Speech delivered by SACP General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande, at the Memorial Lecture in honour of Moses Mabhida held at University of KwaZulu-Natal in the Pietermaritzburg campus, March 8 2013
Remembering and honouring Moses Mabhida on the 27th Anniversary of his death
Jack Simons, the late stalwart of the SACP, writing in the African Communist, Fourth Quarter, in 1986, and in paying tribute to the builders of the SACP, amongst whom being Moses Mabhida who had passed away in the same year, said:
"Communists by and large consider that social forces are the mainspring of change and development. The forces and relations of production, though an essential part of living, occur independently of individual wills. Social forces in Marxist-Leninist theory shape the struggle between competing classes.
"'Men make their own history, said Marx. They do so in accordance with the prevailing relations and forces of production. If necessity is the mother of invention, the necessity arises from the material conditions of life.
"Great men in history recognize the necessity and respond through appropriate action... In the world of politics, which embraces the struggle for state power and its control, the historical mission of communists is to accomplish the transition from the capitalist mode of production to socialism.
"South African communists have an additional task. This is to reconcile the class struggle with the struggle for freedom from white domination, race discrimination and national oppression - in short, to combine radical socialism with national liberation".
In the above passages cde Jack Simons captures a number of important things. Firstly to underline that people wage struggles within the context of definite objective realities. But nevertheless leaders also have an important role to play, partly to lead in the interpretation of these realities in order to devise appropriate means of struggle to overthrow all forms of oppression and exploitation. It is in fact these objective (and historical) circumstances that tend to produce leaders to transform those very same conditions.
In addition, Simons defines the tasks of South African communists in particular and the role they have to play in the South African revolution. Note that Simons is not lamenting - he is clearly defining the role of communists and the necessity to take responsibility in the struggle against national oppression and for socialism!
Indeed these have been the defining feature of the role of the South African Communist Party, its leaders and members, in the South African struggle -taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution! That is precisely what our late General Secretary that we remember today, Cde Moses Mbheki Mncane Mabhida, actually did - dedicated his entire life to the struggle for national liberation and socialism!
Moses Mabhida was a living embodiment of our Alliance, which in itself has been an expression of the deep interconnectedness between the struggle for national liberation and socialism. At the time of his death, Moses Mabhida was General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, a member of the national executives of both the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). He was a communist, a revolutionary trade unionist and a true Congressman! How did all this come about and what lessons should we be learning out of his life and struggles today?
A humble man from humble origins in a Party of activism
Cde Moses Mabhida, often referred to as ‘Stimela' by Harry Gwala, was born on 14 October 1923 at Thornville here in Pietermaritzburg. He grew up with a deep resentment of the theft of land of his family and the African people in general by white colonists. He started school at a late age in 1932,his schooling was often interrupted by his having to work as a herd boy.
One of his teachers at school at Slangspruit was the late Cde Harry Gwala who influenced him to join both the ANC and the progressive trade union movement. Cde Mabhida joined the Communist Party in 1942. It is important to understand the period during which Mabhida joined the CPSA (as the Party was then known) in order to understand his political outlook.
The 1940s can be regarded as the ‘golden decade' and, in many ways, the coming of age of the Communist Party in South Africa as an indispensable force in the South African revolution. The 1940s marked the consolidation and taking to higher levels the many struggles that the CPSA had been engaged in since its founding in 1921.
The all-important decision taken in 1928 by the Communist Party through the Native Republic Thesis to work with the ANC, marking the foundations of our Alliance, was followed by a very difficult decade of factionalism and debilitating internal battles within the Party in the 1930s. Part of these tensions were about the correctness of choosing to work with the ANC as a nationalist movement, with some of the Party members doubting the wisdom of this decision. Some saw this as a postponement of the struggle for socialism.
It was after the ascendancy of Moses Kotane as General Secretary of the then Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), that our Party embarked upon and led many of the mass struggles in the 1940s, thus laying a very important foundation for the ANC-led mass struggles of the 1950s.
