PLEASE CALL HIM NOT A COMMUNIST: THE CRUEL POSTHUMOUS NAILING OF NELSON MANDELA ON A COMMUNIST SICKLE, USING A COMMUNIST HAMMER.
"Now that he is safely dead,
Let us praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name.
"Dead men make such convenient heroes.
For they cannot rise to challenge the images
That we might fashion from their lives.
It is easier to build monuments
Than to build a better world".
A Dead Man's Dream, by Carl Wendell Hines Jr, the great African American poet.
INTRODUCTION.
On 04 March 2015 an interesting article appeared in the Sowetan under the heading ‘Winnie's claim "confusing, opportunistic'. The article was penned by Loyiso Mpalantshane. It opened with the following two paragraphs:
"Executors of the estate of former president Nelson Mandela have described Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's claim over his Qunu home as ‘confusing and opportunistic'".
"They are demanding to know why Mandela's ex-wife waited for the former statesman to die before making the claim, knowing fully well that he would not be able to defend himself from beyond the grave."
It is well-known in our country that one of the executors of Nelson Mandela's estate is none other than George Bizos, Nelson Mandela's long-time friend and arguably modern Greece's greatest Socratic gift to South Africa.
When I read the recent article of James Myburgh, the online journal Politicsweb editor and publisher, under the heading ‘Nelson Mandela and Communist Party', which appeared on 25 February 2015, and which goes on to make the case that "...Mandela was almost certainly a member of the Party in the 1960s...", [by Party of course Myburgh was referring to the South African Communist Party or SACP], I asked myself the same question that the venerable George Bizos and the other executors asked about Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as reported by the Sowetan of 04 March 2015:
Why did those who today claim that Nelson Mandela was once a Communist wait for the former statesman to die before making the claim and having not confronted him personally with the claim whilst he was still alive? Are they today making the claim knowing fully well that he would not be able to defend himself from beyond the grave?
Do those who now declare that Nelson Mandela was a Communist or almost certainly a Communist know, to paraphrase the great African American poet, Carl Wendell Hines, that a dead man make such a convenient Communist; for he cannot rise to challenge the Communist image that we might fashion from his life?
Before attempting to address these questions at some length, it is worthwhile to recall here another incident involving George Bizos and another dead and great South African, and the false, ludicrous claims made about the dead man then - that he too was a Communist.
Here I have in mind the equally venerable former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson. In an extraordinary co-incidence, the false claims about Arthur Chaskalson having been a Communist, and George Bizos' very firm and successful public repudiation of such a fallacy that was peddled, happened almost to the day a year before the death of Nelson Mandela.
Which just goes to show how the very same players who initially wrongly claimed that Arthur Chaskalson was once a Communist, and are today, equally wrongly, claiming that Nelson Mandela was a Communist, learn selectively and self-servingly from history, including our very recent past.
In a Politicsweb article of 12 December 2012, under the heading ‘Arthur Chaskalson belonged to SACP underground - SACP - Party says late former Chief Justice was a member in 1960s, represented the Party in CODESA negotiations", it was false claimed:
"It is lesser known fact that Chaskalson was a member of the underground SACP in the difficult years of the 1960's. He represented the SACP at the CODESA negotiations in the early 1990's".
Largely thanks to the indefatigable George Bizos, to whom democratic South Africa owes an eternal debt, the lie was soon exposed for what it truly was.
In a Speech to honor the former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson on 05 December 2012, exactly a year before the death of Nelson Mandela, and which Speech was carried by Politicsweb on 06 December 2012, George Bizos stated as clearly as he could that:
"Arthur was a democrat. There were no secrets between Arthur and myself. I know that Arthur was not a member of any political party. He would not join any organization that would place any impediment to his absolute independence."
In brief, George Bizos categorically denied that Arthur Chaskalson was ever a Communist or a member of the SACP underground, however briefly. He was also saying that the grandiose claim made by the SACP that Arthur Chaskalson was a Communist was nothing less than a blatant lie.
He of course couched his words in refined tapestry of diplomatic speak!
In reaction to George Bizos' courageous revelation of the truth about the political independence of Arthur Chaskalsson, other than for a brief period when the latter belonged to the Liberal Party of the earlier period, the SACP immediately withdrew its mendacious claim that our highly esteemed former Chief Justice was ever a member of the South African Communist Party's underground machinery.
Franny Rabkin of the Business Day of 13 December 2012 reported thus about this retraction by the SACP:
He quoted "the SACP deputy general secretary [Jeremy Cronin] as saying the SACP ‘fully accepts' that Chaskalson was not a member. He [Cronin] said the misunderstanding came about because of "what comrades like [former SACP secretary general] Joe Slovo has said in the early 1990s, that Chaskalson was a great man and the SACP had in the 1960s, ‘worked very closely with him'. However, Chaskalson did initially come into the Codesa negotiations as part of the SACP's delegation, though he was never a card carrying member, he said."
There are clearly very striking similarities, and even close parallels, between how Arthur Chaskalson and Nelson Mandela have both been claimed to have been Communist at some stage in their lives and during their brave, outstanding and highly laudable opposition to racial discrimination and subsequently to Apartheid.
