Harry Gwala memorial Lecture – Pietermaritzburg
First and foremost, our Party and our revolutionary class interest!
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” –Albert Einstein
It is a single honour that the Party saw it fit that I, once again, conduct this all-important memorial lecture of one of the greatest sons of the soil – Harry Gwala. The lion of midlands has a special place to the South African revolutionaries and his name is ascribed to the epitaphs of the great giants with whom we are standing on their shoulders.
When approached to deliver this lecture I had some doubts whether to agree or not. This was precisely because I was given a carte blanche with no defined theme except to speak about the immediate issues that troubles us in the movement and speak about the Party. And so, I had to gaze the horizon and cast my sight wide to search for the beginning and the end. We seem to have so much going on!
I appreciate that here today we also have the presence of the all the alliance components. We are all worried about what has been the coup de main within and amongst the alliance in the province. Time for unity of the alliance in this province is now; but it should not be a cosmetic unity devoid of being genuine and programme based. It must be a unity that is based on equal respect and mutual trust. Gwala was an embodiment of the alliance as a whole.
This year, June 2016 marks the 21st anniversary since Harry Gwala departed. Comrade Harry Gwala was a communist, a teacher, organizer and a leader of our movement as a whole. A son of the Lutheran lay preacher who himself grew up through those religious teachings. The irony is that Gwala was an atheist.
Born in New Hanover, after completing school he enrolled in Adams College for a teaching qualification. As a school teacher he taught in Slangspruit. Amongst those he taught was Moses Mabhida who later in the cause of struggle became the General Secretary of the SACP.
The Lion of Midlands or Munt’ omdala (as he was affectionately known) joined the SACP in 1942 and the ANCYL in 1944. He is less mentioned as one of those first young cadres of the Youth League, and had worked with the likes of Anton Lembede and often had ideological discord on communism which Gwala subscribed, and on the other hand, Gwala had a problem with narrow Africanist nationalism that Lembede represented in his World outlook. It is during this time when he began his trade union activism, organizing workers in the Chemical and building industries. He established the Rubber and Cable Workers union in Howick. He was instrumental in the organising of the 1950 national stay away to the extent that he was listed under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1952, banned for two years by the system. These were difficult days after National Party had assumed power in 1948 and with greater speed, entrenching racialized laws and fighting against liberation forces with the ban of the Communist Party in 1950.
Because of the above banning orders, he had to found employment in Edendale Hospital but quickly dismissed because he recruited workers for SACTU. After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Gwala became an underground activists, recruiting for uMkhonto weSizwe. It is these activities including other acts of sabotage that led to his arrest and later sent to Robben Island in 1964.
He was released in 1972 but restricted to Pietermaritzburg. As a result, he could not pursue his teaching career or trade union activities. For survival, he opened a laundry business within the area. But Munt’ omdala was not going to stay without defiance. He undermined the system and continued to conduct political operations and this led to his re-arrest in 1975 and August 1976 respectively for being involved in workers strike. These were tumultus times just after the June 16 student riot with the system taking no chances, and consequently Gwala was sent to Robben Island in 1977 under life imprisonment. He had to be released in 1988 after illness from motor neuron disease that robbed him of his use of arms.
But even after his release despite the disease, he remained a fighter and a militant of all.
He was part of the leadership towards and after the unbanning of the liberation movements. He was elected in the early 90’s to be an ANC Chairperson of Midlands and elected to the ANC NEC in the Westville conference in 1991. Again he was elected to the Central Committee of the SACP. He was honoured by the ANC with the highest honour of Isithwalandwe/Seaparankoe in 1992.
Mdala (Gwala) was not a school teacher only, many senior comrades who were in Robben Island always share their part of how Harry Gwala taught them, from Marxism to various theories of development. Amongst those that were his students is comrade George Mashamba, a CC member and veteran of the Party and an outstanding Marxist scholar of all time. From 1988 in his arrival from Robben Island Mdala help the recruitment of health professionals for a newly formed union NEHAWU in particular Edendale Hospital, where he was expelled. In the Midlands, particularly in Edendale Hospital, Gwala coordinated and recruited health professionals to the union linking it with underground work of the movement at a time. That explains why Edendale Hospital, as a biggest in the Region became a focal point of struggle through worker strikes with the Special Branch raiding it more often to seize shop stewards.
Harry Gwala was known to many as one of those militant and firebrand leader particularly in the early 90’s. This was so predicated to an extent of befogging his intellect and decisiveness in key moments. Like all the revolutionaries, he might have erred here and there but his dedication and contribution to the freedom of this country far eclipse any other deviations.
