membership widens; a Revolutionary Council coordinates work towards South Africa.
Implementation remains difficult
Later research examines the continuing challenge of connecting exile structures with domestic organisation.
The meeting was intended to reassess an organisation under pressure
Tambo’s March directive placed the forthcoming conference within a series of earlier consultations after the ANC’s banning. It called for a practical examination of the struggle and machinery capable of sustaining it. The need was organisational as well as ideological.
The ANC’s conference record dates the meeting from 25 April to 1 May and identifies participants from ANC branches, MK and allied organisations. Calling it consultative matters: it was not a freely convened national election within South Africa. Repression and exile shaped who could meet and what kind of institution they were trying to maintain.
Wider membership did not mean identical access to the NEC
The conference opened individual membership of the external ANC to non-Africans who had previously worked through allied organisations. O’Malley’s account distinguishes this from membership of the National Executive Committee, which remained restricted to Africans. Howard Barrell’s research preserves the same institutional distinction.
This was a substantial change in belonging, but not the removal of every racial qualification within the organisation. Using the term non-racialism without specifying the body concerned can hide that difference. Membership, representation through an alliance and eligibility for the executive were related questions, not interchangeable descriptions of one reform.
The Revolutionary Council addressed work towards the home front
The ANC’s later TRC submission describes the Revolutionary Council’s remit as building internal structures, political publicity and armed struggle. Tambo chaired it, with Yusuf Dadoo as deputy and Joe Matthews initially serving as secretary. Its membership included people excluded from the racially restricted NEC.
The council was therefore more than a symbolic statement of inclusion. It supplied a coordinating body for tasks that had to connect leaders and trained personnel abroad with conditions inside South Africa. The submission is the organisation’s retrospective account; Barrell’s separate analysis helps distinguish the intended structure from the practical difficulties of operating it.
Strategy and Tactics placed armed activity within political leadership
The strategy report’s discussion of political and military relations rejects treating armed activity as a self-sufficient substitute for organisation. It insists on political leadership and on active popular support. The movement’s argument was that military actions alone could not automatically generate the constituency needed for success.
That is evidence of a strategic position, not proof that practice always followed it. Nor does studying the document require endorsing every part of its analysis or the methods later used. Its historical value is to show how the ANC explained the relationship between public mobilisation, underground organisation and armed struggle at this point in exile.
Sources for this section: [4]
Reorganisation should not be mistaken for immediate operational success
Barrell’s analysis of the mid-1970s describes an external mission still struggling to establish effective links with domestic resistance. Regional changes and renewed activity within South Africa altered its possibilities, while operational choices could also damage fragile underground networks. A new coordinating structure had not automatically resolved those problems.
Morogoro is consequently best read as a turning point in organisational design and political argument, not a complete explanation of the movement’s eventual success. The distinction preserves both the conference’s achievements and the agency of workers, students, communities and other participants whose later actions were not simply consequences of a meeting abroad.
Sources for this section: [6]
Continue the chronology
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Biography context
Explore Morogoro, Tanzania through connected lives
Connected biographies
The leader whose directive preceded the conference
1917–1993
Oliver Tambo
Teacher, lawyer and ANC president in exileOliver Tambo moved from teaching and legal practice into the leadership of the ANC during its long prohibition. Exile placed him at the centre of international advocacy, organisational disputes and armed struggle. His return preceded democratic elections, which he did not live to see.Read biographyQuick answers
Common questions
- Where did the conference take place?
- In Morogoro, Tanzania, rather than in South Africa.
- Did every ANC leadership body open to non-Africans in 1969?
- No. External membership widened, while the NEC remained restricted to Africans.
- Was the Revolutionary Council just another name for the NEC?
- No. It was a distinct coordinating structure with a remit focused on work towards South Africa.
- Does adopting a strategy demonstrate that it worked?
- No. A programme’s intentions and its later implementation require different evidence.
Primary and institutional sources
How this history was checked
The directive and selected strategy passages were read alongside the ANC’s conference record, its later organisational submission and independent historical analysis. Only relevant Barrell passages were used, not the full thesis. The 1981 photograph identifies Tambo; it does not show the 1969 meeting. This article was reviewed on Reviewed 24 October 2026.
- Oliver Tambo / SAHO archive1 March 1969 directive on the proposed consultative conference
- African National CongressFirst National Consultative Conference, 25 April–1 May 1969
- Padraig O’Malley / Nelson Mandela Foundation archiveMorogoro: external membership and NEC eligibility
- African National Congress1969 Strategy and Tactics: selected political and military leadership passages
- African National Congress / TRC archive1997 second submission: selected 1969–1976 organisational structures
- Howard Barrell / SAHO archiveYou Only Win Once, chapter 2: selected external-mission structures and later constraints
- Rob Bogaerts / Anefo / Nationaal ArchiefOliver Tambo at Schiphol, 17 October 1981, archive 931-7461