These similarities include:
The fact that the claim that both were Communists was made after their death. No one dared to directly and public confront them, whilst they were alive and able to speak for themselves, to affirm or deny as to whether they were ever Communists at one stage or another in their lives. There was and is no direct empirical evidence that either ever admitted to being a Communist or to having had a Communist card-carrying membership. In the case of Arthur Chaskalson, according to Jeremy Cronin, it seems it was a statement by Chaskalson's close friend, Joe Slovo, indicating that the former was a member of the SACP's underground machinery in the past, especially that he was a delegate/representative of the SACP at the CODESA negotiations, which seemed to have fuelled the perception within the SACP that he was once indeed a member of the SACP. In the case of Nelson Mandela, the most credible source of the claim that he was once a Communist is of course Mac Maharaj, who is currently the spokesman of president Jacob Zuma and served a prison term with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island and later served as a Minister of Transport in Nelson Mandela's government (1994-1999).
The parallels include that:
In the case of Arthur Chaskalson, fortunately, a highly respected and authoritative person such as George Bizos was still alive to clearly and unambiguously deny that Arthur Chaskalson was ever a Communist. So high is our democratic country's regard for George Bizos that once he pronounced himself very clearly on the matter, not only was he absolutely believed and trusted, the SACP, the originator of the false claim that Chaskalson was once a Communist, had really no option but to publicly retract its mendacious assertion. In the case of Nelson Mandela, unfortunately, there has not yet arisen a similarly highly respected and universally admired a figure as George Bizos to clearly deny that Mandela was ever a Communist. To the contrary, the Zuma ANC (ZANC) leadership issued a Statement, following the death of Nelson Mandela, in which, as part of its condolences to the Madiba family, affirmed that "Mandela was also a member of the South African Communist Party, where he served in the Central committee", as the former SACP chairman and the current secretary general of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, speaking on behalf of the latter, averred. (See Politicsweb, 06 December 2013, Statement on the passing of Cde Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, African National Congress, Secretary General's Office, "Nelson Mandela: The large African Boabab (sic) has fallen - ANC")
In its "SACP Statement on the passing away of Mandela", carried on its online journal Umsebenzi Online of 06 December 2013, the Party stated:
"At his arrest in 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the underground SACP, but was also a member of the party's Central Committee. To us as South African Communists, Cde Mandela shall forever symbolize the monumental contribution of the SACP to our liberation struggle".
It is true that one of Nelson Mandela's life-long political soul-mates, fellow Rivonia Trialists and fellow Robben Island political prisoners, Andrew Mlangeni, upon hearing of the ZANC and SACP claim that Nelson Mandela was once a member of the underground SACP, asked, in expressing great cynicism at the claim, "where"?
[To their great credit, both Floyd Shivambu, now deputy president of the EFF, and John Lamola, an ANC long-standing member, penned critical but well-argued articles gainsaying the notion that Nelson Mandela was ever a Communist. (See Floyd Shivambu, Politicsweb, ‘Mandela was "never" a member of the Communist Party', 11 December 2013, and Dr. John Lamola, Mail & Guardian's Thought Leader, ‘Mandela the communist?', 10 January 2014)].
In his Business Day article of 09 December 2013, under the heading ‘Mlangeni does not know anything about Mandela's membership of SACP', Setumo Stone, the paper's journalist, quoted Andrew Mlangeni, who served 26 years in prison with Nelson Mandela, as saying he had "never seen Mandela there", (meaning within the SACP), and that "...those who claimed that Mandela had been a member of the party ‘were better qualified to comment'".
So, just as George Bizos had denied that Arthur Chaskalson was ever a member of SACP, so did Andrew Mlangeni deny any personal knowledge that Nelson Mandela was ever a Communist. Andrew Mlangeni had also served with Nelson Mandela on the first High Command of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. He is also a long-standing SACP member and veteran leader.
Whilst George Bizos' declaration that Arthur Chaskalson had never been a Communist quelled any opposite pretension, Andrew Mlangenis's statement that he basically doubted that Nelson Mandela was ever a Communist, did not have the same electrifying and decisive effect. It did not close and bury further debate about Mandela's possible membership in SACP. This is largely because George Bizos, as he readily points out, was never a member of any political organization, and thus is a free agent enjoying a large measure of relative political independence. Andrew Mlangeni, on the other hand, remains a very loyal, disciplined and highly committed member of both the SACP and the ANC. The latter's utterances need to be couched in ways that defer to this political reality and the ANC and SACP's internal strictures on democratic centralism.
In the same Business Day article by Setumo Stone, the SACP deputy general secretary, Solly Mapaila, was quoted as saying that all the Rivonia Trialist, including Nelson Mandela, were Communists.
Yet the biggest difference between the situations of Arthur Chaskalson and Nelson Mandela in respect to their alleged membership of the SACP, baffingly, is that Arthur Chaskalson was never on record, during his lifetime, categorically denying that he was a member of the SACP. So the mix-up about his possible SACP membership is both wholly understandable and forgivable.
On the other hand, Nelson Mandela is on written record on several important occasions, including at the all-important Rivonia Trial and in his world-acclaimed autobiography ‘Long Walk To Freedom' (1994) specifically and categorically denying, in his own words, that he was ever a Communist.
In fact in his last major autobiographical memoirs, Conversations With Myself, Nelson Mandela, in splendid retirement, went out of his way to declare that "...I was not a [Communist] Party man..." (2010, page 43).
The importance of this reiteration of his non-Communist membership in his ‘Conversations With Myself' is not that he was referring to his numerous interactions and collaboration with Communists prior to the Rivonia Trial, but that this was as good an opportunity and occasion as any, three years before his death and many years after his retirement, for Mandela to clearly state that he was once a Communist, if indeed he had ever been, just as Walter Sisulu did in his biography ‘Walter and Albertina Sisulu - In Our Lifetime' by Elinor Sisulu. (2003, page 181).
