Moses Mabhida, former General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in Tanzania during 1980. He served in this leadership capacity between 1978-1986., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
The ANC is the most reliable choice of our people, in alliance with the Communist Party, the progressive trade union and civic movements
28th Anniversary of the passing of Moses Mabhida, Commemorative Lecture
Smiso Nkwanyana SACP District
Chesterville Hall, 25 February 2014
By Khaye Nkwanyana
It is with great honour to commemorate in this so important phase of our political setting, the life of the most outstanding leader, a communist, and trade unionist of note, leader of the national liberation movement and commander of the MK.
This year marks 28 years since Moses Mncane Mabhida (Umadevu) was buried in Maputo, Mozambique. He had caught up a stroke on his way to Cuba and later suffered the heart attack that took his life in Maputo.
Moses Mabhida belongs to that galaxy of leaders of the glorious 1950s-60s in the history of our struggle; leaders who, by their act and deeds, acquired the acceptance as primus inter pares with foremost political responsibility to direct the cause of struggle.
Mabhida rose from humble beginnings. Born in Thornville, Pietermaritzburg, his education was always disrupted to an extent that he did not complete his schooling. His last grade was 9 (Standard 7), which he did in Slangspruit. Amongst his last teachers was Harry Gwala. Apart from the inspiration he got from his father who was a dedicated trade unionist under the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union, Mabhida was influenced and inspired by Harry Gwala, who used to expose his students to Marxism. Gwala conducted political classes secretly. It is Gwala who introduced Mabhida to SACP and ANC, culminating in Mabida being involved in trade union work.
He organized Howick rubber workers union and chemical workers union in Pietermaritzburg. He joined the SACP in 1942. After the banning of the unions in 1952-53, he was ordered to organise workers underground in the then Natal. That work led to the formation of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). He was elected in its founding congress as its first Deputy President in 1955. At this time he was serving as ANC Secretary in Pietermaritzburg, working closely and reporting to Chief Albert Luthuli. In 1956 he was elected to the ANC NEC.
After 1960 Sharpeville massacre, he was instrumental in organizing one of the big strikes in Hammersdale, outside Durban, at Hammersdale clothing industry. A warrant of arrest was issued against him and he was charged for "incitement”. This was the time of the state of emergency imposed by the apartheid regime as a sequel after the Sharpeville shootings. SACTU instructed Mabhida to leave the country to Prague to represent it in World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), also working with developing African unions including doing representations at International Labour Organisation (ILO).
After being re-elected in the ANC NEC in the Conference held in October 1962, Lebatse, Bechuanaland (now Botswana), he was instructed by Oliver Tambo to dedicate his full time in building MK in exile. He did so with diligence and became a Commissar and later Commander. He was appointed to the Revolutionary Council that was established in 1969 which later became Politico-Military Council that in 1979 produced what was known as "Green Book”.
Mabhida was very instrumental after Morogoro conference in setting up the ANC department of Intelligence and Security. After the death of Moses Kotane (SACP General Secretary) in 1978, Moses Mabhida was elected to assume this foremost position. He was very close to Mozambique's leadership, a relationship he built in his earlier travels across the continent where he met Samora Machel as a leader of FRELIMO at Kongwa, the first training camp in Tanzania. He was awarded by the Soviet Union the "Soviet Order of the people"and by Bulgarian government the "Order of the people's republic of Bulgaria first class”.
Our own democratic government honoured him in 2002 posthumously with the Order of Baobab.
In his eulogy at Mabhda's funeral, OR Tambo spoke:
'Mabhida had been educated in the stern university of mass struggle... It is rarely given to a people that they should produce a single person who epitomises their hopes and expresses their common resolve as Moses Mabhida did. In simple language he could convey the aspirations of all our people in their magnificent variety, explain the fears and prejudices of the unorganised, and sense the feelings of even the most humble amongst our people.'
The President of Mozambique, Samora Machel authoritatively observed:
'We shall be the guardians of his body. Men who die fighting, who refuse to surrender, who serve the people and the ideals to the last breathe, are victors. Mabhida is a victorious combatant.'
This self-taught all-round leader represented the true description of Gramsci's classification of organic intellectuals who are taught by history as makers of history themselves being part of the people. Mabhida as a steeped Marxist-Leninist had an ability to translate difficult thoughts into digestible terms for the ordinary level headed cadre to understand.
