7 November 2024
In 2025 1 will be completing exactly 50 years of unbroken involvement in different forms and at different levels of the difficult and complex struggle for the total liberation of this country and our continent.
That 5 decades long involvement entailed enduring some of the most brutal forms of suffering including being repeatedly jailed without trial, brutal physical and mental torture, burying countless close comrades who paid the supreme price, facing vilification, hate campaigns, malicious gossip directed at me or my loved ones and family, to mention a few. In spite of all that one still feels fortunate to be alive and, unlike many, to have tasted even the semblance of fake and incomplete freedom which can be associated with being able to vote and freely speak out in the land of my ancestors.
For a fleeting moment between February 1990 and April 1994 we were all duped into believing that the struggle for liberation might be over and that we would face a different task of reversing the double-barrelled legacies of colonisation and racial capitalism otherwise known as "apartheid'. We were however never so naive as to believe that the system of apartheid was purely a matter of pigmentation or random hatred of black people, especially Africans, by the White European settlers. We learnt very early and very well that the real fight was always over economic resources.
This realisation was gained from intensive political education and active involvement in both the "illegal' and underground activities and structures of the then banned ANC, South African Communist Party and Umkhonto Wesizwe as well as the above ground membership of "legal' organisations ranging from COSAS, the East London Youth Congress, the Soweto Youth Congress, South African Allied Workers IJnion, Azanian Students Organisation, Black Students Society, Release Mandela Campaign, the National Democratic Lawyers Association, United Democratic Front and to most recently, the Economic Freedom Fighters. I mention that list of roughly ten organisations for two separate reasons. Firstly to indicate the level of vigorous political grounding which all activists had to undergo at the hands of countless leaders and in the occupation of countless leadership positions in those organisations, not to mention the levels of discipline required in the process.
Each organisation will naturally have its own rules, dos and don'ts and protocols.
Failure to adhere to these could result in death, literally.
But the second and most important reason for the list of organisations is to make the often forgotten point that all of them were nothing but mere vehicles in the unitary revolutionary journey towards the single destination of the total liberation of the oppressed black people, especially Africans, in South Africa, Africa and the African diaspora, coupled with the dethronement of the domination of the working class at large by the greedy, cruel and murderous capitalist class. The latter lies at the heart of racism, not the other way round. Racist capitalist do not really believe that they are part of some superior race, because all objective evidence points to the contrary. They however effectively use racism as the excuse and veneer to mete out cruelty and to exploit the labour of the more melanin-privileged humans. Any other excuse, whether height or low texture of foot size, could have been equally used and universally entrenched. As it happens gender is another proxy used for irrational discrimination among humans.
We must therefore never fall into the trap of the veneration of the vehicles and mistaking them for the destination. The IJDF, for example, was a collection of more than 500 different organisations or "vehicles", with a total membership probably totalling a few million people. To extend the vehicle metaphor, the IJDF was a peak traffic in a one-way street towards the political emancipation of the oppressed. The exact number of vehicles was irrelevant. What was important was that they were moving in the same agreed direction. They indeed arrived there in 1994.
In fact some of us typically belonged to about 5 or more different IJDF affiliates at the same time. We must therefore have enough political clarity to know when to walk, jog, run, take the car, the bus, boat or aircraft in the endless journey to total liberation. At different turns these modes of transport become necessary. A mistaken choice may be costly or deadly. Each vehicle has its usefulness and each has its primarily season. Enough about historical analogies and metaphors. Let us come to the concrete world and the present moment.
After some long soul-searching I have come to the happy decision to formally join or "rejoin" the modern and now legal version of Umkhonto Wesizwe. I do so because as I once did in the 1980's I honestly believe that, at this time and phase of our struggle, it is the correct vehicle which will most speedily take us, as a people, to the promised land. It is as simple as that. Now of course a belief is, by definition, a subjective thing.
If a person honestly believes in something, anything, the best you can do is to disagree with their belief. But what you cannot do is to deny them the right to hold their belief simply because you disapprove of it or hold a different belief. The only test is whether each belief, yours and theirs, is honestly held. Fake or pretentious beliefs do not enter this discussion.
