South African Communist Party
Statement on the 26th annual commemoration of Joe Slovo’s passing
Delivered by the SACP General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande virtually from Pietermaritzburg
Wednesday, 6 January 2021
Joe Slovo dedicated his entire life from the young age of 16 to the cause of liberation, and social emancipation of the working-class. This for him included ending male domination and oppression of women and girls—that is patriarchy—and building a non-sexist society. Slovo’s dedication to the transformation of South Africa to become a non-racial and non-sexist democratic and prosperous society did not end with his death, however. In celebrating his life, we commit to pursue this struggle further. Slovo was a scientific socialist. To continue his legacy, we need to intensify the struggle for socialism and unite the working-class for the final victory towards complete liberation and social emancipation.
Slovo’s choice of the Avalon Cemetery as his place of burial was part of his commitment whilst alive to break the barriers of racial segregation, even in his death. One of the largest graveyards in South Africa, Avalon Cemetery is in Soweto, the largest township in the country, now home to over one million people. The White only colonial government of South Africa created Soweto in the 1930s as part of its racist human settlements policy to create Black townships, also pushing away Black people from major towns and cities. During that time, the British monarch was the head of state of the colonial South African state, a subordinate of Britain as a colonial power. The apartheid regime consolidated the segregationist agenda under the “Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, 1970”, by creating the Bantustans.
When he was 15 years old, Slovo left school to look for work. He was compelled to do so by his working-class and poor background. That was when his lifelong contribution to the struggle of workers’ rights, the struggle for liberation and democracy began. Two important developments occurred a year after his employment as a dispatch clerk for a chemist, shaping a lifelong dedication to the struggle.
When he was 16, Slovo was elected a shop steward of the National Union of Distributive Workers. He became involved in leading a strike that won workers’ demands, but he was gravely disturbed when Black workers were excluded from benefitting from the gains of that action. The same year, 1942, he joined the Communist Party to wage the struggle against the racist, capitalist, colonial regime. He remained unquestionably loyal to the struggle for over five decades from 1942 until his death on 6 January 1995.
During the Second World War, Slovo overstated his age so he could go to fight against Nazism and Fascism. Upon his return from the war, he gained admission at the University of the Witwatersrand based on life assessment, having left school at the age of 15 without completing the equivalent of matric today. It was at Wits where he met his first wife, Ruth, a communist cadre in her own right, and Nelson Mandela as students. Slovo excelled, winning himself a degree in law. He started working as a lawyer, with more focus on defending the stalwarts of our struggle, after obtaining his law degree.
Slovo was one of the key leaders of our struggle, a great theoretician, strategist, and tactician. He was involved not only in intellectual activity but also in the realm of practical action to change the world for the better. He was a founder member of the Congress of Democrats following the banning of the Communist Party under the “Suppression of Communism Act, 1950”. Together with his wife, Ruth, daughter of the SACP National Treasurer, Julius First, and Matilda (neé Levetan), Slovo was among the first to be banned under the draconian legislation.
As a communist cadre, then functioning in the underground organisation of the SACP but active in the Congress of Democrats, Slovo took part in the drafting of the Freedom Charter. However, because he was banned, he could not attend the Congress of the People where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955. The resilient Slovo observed the proceedings from a nearby rooftop using binoculars. Following the adoption of the Freedom Charter he was arrested, together with 155 other comrades, for the role he played.
During their trial, Slovo simultaneously formed part of the defence legal team. The charges against him and several others were dropped in 1958 and for the rest of the accused in 1961. That was however short-lived because Slovo and others were arrested during the state of emergency declared by the apartheid regime after the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960.
When the joint SACP and ANC military wing uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) was formed in 1961 Slovo, together with former President Nelson Mandela co-founded its High Command, with the SACP headquarters at Liliesleaf Farm as the operations centre. When the apartheid regime arrested our stalwarts at Liliesleaf Farm, leading to the Rivonia Treason Trial between 1963 and 1964, Slovo was on an external mission. He had to remain in forced exile for 27 years performing SACP, ANC and MK work. Slovo was involved together with other comrades in producing the key documents of our struggle. We already mentioned the Freedom Charter. The documents include the popular ANC Strategy and Tactics adopted in 1969, the Green Book, and major SACP documents, to name but a few.
Slovo formed part of the Revolutionary Council established after the ANC Morogoro Consultative Conference where the first Strategy and Tactics was adopted. He formed part of the Politico-Military Council that replaced the Revolutionary Council in 1983 made up of leaders drawn from the ANC, SACP and the South African Congress of Trade Unions, SACTU. Two years later, in 1985, he was elected as the first white person to serve on the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC). The same year he became the MK Chief of staff and the following year the SACP General Secretary. He was succeeded by Chris Hani in both the two roles respectively in 1987 and 1991.
At our first Congress back in South Africa in 1991, Slovo was elected as the National Chairperson of the SACP. Following our first democratic election in 1994, President Nelson Mandela appointed Slovo, who was elected as a Member of Parliament, to serve as the first Minister of Housing in the democratic dispensation. Slovo served our people with great dedication in the three roles – as the SACP National Chairperson, ANC National Executive Committee Member and Member of Parliament, as he had in all his previous roles, until his death on 6 January 1995.
