SACP statement of condolences to the family of liberation stalwart, Stephanie Kemp
Sunday, 11 March 2023: The South African Communist Party (SACP) dips its red flag in memory of the South African liberation stalwart, Stephanie Kemp (25 June 1941 – 10 March 2023).
The SACP conveys its heartfelt condolences to her family, particularly her sons, Alan and Michael Sachs, and her grandchildren.
The SACP also sends its condolences to the entire South African liberation movement, which she served diligently, and the entire working-class, with whose struggles she shared the deepest passion.
Stephanie Kemp joined the South African struggle against colonial and apartheid subjugation. She was particularly attracted to Marxist-Leninist literature, including that developed and enriched by the SACP, based on the South African conditions and struggle for liberation and social emancipation.
Stephanie Kemp’s passion for socialism deepened when she enrolled as a student at the University of Cape Town in 1960. She was subsequently recruited to the SACP in 1961, the same year when uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the joint military wing of the SACP and the African National Congress (ANC), was launched. She would later join the ANC following 1970, after the 1969 Morogoro Consultative Conference. The conference opened up ANC membership to people of all races.
Following her revolutionary work among the masses—including protesting against the Sabotage Act and against the imposition of Afrikaans as medium of instruction (among others), and following increased political uprisings across South Africa, the apartheid regime’s police briefly detained Stephanie Kemp together with another students in 1962 and incarcerated her at the Caledon Square police headquarters (now Cape Town Central police station).
Joining the MK in March 1963, Stephanie Kemp was again arrested on 11 July 1964 and was heavily tortured by the apartheid regime’s police while in detention. She was held in solitary confinement for three months, beaten and tortured until she lost consciousness.
Upon her release from prison in 1966, he did not abandon the cause she stood for. She also did not abandon the Communist Party, even when the ministry of justice threatened her with arrest for her membership in the SACP. In the same year, she escaped to exile and went on to play a key role in the underground SACP leadership structures, continuing her contribution to the struggle for liberation and social emancipation.
Stephanie Kemp worked in secret communication, keeping contact with the units of our liberation movement inside the country, from London. Newly independent African countries would accept stateless South Africans only if they were members of the ANC. As such, many of them, including Joe Slovo, Yusuf Dadoo, Reg September, and others were able to make the transit to London without passports.
Stephanie Kemp was well known among her comrades for the incisive and direct critical analysis of the national democratic revolution’s progress. Her return to South Africa in 1990, following the unbanning of the SACP and the ANC, as well as other organisations, did not slow her down as she engaged robustly to build a non-racial and non-sexist democratic South Africa.
Stephanie Kemp was elected chairperson of the ANC’s Hillbrow-Berea branch when the ANC was unbanned in 1990 and went on to play various roles in the national democratic struggle. She also went on to serve in the SACP Moses Mabhida (KwaZulu-Natal) Provincial Working Committee, as a gender transformation co-ordinator.
In tribute to the hero of the South African struggle, the SACP will continue to organise a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor, and strive to unite the entire working-class for a decisive victory over capitalism, towards socialist transition.
The SACP calls upon workers to unite across union and federation affiliation, and to build the powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor.
Hamba Kahle Mkhonto!
Workers of the World, Unite!
Statement issued by the SACP, 12 March 2023