Why then do I believe that, at this time and at this juncture, Umkhonto Wesizwe is the best hope for achieving my own revolutionary dreams and hopefully those of my long-suffering people?
That question can never be answered without first considering that as part of my political and revolutionary journey I was a member of the African National Congress for 33 years and a member of the Economic Freedom Fighters for Il years. Before joining the ANC underground I was a political activist for 5 years, including a year as a founder member of COSAS, my first political or organisational home. Joining COSAS in 1979 was the very first time I ever held a membership card. This perspective is therefore necessary to explain the announcement I am making here.
I left COSAS in 1981 because I stopped being a pupil and became a factory worker. I therefore joined the South African Allied Workers Union. I left the SAAWIJ and rejoined COSAS when I decided to resign from my job in protest of the retrenchment of my comrades and went back to school. I left COSAS again in 1983 and joined the Black Students Society and AZASO at Wits because I was now a university student. I left the EL Youth Congress and joined the Soweto Youth Congress because I now lived in Johannesburg, and no longer in East London. And so it goes. Every departure and new vehicle has a rational story. Each story is different. The destination remains the same. But my biggest turning points will always be my leaving the ANC for the EFF and the present decision not to renew my lapsed membership Of the EFF and joining MK. In a way, as I have previously said "I have never left the ANC". It left me. Similarly, I will never really leave the EFF. But still I am joining Umkhonto Wesizwe. As a legal statement this is probably and understandably the most confusing thing you may have ever read, bordering on madness. How can one person consider themselves to be a member of the ANC, EFF and MK all at the same time. Impossible, right? Wrong. The first thing to understand is that you do not need anybody's permission to consider yourself as a "membed' or supporter of any one or all three of these organisations. I have earned the right to belong to all three through blood and sweat as well as the personal efforts and sacrifices I have made for each. Nobody can ever take that away from me. In this context by "member I do not mean carrying a card or paying annual dues. In that narrow context I am not a member of any organisation. My membership of the ANC expired or lapsed in 2013. I have also been recently informed that my membership of the EFF has lapsed. I have not yet signed up my membership of MK.
So how can I claim to be a member of any of these three organisations? All of them have the right to issue statements "clarifyind' that, according to their "records" I am not their member. Yet, I insist I am a member of all three. I am a proud member of the "AMF of the Nation" which is some not so imaginary amalgam of the ANC, MK and ANC. The African Mkhonto Fighters, if you get my drift.
In this context by membership I simply mean allegiance. For different reasons a part of me owes some allegiance to all these three organisations. What will shock you more is the fact that, to different degrees, the "AMP', which is the core of what will soon hopefully be the Patriotic Front, is the largest political organisation in South Africa.
More than 11 million people voted for it. That is 64% of those who voted in the most recent elections, a landslide or overwhelming majority by any description. To put it into perspective, it is a higher percentage than the 62% which the ANC of Nelson Mandela received in 1994. Food for thought indeed.
To get closer to our destination, we must all find the inner AMF in all of us. By that I mean that, although we may hold the card or vote for one of these organisations, we must be allowed to support some of them or all of them on different issues. In fact millions of our people recently voted for all these organisations at the same time, even in previous elections. This phenomenon is known as splitting your vote. It is prevalent among black South Africans because of very complex historical reasons. So we must do away with the silly notion that aligning yourself more directly or closely with any one of our organisations necessarily means totally rejecting the others.
The historical mission of the oppressed at this juncture is therefore to collectively strive towards the planned and deliberate unification of all the progressive forces who are primarily found in the ANC, the EFF and now MK. I am dedicating the rest of my life to this particular mission. Diffcult and challenging? Yes. Impossible No! In any event if it was easy, it would not be called "the struggle". It is a mission that cannot be allowed to fail. There will be hiccups, casualties and even setbacks along the way but the mission must go on.
I can therefore reveal in public for the first time that in line with this long held philosophy, in the last period of almost 2 years, I have been part of the conceptualisation, formation, announcement and protection, if not the very continued existence of Umkhonto Wesizwe. This will come as no surprise to the leadership of both the EFF and MK because it was never a hidden secret. The public also knows some parts of that story, at least the most recent parts, which have played out in the public domain in the courts and certain public addresses where I openly shared platforms with President Zuma and other leaders of MK.