During the 1940s, communists like Dora Tamana were leading important struggle in the squatter settlements, including pioneering work in building co-operatives. Many African communists also joined the ANC in the 1940s, including Moses Mabhida and Harry Gwala. The Communist Party further took its early work of building the non-racial trade union movement to new heights, including the founding of the Council of Non-European Trade Unions, an early attempt at building a progressive federation of trade unions. The high point of Party work in the trade union movement was the great 1946 Mineworkers Strike, led by communists such as JB Marks, who was also the Chairman of our Party.
Communists in the 1940s also expanded their internationalist work, especially around the period of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. The Party led a number of struggles in solidarity with the Soviet Union and deepened its anti-fascist work, linked to the struggle against racism in South Africa itself.
In fact, right from the early 1940s, Party membership started growing significantly. Between1941 and 1943 the membership of the Party grew fourfold, with active district committees in all major urban areas of our country. Party activism in this period is aptly captured in the book ‘Fifty Fighting Years', thus:
"The rousing campaigns of the Party, as well as the inspiring defence of their socialist country by the Soviet people, brought the Party a greater measure of support among all sections of the people than ever before. The circulation of the Guardian and Inkululeko rose to record levels; party membership increased rapidly; Communists were elected to City Councils in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and East London. The growth of the Party's influence and the leftward trend of the people, were reflected in such diverse phenomena as the growth in size and militancy of the trade union movement, notably of the African Mine Workers Union, the development of the pioneer peasant movement, A Maliba's Zoutpansberg Balemi (Ploughman's) Association, the popularity of the servicemen's association the Springbok Legion in which members of the Party like Jack Hodgson and Cecil Williams held leading positions.
"The Cape Town district demonstrated its strength in 1943 when Sam Kahn and Betty Radford, then editor of the Guardian, were elected on the Party platform to the City Council".
In fact later Sam Kahn became a communist member of parliament - remembered by amongst other things his reading of the Communist Manifesto so that it could be in the Hansard - and Fred Carneson elected onto the Cape Provincial Council then. There is incidentally an exhibition about Fred Carneson at the Umsunduzi Museum until November this year. Please go and view it!
The Communist Party in the 1940s was to be found in all sites and fronts of struggle - in communities, in the trade union movement, in electoral contests and legislatures, in the rural struggles, on the media front pioneering progressive journalism, and in practically every arena of struggle. It therefore came as no surprise that one of the first political (and legislative actions) to be taken by the racist National Party after its electoral victory in 1948 was to outlaw our Party by passing the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950.
Those who tell us today that we must be in some but not other sites of struggle either do not understand the history and role of the SACP in our revolution, or they want to weaken and ultimately destroy the Party. So today when our own programme, the South African Road to Socialism, as adopted at our 2012 Ngoye Congress, instructs communists to be in all sites and fronts of struggle, it is merely reinforcing the historical role of our Party.
It was these heroic struggles that shaped Moses Mabhida, and clearly had a lasting impact on his life and politics.
Moses Mabhida, a communist, trade union and ANC leader
After the Defiance Campaign of 1952, a period during which 8000 people went to jail in protest against the criminal apartheid laws, the Pietermaritzburg District Committee of the Communist Party - the SACP having been rescuscitated in 1953 as an underground party - suggested that Cde Mabhida resign from his job in order to work full-time for the trade union movement. He became an organizer for the Howick Rubber Workers' Union and the Chemical Workers in Pietermaritzburg.
Cde Mabhida was very instrumental in the building of SACTU and at its first congress at which he was a participant in 1955, he was elected one of the four Vice-Presidents of the federation. He contributed enormously in building a strong trade union movement in this province as a whole.
We should therefore not take it as an accident for communists to be playing an active role as trade unionists, as this is very much part of the history of our Party. Our task today is to recruit more communists in the ranks of the trade union movement to join the SACP. It is the task of the SACP to continue to produce trade unionists steeped in the Congress tradition, guided by the Freedom Charter, and ensuring that COSATU unions in particular remain red trade unions. We must produce unionists who understand our Alliance,that it is a revolutionary alliance and not a bargaining chamber.