Slovo was also a key player in our transition to democracy. He was a key negotiator and participant, representing the SACP, in the negotiations principally between our movement and the apartheid regime and in the multi-party talks that led to the 1994 democratic breakthrough. He also penned the paper titled “Negotiations: What room for compromise”. For first time openly the idea of a government of national unity emerged. The paper led to a huge debate within the movement, but also made a huge contribution in creating some consensus, though never 100 per cent, on our approach to some key aspects of the movement’s negotiations strategy and the transition to democracy.
This year also marks the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party in July 1921. We are indeed commemorating Slovo’s passing under vastly different conditions. Today we face new challenges and multiple crises of the global capitalist system. We are called upon to rise to the occasion.
The fourfold crises of the capitalist system
We are in the midst of the second surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is rising with a massive devastation on life and the economy.
We wish to express our heartfelt condolences all the families that lost their loved ones due to COVID-19. We also salute all our frontline workers in the healthcare sector, including those who have lost their own lives in the course of duty saving the lives of our people. We salute also all those workers in essential services who have risked infection to service the people, including police, teachers, and workers in the security industry
The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the pre-existing economic crisis of the capitalist system. The social indicators of the endemic crisis of the capitalist system include the persisting high levels of inequality, unemployment, and poverty.
Accompanying the worsening economic crisis are the multiple crises of social reproduction, affecting millions of poor and working-class families struggling to make ends meet, including very high levels of interpersonal violence in society. The pandemic of gender-based violence that our country is experiencing is also located at the heart of the crisis of social reproduction.
Another major crisis caused by the patterns of capitalist production and consumption is the catastrophic crisis of climate change, global warming, and environmental degradation.
What is to be done?
Like Joe Slovo, we must consistently strive to Put People First, before and above profit. This is a key task the SACP Central Committee identified in December 2020 at its plenary to guide the Party’s programme of action in this year of our centenary.
To succeed, the theme Put People First—Batho Pele needs the people at its centre, mobilised in action to achieve a change for the better. This is one reason we also refer to this year of the SACP centenary as the Year of Mass Activism by the working-class and poor to put people before profits in defence of humanity.
However, we cannot go back to where we were before COVID-19. We cannot do things and mobilise in old ways in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the other interrelated crises of the capitalist system. We need to forge alternative forms of mass mobilisation and mass activism, considering not only the COVID-19 pandemic but also the other crises of the capitalist system. We have to find new and creative ways to do intense work amongst the people.
COVID-19 is the immediate threat to all South Africans and every person in South Africa need to unite to overcome as a matter of urgency. We therefore reiterate our support for the COVID-19 preventative measures announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 28 December 2020. We call upon every person and family in South Africa to adhere to the COVID-19 preventative regulations.
The SACP also commits to play its part in forging a broad global left campaign for the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. This campaign must seek to challenge the dominant profit logic driven by big pharmaceutical companies. In the same vein, we want to welcome the stance by the World Health Organisation to make the COVID-19 vaccine a global public good, rather than a profit driven imperative. In our country the government should ensure that the production and/or sourcing of the COVID-19 vaccine is not subordinated to private wealth accumulation interests.
There must be no space left to corruption and state capture, old or new, in the sourcing of the COVID-19 vaccine, as in every government programme, department and public entity.
We reiterate our support for the progressive thrust of the government’s economic reconstruction and recovery plan supported by the labour and community constituencies at the National Economic Development and Labour Council, and broadly by the working-class and other progressive strata and formations. Continuing consultation to strengthen the economic reconstruction and recovery plan is essential. That should include adopting targets to reduce inequality, unemployment, and poverty.
We wish to underline the importance of financial sector transformation. This should include prescribed investment and building a developmental banking sector and a thriving co-operative banking sector. We will continue to campaign for the diversification of the financial sector generally, and the banking sector in particular. Our banking system must also include a strong and dynamic public banking sector and a cooperative banking sector.
The SACP also supports the correct focus on infrastructure development as a cornerstone in the economic reconstruction and recovery strategy. In fact, we wish to see the resources, in particular public resources, allocated to infrastructure development increased. However, we strongly caution against the financialisation of infrastructure development and other problematic methods of finance that advance the neoliberal privatisation agenda.
In the same vein, we wish to caution against neoliberalism and its agenda of austerity, which involves budgetary cuts badly affecting social spending and other development objectives of our country. South Africa’s economic reconstruction, recovery and development is stifled by at least two factors, on the one hand neoliberalism and its austerity agenda and on the other hand state capture and other forms of corruption.
Prescribed investment must be pursued must unlock the trillions of rand accumulated from our economy but held in liquid cash in what is tantamount to an investment strike primarily by the financial sector. It is important to bring finance capital under democratic discipline in the public interest to meet our national development goals. To this end, engagements underpinned by democratic state authority are also crucial.
Today we are also officially launching, together with the Joe Slovo foundation, the White Ribbon Campaign against sexual harassment and all other forms of gender-based violence. Our revolution will not be complete without gender transformation and universal social emancipation. The law and its enforcement must be strengthened within the framework of human rights to end gender-based violence.
Last but not least, we wish to express our solidarity with the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy, the people of Zimbabwe in the face of the monumental crisis in that country, the people of Western Sahara and Palestine against occupation by Morocco and the apartheid Israeli regime respectively, and the people of Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, to name but a few faced with heightening imperialist aggression. The SACP stands with the oppressed and the exploited in every situation involving the oppressor and the oppressed and the exploiter and the exploited.
Issued by the SACP, 6 January 2021