What may come as a surprise to most South Africans is that there was a time when President Zuma and I were possibly the only two people in South Africa who were discussing the idea and need of building this unity movement. I can however reveal that it was he alone who came up with the original idea and the name Umkhonto Wesizwe to give shape to the one-on-one secret discussions he was holding with me and possibly separately with other trusted comrades. Mine was a secondary and supporting part. I will forever cherish that he chose and trusted me to play such an important historic and hopefully decisive role in our centuries old struggle for total liberation.
I can reveal that for the best part of the 12 months period between January and December 2023 we held a series of important two-person engagements, which were later expanded to a very limited number of other leaders and persons. These underground meetings took place in the provinces of KwaZulu Natal and later on in Gauteng. The KZN meetings started in the second half of 2023 with people like Ace Magashule and some of the "administrators" who had been delegated to register the MK party. The Gauteng meetings involved multiple engagements with leaders of about 10 other political formations. The two most important of such meetings were held on 28 August 2023 and 3 October 2023 in Johannesburg. Of course all this was followed by our deliberate choice of 16 December 2023 as the symbolic and historical date for the public announcement. Shortly before the public announcement I arranged additional one-on-one separate engagements between President Zuma and the Presidents of the UDM, ATM and the EFF. In each meeting, it was agreed firstly that the unity talks would be revived after the elections and that no unduly negative campaigning would be conducted by the participating organisations against each other.
In spite of any current minor and temporary turbulences and insignificant differences in tactics, I have full confidence that the leaders and members of our progressive organisations still know that there is no viable alternative to our unity. In particular, Julius Malema and the EFF leadership have played a very important role in this search for our elusive unity. For that I salute them. But much more needs to be done, sacrifices must be made and our egos must be put aside. The mission for total liberation and decolonisation is far bigger than any single one of us. The time is now. There will never be any road to our total freedom that does not cross the unavoidable bridge of black and progressive unity.
Since the beginning of 2024 after coming out above the ground, MK was involved in no less than 10 big and small court battles for the very survival of the project. On 2 January 2024 merely two weeks after the public announcement of the MK party, the ANC predictably launched two big court actions in one day in as part of a major offensive aimed at killing the MK party. Fortunately, we had long anticipated their moves and carefully planned our responses. Predictably, the first court case was for the deregistration of the party and the second was for the setting aside of the trademark, logo and the name Umkhonto Wesizwe. Both ANC attacks were unsuccessful. Needless to say if even one of these had succeeded, the history of this country would have been different. These key battles were followed by other minor court skirmishes with ANC sponsored political "administrators" like Jabulani Khumalo and other chance takers all aimed at liquidating Umkhonto Wesizwe. Again they all failed. Having dodged all those bullets shot by the ANC of Ramaphosa, the stage was therefore set for the historical results of the 29 May elections, the outcomes of which clearly came as a genuine "shock' to the media and commentators. However, I can now reveal all this was part of a carefully laid out plan. There was no shock or coincidence on our side.
When President Zuma coined the electoral goal of MK as the attainment of a two-thirds majority, again the innocent "experts" saw political "madness". I can now also reveal that this was a coded reference to the political fortunes not only of MK but of the combined progressive forces. Indeed if you add up the members of what would have been a truly progressive or patriotic front caucus, in Parliament, the percentage would have easily been around or even above the required 67% of two-thirds majority .The immediate political enemy and obstacle of that dream is the fake "Govemment of Neoliberal Unit/' pact which was ominously signed by Helen Zille and Fikile Mbalula on 14 June 2024, only two days before the 48th commemoration of the massacre of African children on 16 June 1976. The symbolic irony of selling out during a special period was lost to Mbalula and his principal Cyril Ramaphosa. From now on our mourning and commemoration period must begin on June 14 till June 16. The children of 1976 and thousands of others were not murdered only to bring about a single super "homeland' regime incorrectly called a "Govemment of National Unity'. That is the sad context within which the declaration by the DA of the EFF as "number one enemy/' must be understood. The same goes for their self-serving characterisation of a possible ANC/EFF/MK unity government as a "Doomsday Coalition". It would indeed have been doomsday for racism, inequality, landlessness and poverty in our land of plenty. For black people the real doomsday coalition is the current backward DA/ANC pact of June 14.