The then General Secretary of the SACP comrade Charles Nqakula, in his eulogy, referred to him as “Harry Gwala as – Man of Steel”. In qualifying this, comrade Nqakula quotes the last paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto:
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare them...” he further goes from this quotation to describe Harry Gwala “Harry Gwala spoke his mind, always. In doing this he was prepared to ruffle feathers, to criticise anyone, no matter how important, in our movement. That was Harry Gwala”.
He was one of the interesting leaders to listen. He was a leader that canvassed no popularity in assuming a political posture. He will differ even if means with everyone. His approach was always from the class perspective on any argument or theoretical debate. The most interesting debates for me with Gwala’s weighing in, remains the debates towards the Party 8th Congress in Soweto about whether the SACP must be a mass or a vanguard party with carefully recruited cadres. Obviously his views were for a vanguard party with no open policy for everyone but tightly managed recruitment base on selection. Otherwise, Gwala contends, would have an amorphous mess!
He was suspicious of the CODESA negotiation process and did not trust what could be the outcomes of this process in the interest of our peoples demands – whites and their interest. As for him, the movement was committing serious mistakes in the process such as suspending the arm struggle as this elevated National Party to occupy high moral ground on the table. He was also critical about the concessions in CODESA canvassed through a document “Strategic Perspective” and our Chairman, comrade Joe Slovo was leading on the front. This popularly became known as the sunset clauses ( Negotiations, what a room for compromise). He differed with Slovo in terms of sunset clauses as encapsulated under Slovo document. As comrade Charles Nqakula said it….. that was Gwala at best.
Today we have strange comrades who, before taking a political stand on any issue, they first make a calculation on who not to offend in power, because they might commit career suicides and get overlooked during deployment seasons. As a result of this new fear and nurtured culture of pleasing leaders than respecting them has given birth to institutionalized tabular rasa tradition from the foremost leading cadres in our movement and alliance. Today, wrong things are not challenged with the strength of vigour that should be; because comrades are fearful of being rounded off, isolated if not cornered and lose their deployments. By so doing, we are in the service of those who are in the mission to destroy these organizations that we belong.
There is a huge difference between unquestioning loyalty and a questioning loyalty. Cadres who have imbued themselves with the tendency of unquestioning loyalty (tabular rasa) are an albatross to the revolutionary oxygen of the movement; it is even more worse for the Party that must internalize constructive criticism and self-criticism. A “questioning loyalty” is not a minimum loyalty but supreme loyalty. We must encourage cadres to be loyal and question certain perspectives and decisions from the point of view of insulating these organizations from outside vulnerability and attack.
Many comrades asked me a question: What Harry Gwala would have done or said in the current problems and challenges facing our movement?
I disappointingly, respond by asserting that I prefer not to use the weight of dead heroes and appropriate their voice on today’s problems in order to gerrymander our present situation. And so, I forbid anyone in advance who will preface any question from this template. Let’s confront the difficult task that proceed from the basis that what is it that we, as the living, are doing in saving the alliance and the movement as a whole.
I am saying this because, this ANC and its alliance, must continue to be a leader of our society and a leader of government. The ANC and its alliance ought to enjoy moral authority to the society that they lead; and indeed the ANC and its alliance, ordinarily, should be the South African point of entry and a point of departure because of its upright and moral stature. But is this still the case?
For those who are objective within our alliance and the movement as a whole, would agree that our occupation of moral high ground; of being the voice of reason and therefore a natural towering leader of society is fast dissipating. This is because of our own making. The movement is spending a lot of time in its own internal leadership battles is emasculating its strength as a leader of government and society.
These leadership battles, at all levels as they peak, tend to defocus or lower the tempo in our strength on governance. The by-product of that lowered tempo is that our people, the recipients of service delivery, becomes collateral damage arising out of defocused leadership in government.
One of the biggest strategic errors we committed and became hardwired in Polokwane Conference was to sanctify the slates or what we refer now as “winner takes all”. By this practice, it means factionalism get rooted beyond the elective conference as triumphalism of the victors, and their non-inclusive leadership (in most instances) tend to sideline the defeated comrades. This has gone down to all levels of the movement as the most ravaging cancer. Comrades are unwilling to look beyond their faction for good leaders even if they disagree on conference choices.