Instead, Nelson Mandela used the opportunity to clearly re-affirm that he had never been a Parry member.
So Nelson Mandela had three occasions when he clearly stated that he was never a Communist, namely at the Rivonia Trial, in his autobiography ‘Long walk To Freedom' and in his autobiographical memoirs ‘Conversations With Myself'.
So why are the Zuma ANC (ZANC) and SACP leaders of today joining well-known veteran anti-Communists like Stephen Ellis in declaring that Nelson Mandela was indeed once, albeit briefly in the early 1960s, a committed Communist? (See Mail and Guardian, 03 January 2014, Stephen Ellis, ‘ANC suppresses real history to boost its claim to legitimacy').
In his book ‘The Tyrants - 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption', Clive Foss tells a fascinating tale about Haiti and one of its psychopathic dictators, ‘Papa Doc' Francois Duvalier. In concluding this tale, Foss wrote:
"On 22 February 1971, a referendum approved Duvalier's choice of his son Jean-Claude to succeed him as Life President. Somehow one negative vote was cast out of 2.3 million. Two months later, ‘Papa Doc' died. His body was guarded by 22 soldiers and 22 Maoutes and his son succeeded him without a problem. However, when ‘Baby Doc' , as he was known, fell in 1986, ‘Papa Doc' Duvalier's body was dug up and beaten ‘to death'". (2006, 166).
It seems today we have people who so loved Nelson Mandela in his life, and still so deeply love him, that, following his death, they were and are prepared to, metaphorically, dig up his mortal remains, not to beat him ‘to death', as the poor masses of Haiti did to the thoroughly despised and dead dictator ‘Papa Doc', but, in the case of Nelson Mandela, in order to shower and smother him with Communist love, and to declare him, posthumously, a Communist Saint, clearly against Mandela's own repeated denials, at least on three known occasions, that he was ever a Communist or a member of the pre-1951 Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) or the post-1950 South African Communist Party (SACP).
It is, so to speak, Communist love unrequited by Nelson Mandela through his card-carrying membership of the SACP, at least according to available historical records.
What accounts for this astonishing disrespect shown torwads the clearly stated views of Nelson Mandela that he was never a Communist? How come we have today leaders who claim they know Mandela better than even Mandela knew himself, at least according to Mandela's own declaration that he was never a Communist?
Why, metaphorically speaking, is Nelson Mandela being dug from the dead in order to be "beaten" into being a Communist?
The over-riding importance of this question lies precisely in the fact that this year (2015) is the second time, since Nelson Mandela became involved in South African politics in the office of Walter Sisulu in 1941, that we are going to commemorate International Mandela Day (18 July), posthumously and with the dark cloud that Mandela was once a Communist hanging menacingly over the seminal, global occasion. (See John Carlin, Interview: Walter Sisulu, Frontlie, PBS).
How do we deal with James Myburgh's Politicsweb article ‘Nelson Mandela and the Communist Party', in which he states that "...Mandela was almost certainly a member of the Party in the 1960..."?
In trying to tackle Myburgh's assertion, I, for one, choose to be guided by the spirit of Russia's greatest novelist, Leo Tolstoy, when he was confronted with a similar challenge to courageously speak truth to power.
On 1 March 1881, Russia's Emperor Alexander II was assassinated by members of the Revolutionary Executive Committee in the then Petersburg. Leo Tolstoy was so deeply moved and touched by the trial and sentencing to execution of the young revolutionaries that he penned a highly emotional letter to Emperor Alexander III in which he stated, inter alia:
"What I know, I know from the papers and from rumours, and I may therefore be writing unnecessary futilities about what is in reality quite different. If so, pray forgive my self-confidence and believe that I write not because I think highly of myself, but only because I am already so much to blame towards men I fear to be again at fault if I fail to do what I can and ought to do. I will write not in the usual tone of letters to an Emperor - with flowers of servile and false eloquence that only obscure both feeling and thought - but simply as man to man". (Aylmer Maude, ‘The Life of Tolstoy', Letter to the Tsar).
In tackling Politicsweb editor and publisher James Myburgh's article ‘Nelson Mandela and Communism', I too shall "write not in the usual tone of letters to an Emperor - with flowers of servile and false eloquence that only obscure both feeling and thought".
Hell, no. No, no, no.
I shall write "simply as man to man", to quote Leo Tolstoy.
Because I believe that the SACP is again at fault to claim again that one of our outstanding leaders - Nelson Mandela - was a member of the Party and its Central Committee in the 1960s, just as they were at fault when they claimed, falsely, that the former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson was once a Communist.
Unlike James Myburgh, I do NOT believe that Nelson Mandela was "...almost certainly a member of the Party".
I am strongly convinced and persuaded, by no other than Nelson Mandela himself, that he (Mandela) was neither a Communist, nor ever a formal member of the SACP.
And I am further deeply moved by Nelson Mandela's indicative statement in his autobiography, ‘Long Walk To Freedom', when he posed an essentially revealing, albeit rhetorical question:
"There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us", wrote Mandela. "But", he asked pointedly, "who is to say that we were not using them?'. (Quoted in The Telegraph article, on allegations that it had been "proven" that Nelson Mandela was a member of the South African Communist Party, 08 December 2012).
Again, as a matter of a fourth occasion he did so, Nelson Mandela was clearly establishing a wide distance between "us" (meaning the black African, Coloured, South African Indian nationalists and non-Communist white democrats within the ANC, including himself) and "the Communists", among whom he certainly did not count himself.