It is of no value to just meet and recite the memories of such leaders without saying what practical lessons we should draw from them and what lenses do we use as magnifying glass to diagnose conjectural political questions and perfect characterisations of moments as they obtain in our full view.
The spirits of leaders like Moses Mncane Mbeki Mabhida can only be propelled by witnessing us drawing revolutionary inspiration to them and undoing what amounts to a counter-revolution against our own revolution, such as corruption, stealing public money for personal wealth, shoddy service by some of our public servants, dereliction of duty by paying leap service in radically transforming the colonial architecture in the structure of our economy and therefore racially skewed class relations. Lukewarm empowerment to the people economically in various forms as direct beneficiaries of our economic activities is but part of what need to change.
As communists, we can honour a leader like Mabhida through building the Party. We need a strong party; we need a party with cadres of special type; cadres that are diligent; cadres that seek no personal glory and fame but loyal servants of the party. A good party cadre is the one who moves mountains but allowed others to claim that victory and glory. We don't need cadres of the party who are obsessed with sniffing deployments; cadres who run from ear-to-ear in the mid-night hours lobbying for themselves to be elected in our congresses than being asked to be available by structures.
There is a difference between members of the Party and cadres of the party. The above features distinguish a cadre of the Party and a mere member regardless of level of involvement in the party. Moses Mabhida and Moses Kotane best represent these attributes. We need to build a party of this special type of cadres.
Towards ANC election victory
It is a foregone conclusion that the ANC, once again, will emerge victorious in May 7 elections. But this will not come about without our sweat. We are in the height of the campaign and we are narrating to our people the historical record that the ANC government over the past 20 years has done and what it has not, and what it is busy doing or intends to do. We are coming clean to our people. A lot of combined effort by opposition parties, who are shouting from the oasis of middle class trappings, to vassalage the public standing of the ANC has been sustained in an unmitigated fashion. But they always get it wrong because they always fail to discern the collective psychology and sensibilities of our people.
The more you are obsessed with attacking the ANC or its leaders is the more our people are suspicions about you. Majority of our people agrees that today is better than yesterday and that tomorrow will be better than today. They understand that more than 300 years of warped colonial development that informed South Africa's physiognomy cannot be wiped out completely in the period of 20 years. They know that ANC cares about them and it is a credible party to continue to move South Africa forward. Our people are not prepared for chancers. This country is not in a stage of trial and error involving the untested parties given government. It is only the ANC that carries the real aspirations of our people and is tested in government.
EFF: Is it new political behemoth or an innocuous ballistic snake?
All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are powerful"- (Mao, selected works. Vol. IV, p. 100)
It has become trite from the past few months when flipping over newspapers to get long kisses from articles pre-empting the hard time that the ANC will find in these 2014 elections and locating such organisations as EFF, Agang SA and DA as the forces that would radically reduce the ANC base, especially the EFF. It may very well be that this positive profiling of the opposition to ANC is subjective in order to promote these organisations and thereby defile the ANC to its support base.
The formation of the political organisation led, in the main, by the former ANCYL leaders represents another episode in the series of what the ANC, after 1955 adoption of the Freedom Charter, got accustomed to as a movement. The various elements within the ANC ranks that left in various forms (either as dissidents or being formally expelled) and therefore formed political parties that ranged against the ANC have been an occasional norm since the 50s.
The PAC is but one of these formations. Today it is under health life-support if indeed it is still functionally existing. The UDM under General Bantu Holomisa (the first one in the post-apartheid terrain) is another organisation, formed by a former ANC leader after being expelled for his ill-discipline. The UDM is almost extinct. The Shilowa COPE faction flavour will not alter that state of affairs.
More recently, COPE today, barely more than five years, is in doldrums. It is a shadow of itself (i.e. itself as it never was but as it was projected by the media). If it still exists organisationally, it is only in the figment of the imagination of those who still believe it still does.
But what does EFF represent?
There is no doubt that when these individuals were still comrades within the ANCYL they radicalized the youth league in various forms. But in the process of doing so, they committed serious mistakes, such as unmitigated arrogance, prone to invectives, creating untenable situations to the ANC by prematurely calling for leadership change and tossing in air of their preferred candidates in ways so outlandish to the movement; they insulted leaders in ways far extreme than the DA can do. This was pursued under the basis of a distorted conception of the dialectical relationship between ANC and its league (i.e. organisational and political autonomy as it was dangled).