Cde Mabhida also played a very important role in the ANC in the 1950s, and played a big part in the preparations for the Congress of the People in Kliptown where the Freedom Charter was adopted. This was, by the way, the only real Congress of the People in our movement. During this period Cde Mabhida also became chairman of the ANC Working Committee in this Province, as well as Chair of the Durban District of the Communist Party. He was at the same time at the centre of every mass activity and campaign in the province.
Cde Moses Mabhida was elected onto the National Executive Committee of the ANC around 1956 and in 1959-1959 was acting Chair of the Natal ANC.
After the declaration of the state of emergency by the apartheid regime, Cde Mabhida was instructed by both the ANC and the SACP to leave the country and organize anti-apartheid and solidarity activities with the struggle of the South African people. It was during this period that cde Mabhida's stature as an internationalist also began to grow. He worked as the SACTU representative at the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). In 1963, whilst attached at the WFTU headquarters, cde Mabhida was instructed by the ANC President, Oliver Tambo, to leave the solidarity field and to work full time for Umkhonto weSizwe MK). Cde Mabhida was a central component and commander in opening the Natal front for MK, and many comrades from this front still have very vivid memories of the final instructions they got from Bab'Mabhida as they illegally entered the country for MK underground work.
So when the front of armed activity opened, communists, including Cde Moses Mabhida, were there and amongst the first to join the ranks of MK. So our slogan is very appropriate, ‘Communist Cadres to the Front'; and we perhaps need to add ‘In All Sites and Fronts of Struggle'!
After the death of Cde Moses Kotane in 1978, Cde Mabhida was elected General Secretary of the SACP in November 1979, a position he held until his death on 8 March 1986. Cde Mabhida was a committed communist, who knew that all good communists must be in the ANC. Not only must a good communist be in the ANC, but he or she must be prepared to serve in whatever capacity assigned by the ANC! Cde Mabhida died of a heart attack in Mozambique on 8 March 1986.
In his eulogy to Cde Mabhida at the funeral - which President Samora Machel of Mozambique proclaimed as a full state funeral - the President of the ANC, Cde Oliver Tambo made what has possibly become the most quoted statement about our Tripartite Alliance:
"Ours is not merely a paper alliance, created at conference tables and formalized through the signing of documents and representing only an agreement by leaders. Our Alliance is a living organism that has grown out of struggle".
Cde Tambo, at that state funeral, also observed that 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 epitomizes 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 unorganized, and sense the feelings of even the most humble among our people".
Following his death, his friend and fellow revolutionary, Samora Machel said: "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 breath, are victors. Mabhida is a victorious combatant".
Many of us here today were part of the reburial of cde Moses Mabhida, after the exhumation of his body in Mozambique, in November 2006 here in Pietermaritzburg. At that reburial Nokuthula Mabhida, one of Cde Moses Mabhida's daughters said: ‘This is a moving moment for us. The tears that you see are not tears of pain but tears of joy, because for years we have been trying to get our father reburied in South Africa'. Long live the memory of Cde Stimela, long live!
Learning from Mabhida's example: Some of the tasks of the SACP today
Our task today as communists is to tell over and over again the story of Moses Mabhida and other revolutionaries. But it must not be for the sake of telling a story, it is so that we can continue to learn appropriate lessons from their lives and struggles, as part of learning from our own history. It is so that we do what Jack Simons was saying ‘Great men in history recognize the necessity and respond through appropriate action'.
Intensify the struggle against the abuse of women and children
It is indeed an important co-incidence that Cde Mabhida died on March 8, which is International Women's Day. So therefore, in future we must also use this day to honour our women and their important role in the liberation and reconstruction of our country.