Why are people, including the current leaders of the Zuma ANC (ZANC) and SACP, as well as Politicsweb editor, James Myburgh, finding these clear statements of Nelson Mandela that he was never a Communist so, so unconvincing?
It truly boggles the mind.
CHAPTER ONE.
Writing about the tragic meltdown and ultimate collapse of the marriage between Nelson Mandela and his first wife, Evelyn Mase, Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob, in her book ‘The Nelson Mandela Story', wrote the following about the married couple's completion for the hearts and minds of their children:
"Mandela and Evelyn now entered the desperate contest for their children's affection and support. He admitted that they ‘waged a battle for the minds and hearts of the children'. Evelyn would take the children to church and read to them from the Watchtower, a religious publication distributed by the Jehovah's Witnesses. Mandela would have long discussions with them in his office, the walls lined with photographs of the USSR's red flag emblazoned with a hammer an sickle, Lenin and Stalin, Gandhi and Churchill". (2006, page 84).
It is a bit of a non-delicious irony that Nelson Mandela had pin up photographs of the hammer and sickle of the Soviet red flag, and of Lenin and Stalin, amongst others, on his office walls in the 1950s, and that today he is being nailed, despite his protestations to the contrary, on the Communist sickle with a Communist hammer.
The huge controversy about whether a leading South African anti-apartheid revolutionary was, or was not, a confirmed Communist was once visited on another important political personage.
Stephen Clingman, in his biography of the leading SACP and ANC's white revolutionary, Bram Fischer, which is entitled ‘Bram Fischer - Afrikaner Revolutionary', wrote the following about the controversy that broke out regarding Fischer's initially enigmatic membership of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA):
"It is difficult to say exactly when Bram Fischer became a member of the Communist Party. The Party itself has no record, and if records were kept by the Security Police in Pretoria (shredded now, or unshredded) or in some archive in Moscow, I have not been able to trace them. Moreover, virtually everyone I have spoken to or corresponded with has a different account...According to some of Bram's early colleagues at the Bar, his communist sympathies were well known, as was the fact that he associated with communists. Yet there is a difference between being close to communism in one's mind, associating with communists, or even claiming to be one, and being a formal member of the Communist Party - and no one has been able to say with any certainty that Bram was a member at this early stage". (1998, pages 147-148).
[Very interestingly, George Bizos again looms very large in Clingman's account about the debate regarding Bram Fischer's membership of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). He wrote about Bizos that "according to George Bizos, who assisted Bram many years later when he prepared his speech from the dock, Bram's own account was that he ‘considered himself' a member of the Party by 1938, and that Yusuf Dadoo (the militant leader of the Transvaal Indian Congress and future leader of the CPSA) had been the one to recruit him. The phrase ‘considered himself' was perhaps a careful and flexible one, admitting to some doubts on a formal membership of the Party as might have applied a few years earlier"]. (Ibid, page 148).
On the other hand, Mac Maharaj's biographer, Padraig O'Malley, stated that:
"The CPSA had adopted a two-stage strategy of struggle, asserting the primacy of ‘revolutionary nationalism' in the first instance. Class struggle was subordinated to the imperative to build a broad nationalist coalition to achieve the primary objective of national liberation, after which the socialist revolution would follow. This was upheld by the new underground party even until the early 1990s.
"Among party members, never publicized for political reasons, were Walter Sisulu, Thomas Nkobi, later the ANC's Treasurer, Alfred Nzo, later the secretary-general; and most likely, for a brief period, Nelson Mandela, according to old colleagues". (2007, page 63).
Just as Stephen Clingman was able to state that "the phrase ‘considered himself' was perhaps a careful and flexible one", regarding the controversy about when exactly Bram Fsicher became a member of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), Padraig O'Malley's expression regarding Nelson Mandela's possible membership of the underground South African Communist Party (SACP) as "most likely, for a brief period...according to old colleagues", is similarly a "careful and flexible one". It is a statement that is definitely hedged. And most probably advisedly so.
O'Malley named, with crystal-clear certainty, the ANC's Walter Sisulu, Thomas Nkobi and Alfred Nzo as Communists, without any qualifications or caveats.
But when it came to Nelson Mandela, O'Malley suspended, for reasons not explained by him, his crystal-clear certainty about his (Mandela's) alleged underground SACP's membership.
Stephen Clingman was also absolutely correct to point to the huge differences "between being close to communism in one's mind, associating with communists, or even claiming to be one, and being a formal member of the Communist Party...".
It is a paramount and inordinately important distinction to draw.
He should have also pointed out that there is also a very big difference between others alleging that one is a Communist, however senior in the ANC or SACP those so alleging may be, and actually being a formal member of the SACP.
This too is a very crucial distinction to highlight, especially when one who is claimed to have been a Communist had repeated denied ever having been a Communist, as Nelson Mandela had repeatedly done so in writing.
In the case of Nelson Mandela, because of the unique and very lofty moral and inspirational position Nelson Mandela occupies in the world, Africa and South Africa's history, it seems many of us, including among the leaders of the Zuma ANC (ZANC) and the SACP today, have completely lost sight of the nuanced differences Clingman alluded to.
But fortunately, for the purpose of untangling the multi-layered Gordian knots tying down the debate about whether Nelson Mandela was ever a Communist or not, we are greatly assisted by the rare insights of one of the SACP's most outstanding leaders, one of Nelson Mandela's very close confidants and in fact Mandela's second-in-command when the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, was launched in the early 1960s, namely Joe Slovo.
