Oliver Reginald Tambo (1917-1993) was, as acting president of the African National Congress (ANC), a principal spokesman for the Black African opposition to apartheid in South Africa. He remained active in the ANC, ultimately living to witness the political end of apartheid in the early 1990s.

Born in poverty of peasant parents in Pondoland in 1917, Oliver Reginald Tambo's early education was at St. Peter's School in Johannesburg. He won a scholarship to Fort Hare, the only college Blacks could attend, where he studied science. He was expelled in 1939 for participating in a student strike but later studied law by correspondence and qualified as an attorney in 1952. He and another Black leader, Nelson Mandela, then began a law partnership in Johannesburg.

In the early 1940s Tambo joined the African National Congress, an organization founded in 1912 that opposed white supremacy. Dissatisfied with the ANC's moderation, Tambo, Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and...