In the true tradition of our Party, we must intensify the recruitment of women into the ranks of our Party. We can be proud of the role that outstanding Communist women have played in struggle - among them Dora Tamana, Ray Alexander, Josie Mpama, Dorothy Nyembe, Betty Radford, and Ncumisa Kondlo, to mention but a few. Few know that in 1931 our Party established a Women's Department to ‘organise women as women, to draw into active struggle the proletarian woman in the factories, the peasant woman and also the wife of the petty owner'.
During this period the Party called for a Women's National Conference to unify and consolidate the struggles of women. It was therefore not an accident that communist women played an important role in women's organisations such as the ANC Women's League and the Federation of South African Women. Organisation of women must be central in all of our campaigning and organizational work as the SACP. We are not doing badly on this front as about 45% of members of the Party are women. But we must build on this, and it must be reflected inour structures.
However, the organization of women must not be an abstract ‘feel good' task, but must be rooted in the important struggles of the day. We are gathering today in the midst of further exposition of the prevalence of violence against women and children in our society, including rape, mutilation and murder.
Let us use March 8 to intensify the struggles against this scourge and mobilise and educate our communities about the importance of gender equality and defence of women and children. The SACP has called upon all communists to work inside all community organisations and NGOs that are part of this important struggle against women abuse. That would be a most appropriate way also to honour the memory and legacy of cdeMoses Mabhida.
Strengthening our Alliance
Mabhida was a personified embodiment of our Tripartite Alliance. He represented both the independence of each of the Alliance partners and the inter-dependence within our Alliance. Each of the Alliance partners in their own way took responsibility for the national democratic revolution. The SACTU he was leading defeated attempts to be captured by either the ultra-left or the liberals.
Cde Mabhida protected and ensured an independent, militant, but Congress-aligned trade union movement. Independence of each of our Alliance partners does not mean oppositionism to the ANC, nor submission or becoming a conveyor belt for the ANC.
It means being principled allies to the ANC! Independence of each of the Alliance partners must be a source of strength to our Alliance as a whole, rather than a subtraction! Mabhida knew that to lead SACTU as a progressive trade union component of our Alliance did not mean being above, or oppositionist, to the national liberation movement!
Honour Mabhida, revitalize a campaigning SACP
The SACP has decided to revitalize some of our key campaigns in 2013. The revitalization of our financial sector campaign is going to be the mainstay of SACP work going forward, and ensuring that resources in the financial sector are invested in a manner that supports investment into infrastructure and into the productive economy. The SACP will engage COSATU on ensuring that workers' provident and other funds are invested in such a manner that they reinforce a new growth path for our country and the strengthening of our social economy.
The SACP Central Committee has also decided that because 2013 is the centenary of the notorious and obnoxious 1913 Land Act, our rural districts in particular must revitalize the campaign for land and agrarian reform. Much as the land question is not only a challenge for rural areas, but our rural districts must lead. This is also an important dimension of realizing 2013 as the year of the SACP District!
In the course of our campaigning it is important that the struggle against corruption informs all what we do. The SACP must refuse the NGO-isation of the struggle against corruption. It is a struggle that must remain a mass-based and mass driven struggle that is not tainted by unknown sources of funding. The energy of the mass of the workers and the poor must be the principal driver of the struggle against corruption!
The battle of ideas and proletarian internationalism
We are meeting here today at an institution of higher education. I want to challenge our entire progressive student movement. Is this history I have just told being taught or engaged in our institutions? This country is free today not least because of the contribution made by communists and leaders like Moses Mabhida.
Over and above the demands for access to university, what is our progressive youth alliance doing to challenge most of the reactionary rubbish they are taught in their lecture halls? At the very least if the progressive youth alliance is not being taught this, is it holding student reading circles on progressive literature and about the heroism of the national liberation movement and our people?
Capitalism is today in yet another crisis, partly as a result of the very same ideas that are being taught with impunity in many of our higher education institutions; the false idea that the market is the solution to the problems facing humanity today. Let us be like Moses Mabhida, a socialist and proletarian internationalist, for a consistent struggle against capitalism!
Long Live the Memory of Stimela Mabhida, Long Live!
Issued by the SACP, March 8 2013
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