In his very helpful and influential book, ‘ANC - A view from Moscow', Vladimir Shubin wrote the following about the roles and interactions between Nelson Mandela, on the one hand, and both Joe Modise (also a leading ANC and MK High Command member and leader) and Joe Slovo, on the other hand, during the period it is claimed Mandela was briefly a member of the underground SACP:
"In the MK magazine Dawn in 1986, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, Joe Modise recalled that after preliminary discussions with some members of the ANC leadership, in particular Duma Nokwe (the Secretary General) and Walter Sisullu, he was invited to Stanger in Natal, where the African National Congress, South African Communist Party, Coloured People's Congress, South African Indian Congress and the Congress of Democrats met to discuss this new method of struggle. After two days of consultations it was agreed that the ANC and SACP were going to undertake this new form of struggle whilst the other movements that were still legal should continue working legally. It was then decided that MK was going to be launched. In implementing the decision, the most prominent individuals were Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo, who was at the time a member of the SACP Central Committeee and a veteran of the Second World War". (2008, page 15).
Two important things become clear from this quote from Shubin's book. Firstly, Nelson Mandela served on the MK High Command NOT because he was a Communist, as it is often alleged, but, as Joe Modise himself confirmed, because he (Mandela) was seconded by the ANC. Secondly, Shubin reveals that at the time of the launch of MK in the early 1960s, Joe Slovo was a member of the Central Committee (CC) of the underground SACP. Yet no such confirmation about Mandela's underground SACP membership in the early 1960s is made by Shubin, who was for decades Moscow's chief liaison with the exiled ANC and SACP, and should know better if Mandela was ever a Communist. [It is worthwhile to recall in this regard that even Stepeh Clingman, in his biography of Bram Fischer (ibid), expressed the hope that perhaps some more information on Fischer laid "in some archive in Moscow", which archive, if extant, he had not been able to access].
Later in his biography of the exiled ANC Shubin explained how Mandela and Slovo came to play such pivotal roles in the early stages of MK:
"Further details were given by Slovo in the issue of Dawn mentioned earlier. ‘To constitute the High Command the ANC appointed Mandela and the Party appointed me. We were instructed by both sides to make recommendations about the balance of members of the High Command, which we did and it was endorsed'" (Ibid, page 16).
In his book, Shubin also shows how the veteran SACP stalwart and the biographer of the former SACP long-time general secretary Moses Kotane, Brian Bunting, at the time working for a Soviet Moscow's ITAR news service in London, sent a telegraph to his Moscow head office bosses, which seemed to imply that he (Bunting) was confirming some of Nelson Mandela's alleged Communist membership, although a month later ITAR news service clarified itself by somehow back-tracking from its initial report.
It is this kind of bits and pieces of information about Nelson Mandela, especially coming from veteran SACP leaders such as Brian Bunting, which may have fuelled wide-spread perceptions that Nelson Mandela was at some stage in the 1960s a member of the underground SACP.
On 08 December 2012 UK The Telegraph carried an article by Colin Freeman and Jane Flanagan under the heading ‘Nelson Mandela's "proven" to be a member of the Communist Party'. In the article, the veteran anti-Communist and anti-ANC, and evidently anti-Nelson Mandela element, Stephen Ellis, apparently greatly titillated by the discovery captured in the article's heading, "quoted a collection of private papers at the University of Cape Town , in which a veteran former Party [as in SACP] member, the late John Pule Motshabi, talks about how Mr Mandela was a party member some two decades before".
The Telegraph went on to report that:
"In the Minutes", Mr Motshabi is quoted as saying: "There was an occasion that we opposed allowing Nelson [Mandela] and Walter [Sisulu, a fellow activist] into the Family (a code word for the party)...We were not informed because this was arising after the 1950 campaigns (a series of street protests). The recruitment of the two came after."
This quoted paragraph attributed to John Motshabi is so muddled, it does not really make any logical sense at all, if indeed Motshabi was correctly quoted.
If the Minutes were correctly captured, it proves that Nelson Mandela was not a Communist; it is why Motshabi and others did not want to let him and Walter Sisulu into the meeting. Secondly, if it is true that the "recruiting of the two came after the 1950 campaign", Walter Sisulu has confirmed his underground membership. So the recruitment of him was successful. But Nelson Mandela has denied he was an underground SACP member, so the recruitment did plausibly happen, but was unsuccessful. Motshabi, like Mac Maharaj and Brian Bunting, did not and in fact could not say definitively that Nelson Mandela became a formal member of the underground SACP. All he (John Pule Motshabi) could vouch for, according to the Minutes of the "Family" meeting, was that "the recruitment of the two" happened "after the 1950 campaign". But this in no way confirms Nelson Mandela's underground SACP membership. But it certainly cognates with Walter Sisulu's own, subsequent confirmation that he became a formal member of the underground SACP.
Lastly, Shubin says that Joe Slovo repeated this position in his ‘Unfinished Autobiography'.
So, according to a leading member of the SACP, Joe Slovo, Nelson Mandela's involvement in the formation and leadership of MK did not owe to any of his alleged membership of the underground SACP and its Central Committee, but due to the fact that Mandela was a duly chosen representative of the ANC in the joint endeavor with the SACP to create MK, with Joe Slovo himself representing the SACP in the High Command.