The piling up of executive committees with one factions that cohere and kowtow around a single or few influential leaders practically delivering, in our four alliance components, poor leaders because the judgment of strength to lead is replaced by the strength of being in a winning camp. And so, many qualitative leaders who have been tampered by the time in our structures are dejected out of leadership on the basis that they are not part of this or that faction. The ultimate loser in this new entrenched ecosystem is these alliance organizations themselves and the trust by our people.
We must also admit that as these progressive organisations, we have abandoned political education in its most thorough form. If there is any effort in some quarters of our structures, it is in the most elementary level and purely an act of academic exercise. Our organizations, the branches upwards, are too obsessed with governance issues in their agenda and conferences/congresses. The new recruited cadres hardly get trained on the ABCs of the ANC and Communist party; the relationship between all alliance components including SANCO; the conception of the national democratic revolution and tools of analysis to comprehend balance of forces, both domestically and globally from a materialist scientific frame of mind.
The above are important wherewithals for cadreship development without which a revolutionary organization will progressively be emptied of its very self. Already signs are in sight. The new young and emerging cadres (which I am very much part of) are exhibiting some very strange kind of discipline or lack of. To understand this one must not go very far than face book postings. All manner of what is revolutionary ugly and pernicious from those who define themselves as comrades is startling and depressing. Yet these are potentially our future leaders. Some young leaders think that it is excusable to be careless because they will be forgiven that they are still young and upcoming. Comrade Joel Netshitenzhe captured it very well in his address to 200 young leaders in June 2010, Mail and Guardian programme:
“And so, the condescension that we of greyer hair and emptier scalps tend to evince towards young people is as much artificial as it is pretentious. It is an ageism that can be a convenient tool of social control; some rule that there are the deserving – to whom it is decreed by sheer dint of age that they should lead. What we do not realise, though, is that this has its collorary; treat mature youths like children and they will behave as such. They will say anything and do anything, proceeding from the perspective that someone else will clean up after them”
We need revolutionary discipline in our comrades and an appetite to learn from those who come before us.
Youth loyalty to the progressive movement is not unconditional.
As a movement, we need to appreciate that in 2016 we are largely in a country that has a strong and growing younger population. These younger people have no emotional connection with the ANC and the SACP except that, for the ANC, it must deliver as a ruling party. They have no historical loyalty of exile troubles, detentions and mass democratic movement actions’ experiences of the 80s. The youth love the ANC to the extent that it leads and deliver to the needs of society. And so, their loyalty to the ANC is by no means unconditional.
The above poses a particular challenge that we must, always, raise the bar all the time otherwise they have plenty of options to switch on, come election time. These are facts that we must embed in our base-level as we seek to remain relevant and as leader of society beyond sloganizing. To be a leader of society is not by proclamation from the roof tops but it is earned.
Alliance perestroika and glasnost.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke.
We are commemorating the life and times of comrade Harry Gwala at a time where the alliance is facing its testing time. It is true that there are challenges in the alliance at all levels and the solution is not from the SACP to bury its head, and wish that this will come to pass, but it must conduct a deeper reflection to itself. The current modalities within which the alliance is functioning is outdated and functionally unsustainable. Where there is relatively healthy alliance relations in some part of the country is a function of a matured and good human relations amongst leaders. In some cases there is a subtle paternalistic approach where decisions are taken elsewhere and alliance is just consulted to satisfy formality and rubberstamp. We need an alliance perestroika and glasnost.
The Communist Party should not lament but accept that the centre of power is ANC because it contest electoral power directly. And this locates it on a higher plane of influence than any other component of the alliance to make determinations.
The elephant in the room that the Party must resolve in the 14th Congress in 2017 is the vexed question of the alliance political centre. This is one issue, immediately after Polokwane conference alliance engagement caused must of the consternation on whether ANC should and must continue as a political centre or we need a reconfigured alliance with the centre being the alliance as a whole.
I am a strong proponent of a reconfigured alliance where power relations will not only lie in one component of the alliance. But leveling of power relations cannot practically happen out of the vacuum. It cannot be realized outside of how we, as allies, relate to electoral politics. He who contest elections directly and receives an electoral mandate from South Africans to have public representatives will always have an upper hand, and therefore naturally, is a centre of power. The era that was hailed by OR Tambo in the SACP Anniversary address in the early 80s, that “ours is not a paper alliance” requires restructuring. At a time, we were not in government and no irritations associated with governance and policy direction.
To that extent, reconfiguration of the alliance cannot be a product of gentleman’s agreement between leaders of that conjuncture, agreeing to the dispersal of power to the common agreed centre voluntarily; but to the contrary, power relations and their dispersal to the alliance centre lies on how the alliance as a whole (at least the political parties within) relates to power that derives material weight to the many issues that renders the current alliance template outmoded.
