Oliver Reginald Tambo was born October 27, 1917, just five years after the formation of the African National Congress. By the time the National Party was voted into power in 1948 Tambo had thrown himself heart and soul into furthering the cause of the ANC. 

In 1942 Tambo began teaching at St. Peter's College, in Johannesburg, where he had finished high school. It was at this time Tambo met Walter Sisulu and became an active member of the ANC. Two years later he founded the ANC Youth League with Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, and was promptly elected national secretary. The members of the Youth League felt that much more aggressive action was needed to combat apartheid. Drawing from their experience in college, when both Tambo and Mandela had been expelled from Fort Hare University for taking part in a student protest, the ANCYL wrote up the Programme of Action, and effectively changed the ANC from an organization that worked against the government very reservedly to one that advocated civil disobedience, boycotts, and peaceful protest demonstrations. 

Soon after the Programme was created Tambo left St. Peter's College to start a law firm with Nelson Mandela. In 1952 they were running the first black firm in the country. The same year they both took part in the Campaign of Defiance, deliberately breaking apartheid laws and just barely avoiding imprisonment. 

Then, in 1956, because of his role within not only the ANC but also the Congress of the People and the National Action Council, he was tried along with 155 others in the marathon "Treason Trial" of that year (one of the first mass trials in South African legal history). Again, Tambo narrowly avoided imprisonment, being acquitted soon after the trial began. 

After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, the ANC and the Pan-African Congress, a similar organization that Tambo did work with, were banned. Tambo was assigned to travel abroad, spreading antiapartheid sentiment and establishing missions in foreign countries. By 1990 twenty-seven missions had been set up in twenty-seven different countries. During the same time, Tambo helped found the South African United Front, a group which successfully campaigned to expel South Africa from the british Commonwealth, in 1961. Throughout the 1970s he continued to travel the world speaking against the apartheid, and helped raise the ANC to a level of international prestige. He himself at the time was considered the most respected man in the African continent, and was received in most countries with the same level of protocol as royalty or heads of state. In 1985 he was elected president of the ANC. In 1989 Tambo suffered a stroke with complications and was hospitalized for several months. In 1990 Frederick de Klerk repealed laws banning the ANC and PAC, and relinquished the presidency of South Africa to the newly-freed Nelson Mandela. 

Oliver Tambo returned to South Africa in 1991 after thirty years in exile. He died from a second stroke on the 24th of April, 1993. 

Oliver Tambo is a person of faith because of his unwavering belief in the cause of the ANC and related groups, and his extraordinary untiring effort on their behalf. He dedicated his entire life to ending apartheid rule, putting his livelihood and even his life on the line again and again. Risking jail and assassination, giving up his home for thirty years, and committing his every waking moment to his life's work, Oliver Tambo was an inspiring example of powerful faith.

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