This, in my mind, would also explain why Nelson Mandela was invited to attend the SACP Central Committee meeting in December 1960 in Emmerentia, Johannesburg, as indicated by Stephen Ellis. (Ibid).
Interestingly, whilst the CPSA/SACP leader Yusuf Dadoo has been universally acknowledged as the one who recruited Bram Fischer into the CPSA, and whilst Walter Sisulu revealed in his biography by Elinor Sisulu that he joined the underground SACP after attending Communist classes which were offered by Michael Harmel, it has never been clearly indicated as to who recruited Nelson Mandela into the underground SACP.
If Nelson Mandela was a Communist, who recruited him and when? How specifically did Mandela join the underground SACP, which thing he himself denied ever taking place?
In response to the allegations contained in The Telegraph of 08 December 2012, about which Stephen Ellis got himself in such a tizzy, a spokesman of the Nelson Mandela Foundation was quoted by the self-same The Telegraph article as stating:
"We do not believe that there is proof that Madiba (Mandela's clan name) was a Party member. The evidence that has been identified is comparatively weak in relation to the evidence against, not least Madiba's consistent denial of the fact over 50 years. It is conceivable that Madiba might indulge in legalistic casuistry,, but not that he would make an entirely false statement.
"Recruitment and induction into the Party was a process that happened in stages, over a period of time. It is possible that Madiba started but never completed the process. What is clear is that at a certain stage in the struggle, he was sufficiently trusted as an ANC leader to participate in Party CC meetings. And it is possible that people in attendance at such meetings may have thought of him as a member".
This is a very crucial clarification statement the Nelson Mandela Foundation made in The Telegraph article of 08 December 2012, a year before the death of Nelson Mandela.
The Statement contains several important elements. Firstly, even if John Motshabi was correct to claim that "the recruitment of the two" (Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela) happened "after the 1950 campaign", he did not confirm the induction of the two into the underground SACP. By confirming his attendance of the Communist classes offered by the underground SACP stalwart Michael Harmel, Walter Sisulu effectively affirmed that "induction" took place, in his case, before he formally joined the SACP. No such evidence whatsoever of such an "induction" into the underground SACP regarding Mandela has been proffered to date.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation Statement on allegations and claims that Nelson Mandela was a Communist also makes clear why there would be those veteran ANC, SACP and MK leaders, eg Mac Maharaj, Brian Bunting, John Motshabi and the current leadership cohorts of the ZANC and SACP, who might and may think that, by his mere attendance of some of the underground SACP CC meetings, Nelson Mandela was, per force, a Communist.
Nothing in the announcements by the ZANC and SACP leaders, following the death of Nelson Mandela on 05 December 2013, has undermined or refuted or discredited the core arguments of the Nelson Mandela Foundation's Statement of 08 December 2012, as to why Nelson Mandela was never a Communist and a formal member of the underground SACP.
Not even the undeniable great combined authority and struggle credentials of the current ZANC and SACP leadership core is sufficient to make a Communist out of Nelson Mandela, when the latter stated, whilst alive and quite clearly, that he never was one.
The real great pity is that the Nelson Mandela Foundation has not, to date, seen it fit to re-issue the Statement by its unnamed spokesman, which was quoted at length and ad verbatim, by The Telegraph of 08 December 2012 on why Nelson Mandela was never a Communist.
Maybe this year (2015), and on the eve of the International Mandela Day, this is as auspicious an occasion as any for the Nelson Mandela Foundation to re-issue its Statement of 08 December 2012, if only to reset the record straight and to firmly rebut the mendacious claims contained in the ZANC and SACP Statements of Condolences on the Death of Nelson Mandela, regarding the latter's alleged underground SACP membership, as well as in Politicsweb editor and publisher James Myburgh's article ‘Nelson Mandela and the Communist Party'.
Now is the time for the Nelson Mandela Foundation to re-issue its Statement in The Telegraph of 08 December 2012 in order to again set the record straight about the alleged underground SACP membership of Nelson Mandela!
CONCLUSION.
Arguably the most intriguing and fascinating question is: Given that Nelson Mandela was so close to Communism, the underground SACP and later to the unbanned SACP leaders, and given the fact that he admitted to admiring key postulations of Marxism, Lenin and Stalin at some stage in his life, and given that he so extensively read up on many and various classics and other literature of great Marxists and Leninists, why didn't he, like Walter Sisulu, his political mentor, take the final step and become a formal member of the underground SACP? (See David James Smith, Young Mandela, 2010, page 76).
The question becomes imperative when viewed against the backdrop of Mandela's own hand-written sketch called ‘How To Become A Good Communist'.
[In her biography ‘The Nelson Mandela Story', Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob offers what I consider a very persuasive explanation as to how come Mandela ended up with his hand-written sketch ‘How To Become A Good Communist'. She writes that:
"As he [Nelson Mandela] had in his early years at the University of the Witwatersrand when he felt a need to expand on his political knowledge, he set out to arm himself with as much information as possible. Having already studied Clausewitz, he spent hours reading about war and armed struggle in sources as diverse as Mao Tse-tung and How to be a good Communist by Liu Shao Chi on the revolution in China and Boer General Deneys Reitz, whose book Commando explained the guerrilla tactics used by the Boer forces during the war with the vastly superior Britain. He read books by Che Guevara and Liddell-Hart, Menachem Begin and Fidel Castro. He studied conflicts in various parts of Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya and Algeria) and drew on his own history, dissecting early wars in South Africa, both colonial and tribal. He made copious notes on all aspects of armed resistance: the theory, strategy and tactics of legendary leaders and conflicts. Nelson Mandela was fast becoming an expert on war"] (2006, page 139).