And so, an interesting discussion is re-emerging in the structures of the Party, at least in this province, the PEC is equally seized with such a discussion which we believe should be allowed and shaped towards the 14th Congress next year.
Such a discussion suggests two options the SACP is facing in the 14th Congress which must be a basis upon which the issue of leveraging of centre of power will be set in motion (But these options should not be seen as the only ones):
1. There seem to be a strong view for the SACP to contest elections directly at all levels and, together with ANC, constitute a coalition government on the basis of each component bringing its electoral gains on the table. This will mean establishment of protocols within a framework of accountability at the centre and directly for each components. [examples of this arrangements are plenty across the World especially in Left movements]. This option also speaks to the direct influence of the NDR in terms of a radical nature. COSATU calls it “walking through the doors”
2. The second option that springs up is the maintenance of a status quo, continuation of the alliance campaigning under one but underpinned by the agreed allocative percentage which are non-negotiable in the distribution of deployments (paper alliance).
The above discussion should not be seen as a totality of tasks on what the Party is grappling with on its bigger debate of Party and state power debate which started in 2005 Special Congress. The influence on state power goes beyond electoral politics but to all components of what we regard as state from a Marxist perspective.
We need to continue with greet vigour to assert ourselves in communities. Communists must be a pulse of the community; like a fish in the river, they must be a miniature of communities that they are living. We need to build organs of peoples power and invigorate as a permanent feature the “Know your neighborhood campaign”.
Our role in building strong progressive unions in the workplaces must continue; our role in the battle of ideas and economy; providing leadership on environmental degradation struggles and other centres of power consistent with the overall medium term vision in its most essential detail.
In discussing these options, we must avoid two extremes:
To debate these issues proceeding from a premise anger arising out of intra-alliance irritations and therefore omit or underplay objective realities that this may bring; equally, we must avoid entering this debate from a cowardice starting point that over exaggerate the threat of any of the radical decisions to reconfigure the alliance thereby hamstringing the Party from taking bold decisions if necessary and therefore cage it to indecision.
Related to the above is the sense of discomfort to upset relations with our ally in having such a discourse within the Party as if the autonomy for these engagements must be tacitly countenance elsewhere.
First and foremost, our Party and our revolutionary class interest!
Comrades, we demand less from you as cadres of the Party. There is a particular standard within which a cadre of the Party must stand out. The phase that we are in and the one that we are gravitating towards, requires the most committed cadres. We need cadres that will boldly say “Less about others and more about us as the Party”
1. We demand absolute loyalty to the Party.
2. We demand total commitment to the Party.
3. Submission to the party discipline and subordination of ones interest to that of the Party.
4. We rid ourselves of Communists by convenience not committed to the thoroughgoing revolutionary project of the alternative society from the present.
5. We demand cadres who will unflinchingly defend the Party from any attack and slander.
6. We must build the Young Communist League and nurture by way of political scaffolding, young cadres to acquire necessary theoretical growth and, through organizational experiences, be steeled into quality cadres.
Conclusion
Our task is to infuse and agitate for a revolutionary content of the NDR. We must carry forward the 11th Congress slogan “Building elements of, capacity for and momentum towards Socialism” this is more urgent than it was in 2002 Rustenburg Congress. The task of building the mass base of the party that is rooted to the community is the most urgent task. The bourgeois apologists and those who are intellectually blighted always pour scorn to the Communist Party as irrelevant, without mass base and clinging behind ANC. Whilst we must not fall to their trap and therefore want to prove a point to them, but instead, we must continue to swell our ranks with more membership and turn the quantity to quality through political education and programmatic involvement.
We are a Party of power and we are Party of Socialism. We believe, there is a strong case for Socialism in South Africa. The current bourgeois crisis both domestically and globally, the social effects that this create to human kind, is testimony to a system that is inhumane and which must be struggled against.
I have decided to speak about all of the above issues that many of our comrades prefer to side step, because, as Albert Einstein said “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” And so, a different level of consciousness is needed in some of the current challenges than the that created them.
Lets build the Party as a Party of class. Lets build cadres who will say: First and foremost, our Party and our revolutionary class interest is supreme. In that way, Baba Harry Gwala will wear a smile in his permanent residence in the cemetery of kwaSwayimane!
-thank you-
Khaye Nkwanyana is the Provincial Executive Member of the South African Communist Party in KwaZulu Natal [Moses Mabhida]