Only the sell-out exploits of the ANC of Ramaphosa have delayed the inevitable total liberation of his own people, the Africans, and possibly the Continent as a whole. In opting for the present sell-out deal which was brokered and heavily sponsored by White Monopoly Capital, Ramaphosa once again chose 30 pieces of silver over the suffering masses of our people. However, at worst "it is only a matter of 5 years", as one leader once said. Within the next 5 years we need to put all our collective energies and focus on the sacred mission to reunite the forces of African liberation in South Africa, whatever it takes. The so-called GNIJ must be fought, defeated and dismantled.
By any lawful means necessary.
At the centre of the sellout deal known as the GNU is one person, Cyril Ramaphosa, who is the modern day personification of a homeland leader and sellout. He is no different from Matanzima, Mangophe or Mphephu of yesteryear. He will go down in history not only as the person who sold out his comrades as gruesomely narrated by Mosioua Terror Lekota, in the student movement in the 1970s, or who collaborated with the Oppenheimers in forming a captured trade union in the 1980s, brokered section 25 of the Constitution which ensured the non-return of our land in the 1990's and instigated the murder and massacre of 34 workers in Marikana in August 2012 but above all, the architect of the special type re-colonisation of our country by the apartheid regime as represented today by the racist DA, Freedom Front and their black collaborators. There is no single black human being in the history of this country who has consistently sold out black people and deliberately ensured their continued economic subjugation on a larger scale than Ramaphosa. He is the modern day Nongqawuse and his mission is to instigate a second mass suicide of our people. This time we must refuse.
We must never forget that the current political reality and the ongoing realignment of the political landscape both on the right and the left, has not been ushered in about by any particular organisation or single leader. It comes largely as a result of the election outcomes delivered by the people of South Africa themselves. The role of wise leaders is to try to listen and carefully decode what our people are saying. Any misreading of what the people are really telling us will likely result in political mistakes such as the so-called GNIJ and other missteps which will be severely punished by the people.
So what is to be done? We need to intensify the work for the total liberation of our people and the decolonisation of our country and our continent. To do that in the immediate term goal is to kill the sellout deal called the "GNU' by politically identifying and isolating its high priests in the neoliberal faction of the ANC from the leadership of that organisation and our country. At the same time we must spare neither strength nor courage in achieving the much needed and hitherto elusive black unity, which is the single most important weapon which we desperately need in order to defeat the forces of evil, oppression and exploitation. Without the unity of the oppressed, we will be subjugated for another four centuries. Now is the time to wake up and see through the cheap schemes of the enemy and embark on the new exciting journey towards the interrelated twin goals of radical economic freedom and genuine decolonisation. There is no alternative road leading to our total freedom which does not cross the unavoidable bridge of black and progressive unity in action.
It is indeed a tragic truth that since their arrival on our shores on 6 April in 1652, the colonisers have never ever had to face us as a united force. That is the single most important cause for our ultimate defeats. Since that arrival date we have been defeated with many variations of one single strategy of the enemy: divide and rule.
This has been done by teaching us hatred instead of love, tribalism and xenophobia instead of Pan Africanism, individualism and selfishness instead of ubuntu, the veneration of foreign languages and cultures instead of our own rich cultures, Western music instead of our cowhide drums, and capitalism and neoliberalism instead of our natural collectivist modes of production and distribution. The time has come to open our people's eyes to see through all this and say with one voice: Enough is enough.
Umkhonto Wesizwe and the mooted Patriotic Front are two symbiotically interrelated ideas which we must drive with everything in our power, if we are ever to obtain our long awaited and unduly delayed political and economic, social, cultural, ideological freedom in our lifetime. If not for ourselves let us do it for the next generations. We need to join the new fight for total freedom and answer to the call for unity in our millions across the length and breadth of this country and this continent. There can be no bigger or more important mission. We dare not submit. We must fight.
MAYIHLOME!!
KE NAKO!!
ZEMK' IINKOMO MAGWALANDINI!!
MATIMBA YA HINA!!
Issued by Dali Mpofu, 7 November 2024