So, Nelson Mandela read up on and made copious notes of Liu Shao Chi's ‘How To Be A Good Communist', used these notes as a basis of his multi-faceted ideological engagements with the SACP's veteran and long-serving secretary general, Moses Kotane, over a long time, and had these notes on Liu Shao Chi's classic used against him during the historic Rivonia Trial in the early 1960s, after they were confiscated by the sniffing apartheid security forces.
Yet both the apartheid regimes, the veteran anti-Communists like Stephen Ellis and some among South Africa's democratic forces, have always sought to use Nelson Mandela's hand-written notes ‘How To Become A Good Communist' to give credence to the false conclusion that Mandela had become a Communist in the early 1960s.
In his book, Vladimir Shubin reveals that the underground SACP elected in 1958 was made up of Moses Kotane, Yusuf Dadoo, Walter Sisulu, Bram Fischer, ‘Rusty' Bernstein, Joe Slovo and Michael Harmel as the Executive. Kotane, Sisulu and Harmel constituted the Secretariat. Other members of the underground SACP CC were J.B Marks, Dan Tloome, Ruth First, Brian Bunting, Fred Carneson, Ray Alexander (Simons), Raymond Mhlaba and M.P Naicker. Co-opted into the CC in 1960 were Bartholomew Hlapane, Robert Hepple, Joe Matthews and Ben Turok. He stated that many of these underground SACP CC members continued to serve the ANC and the SACP in this capacity. (Ibid, page 7).
Nowhere does Shubi confirm that Nelson Mandela was ever a communist or a formal member of the underground SACP in the early 1960s.
For his part, David James Smith in his ‘Young Mandela' does confirm that Nelson Mandela, in his early years in Johannesburg, did attend "some Communist meetings" with his political confidante and friend, Gaur Radebe, who was himself a member of the CPSA/SACP. But later in his book, David James Smith, commenting about the Treason Trial and how the accused, including Nelson Mandela, commuted to and fro between Pretoria and Johannesburg for the duration of the trial, wrote:
"According to Mac Maharaj, who was not there but heard about it later, Mandela would often attack Slovo and the communists on the journey, complaining that, despite appearances to the contrary, the Communist Party was run by whites and was no beacon of equality. As Mac said, that was an indication of how well Mandela knew the party apparatus". (Ibid, page 48 and 177).
And this segues us into the concluding remarks of this article.
One of the surprising features of the studies and literature on Nelson Mandela is how little attention and time are devoted to the period when Nelson Mandela was openly and violently anti-Communist in his earlier years in the ANC Youth League.
To his great credit, president Jacob Zuma, addressing the J.B Marks reburial occasion in Ventersdopr several days ago, drew the nation's attention to this anti-Communist period in the political life of Nelson Mandela.
I can say that, in as far as my own personal experience in the anti-apartheid struggle in concerned, it is the first time in the last 40 years that I have heard a major ANC leader refer to this anti-Communist period of Nelson Mandela on an open public platform, and in a way that did not make Mandela's then anti-Communist activism an anathema and an aberration.
This is a very healthy, important and unprecedented initiative on the part of president Jacob Zuma, for which he should be heartily complimented, because it makes it possible for all of us to have a well-rounded, well-anchored and a realistic appreciation and measure of the very influential and impressive political morality and ideological personality of South Africa's most important leader ever.
What has passed as studies and literature on Nelson Mandela has often been characterized by an overly romantic narrative on Mandela's early years as a rural, royal boy growing up within a traditional Xhosa setting. His student years, including at Fort Hare university, are often viewed uncritically as the start of his broader worldview and progressive personal transformation towards later greatness. It then jumps into his epochal ANC youth league radical politics, whilst downplaying Mandela's legendary anti-Communism and black racial exclusivist politics, which he backed with militant and violent confrontations with and verbal abuse of then Communists and others he opposed, as a narrow black African chauvinist, at that stage in his political evolution.
But this anti-Communist phase of Mandela's political growth is treated by many as a temporary aberration, in the way we treat the aberrant behavior of our rebellious adolescents and teens. From here it is made out as if Mandela then entered his mature and glorious phases of his politics - his Pisgah.
The cursory treatment of Nelson Mandela's early anti-Communism in ANC, SACP and other literature is in the main explained by the ruthless and insidious way the racist apartheid white dictatorship used anti-Communism to perpetuate the oppression and repression of black South African, including through the Suppression of Communism Act.
But it is likely that Mandela's early anti-Communism had more lasting impact on his subsequent world-view and ideological certainties than we care to admit. He was also under the influences of his two greatest confidantes, friends and soul-mates - OR Tambo, a deeply committed man of God and a practicing Christian and one of the most refined minds, as well as Walter Sisulu, a strategic thinker, a tactician of enormous depth, his mentor and an avowed Communist and dialectical materialist.
Nelson Mandela's declaration that he was never a Communist, whilst he took great pride in celebrating his very close collaboration and intimate friendship with many leading South African Communists like Moses Kotane, J.B Marks, Yusuf Dadoo, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed kaathrada, Andrew Mlangeni, Joe Slovo, Harry Gwala, Ruth First, Mac Maharaj and many other such titans of our anti-racism and anti-apartheid struggle, speaks to his golden medium located between the God-fearing OR Tambo, the exiled ANC president, and the steadfastly Communist Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada.