Unfortunately, these foreign tendencies they exhibited account much in the todays violent protests where the youth leads those whose bad conduct is destroying community infrastructure such as libraries, community halls, street robots and burning councillors houses at times. Whereas protests should be encouraged as a form of demonstrating dissatisfaction and a demand for attention to what is required, the violent degeneration has gone into the worst abyss of lumpen drive that demobilizes even the salient sympathy in some quarters. ANCYL by its strategic location and attachment to the ANC transmit moral authority with its conduct and deeds to the youth sector, which they take their cue from. It is a microcosm of what the youth looks like.
The EFF will get votes from sections of the youth and others who cannot see beyond the river bank. Unfortunately we have a chunk of those people whose perspectives and their general view is jaundiced.
The hype about EFF is similar to that of 2009 COPE. Where is it today?
Once its leadership is in parliament arising from whatever they may garner not sooner than later many of those people who would have voted for them will be disillusioned and therefore come in droves back to the ANC as the election fever will have come to pass after a year or two. EFF is an ephemeral. Its linchpin is based on hatred and anger not against the status quo but an anger against President Jacob Zuma and the ANC. This obsession with Zuma or what they call Zuma-ANC is just an evidence of an organisation playing "half-ground football and using off-side traps"against the opponent than imposing their game to win.
The foremost leaders of EFF have been part of the ANC and defended ANC policies and government programs yesterday. They campaigned with us in 2009 and 2011 local government elections for the ANC under Zuma presidency. And so, they have no moral standing today to criticise the same that which they have defended and justified in previous two elections and unilaterally declared they will kill for it. If there is anything to characterise this is that it is opportunism of the worst kind.
EFF speaks about standing for the real socialist revolution they want to pursue. From which terrain within which this revolution will be pursuit, what are their motive forces? Are they themselves collectively committed in the most serious and fundamental way to Socialism (think about Dali Mpofu now). The Left rhetoric seem to be a well-disguised revolutionary subterfuge.
The ANC 1969 Strategy and Tactics reminds us: 'The revolutionary-sounding phrases does not always reflect revolutionary policy, and revolutionary-sounding policy is not always the springboard for revolutionary advance. Indeed what appears to be militant and revolutionary can often be counter-revolutionary.'
Revolution is a serious, protracted and an elusive pursued. It has its ebbs and flows. It is not a rectilinear beam that proceeds in straight line in the wish of the operator. The ebbs and flows are a function of the balance of forces at each historical moment and phase. The balance of forces can tilt against the revolutionary movement not out of its willing but as a consequence of global environment that informs domestic environment and therefore impedes the pace and tempo of the revolution.
Even a seasoned revolutionary movement has to tread carefully and where tactical detours need to be adopted (as opposed to strategic detours) must be done so that the overall trajectory is not lost whilst working with progressive forces and the left all-over the world to counterweight imperialist hegemony and whilst working on tilting the balance of forces.
This is not a matter of subjective choice but a reality in a world dominated by one strand of thought. The absence of political wisdom in discharging those tactical retreats and advances will result in what we witnessed in Zimbabwe's economic and social collapse of the past decade.
The EFF has not articulated as to what type of social-makeup they conceive of this society away from what it is about and aspires to be. The mere delivery of land to the dispossessed whilst important and nationalisation of mines does not tamper with the societal structural makeup as is currently. The doubling of social grants to the 17 million South Africans is unrealistic and unsustainable from the fiscus (as contained in their manifesto). A lot of elements in their manifesto do not depart much from ANC commitments and what it is doing except to go in the extremes. The ANC remains the best option for our people.
El Commandant Fidel Castro once put it 'A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.'
In the longer term EFF will not be a political behemoth. The media hype that has saturated the room about them is associated with the season of elections as it with COPE in 2008/09 after which the obsession went down. I see no green mamba poison to game-change our politics as led by the ANC and its alliance.
Conclusion.
In the true spirit of Moses Mabhida let us all go out and explain to our people in the townships, rural villages and in various areas, that the ANC in alliance with the Communist Party, the progressive trade union and civic movements is the only political party that has a vision to take this country forward. We know there is still more work that needs to be done as well as rectifying that which did not go well. The ANC is attending to that. The ANC led government is a government of the people and we are for the people with them, side by side.
Thank you!
Khaye Nkwanyana is the PEC and PWC MEMBER of the SACP in KwaZulu Natal responsible for Communication.
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