There is no doubt that, whatever is said, at the end of the day, the excellent and immortal contribution of both the CPSA and the SACP to the freedom struggle in South Africa over many decades stands on its own two legs and flies by its own two wings, needing no assistance, and is such that it does not need to impose, posthumously, a Communist membership on Nelson Mandela to affirm its outstanding, known and rightly celebrated struggle credential and democratic mantle.
The worst thing the SACP can do now, following the death of Nelson Mandela, is to continue to fanatically controvert and contradict Nelson Mandela's own public declaration that he was never a Communist and a member of the SACP.
It really is not clear what possible gain is achieved by making a claim about a man who in life demonstrably denied the claim.
It absolutely makes no political or any reasonable sense.
But Nelson Mandela's non-Communist allegiance is also proof positive that some of our country's greatest patriots, leaders and revolutionaries in history were never Communists. These would include such colossi of our anti-colonial and anti-racism history as Nelson Mandela, OR Tambo, Chief Albert Luthuli, Dr. Xuma, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Sol Plaatjie, ‘ZK' Matthews, Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko, Onkgopotse Tiro, Tsietsi Mashinini, Shaka Zulu, Mzilikazi, Moshoeshoe, Sechele, Makana, Cetswayo, Hintsa, Sekhukhune, Makhado, Soshangane, Khama, Sobhuza, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Albertina Sisulu, Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph and many more such non-Communists.
Whilst it may be true also that the best Communists are found within the SACP, world history in the last hundred years teaches that the very best Marxists are often found outside Communist Parties, and that the worst Communist butchers and mass murderers are found within Communist parties, such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot genocidees.
I am persuaded that Nelson Mandela was a Marxist, for sure, but never a Communist.
Falsely claiming that Nelson Mandela was once a Communist is not the best of monuments we can build, posthumously, to him, now that he is dead and cannot rise to challenge the Communist image we seek to cultivate of him.
For what good reason under the sun would we want to make Nelson Mandela a convenient Communist hero, to paraphrase Carl Windell Hines, when he himself made clear repeatedly that he was never a Communist?
Under a section entitled ‘Mandela's Autobiography', Padraig O'Malley quotes Mac Maharaj explaining why the earlier draft of Nelson Mandela's autobiography he (Maharaj) smuggled out of Robben Island when he was released in the mid 1970s was not published, with Maharaj saying about Nelson Mandela that, inter alia:
"...there were things he didn't want to get out. One was a section that dealt with a number of us individually and how he saw us. I think some of the judgments are a little too harsh, and I think they would make some waves. I don't think it is fair while these people are still living". (Ibid, page 214).
The highly surprising claim by the ZANC and SACP that Nelson Mandela was once a Communist has made waves domestically, across our African continent and globally, for sure.
Claiming, posthumously, that Nelson Mandela was a member of the underground SACP is more than "a little too harsh". It is certainly also patently unfair that the false claim was made by the ZANC and SACP when Nelson Mandela can no more defend himself, from beyond his grave, and beyond the several occasions when he stated unambiguously in writing that he never was a Communist.
In his booklet, ‘Leading like Madiba - Leadership Lessons from Nelson Mandela', (Double Story Books, 2006), the Zambian Martin Kalungu-Banda narrates several tear-jerking instances when Mandela showed extraordinary leadership humility by eating humble pie in public and apologizing for some of his most egregious leadership errors and missteps. One such a gigantic faux pas was when Nelson Mandela advised Zambians to re-elect the then deeply unpopular and universally despised long-serving Zambian president, and anti-colonial hero, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, during Zambia's first multi-party, democratic election post-independence. Of course Dr. Kaunda went on to be humiliatingly defeated by the Movement for Multi-party Democracy )MMD).
But Mandela was a strong, authentic and mature enough a leader that the next time he visited Zambia, and was the host of the post-Kaunda government, he publicly apologized to the Zambians for his error of judgment, pointing out that his judgment was clouded by the outstanding role Zambia had played under president Kenneth Kaunda in hosting the exiled ANC, and in supporting the anti-apartheid liberation struggle in South Africa.
Many Zambians felt deeply humbled and moved to tears by Nelson Mandela's public apology.
Martin Kalungu-Banda narrates not one, not two, but several of such public Nelson Mandela mea culpae.
Perhaps the ZANC and SACP should take a leaf out of these "leadership lessons from Nelson Mandela".
After all, the SACP has already very commendable apologised before for claiming, erroneously, our former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson as one of their own Communists.
And whilst thinking of a more proximate and appropriate elegy to the deceased Nelson Mandela, rather than attempting to erect a wobbly, clay Communist statue to him, the ZANC and SACP would do no worse than remembering that anyone, or any organization for that matter, which can lie with a straight face, and without missing a singe heartbeat, about Nelson Mandela's political creed, political associations, party-political membership and ideological leanings, can almost certainly lie about practically anything under the sun.
The great African American poet, Carl Wendell Hines Jr, concluded his poem ‘A Dead Man's Dream' with this stanza:
"So now that he is safely dead,
We, with eased consciences will
Teach our children that he was a great man,
Knowing that the cause which he
Lived is still a cause
And the dream for which he died is still a dream.
A dead man's dream."
The dream for which Nelson Mandela died was most certainly never a Communist dream. Claiming that he was once a Communist will never ease our consciences.
Isaac Mpho Mogotsi is Founder and Executive Chairman of the Centre for Economic Diplomacy In Africa (CEDIA). This article first appeared on the Centre's website.
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