Widow of Moses Kotane receives a home
The South African Communist Party in Gauteng welcomes the revolutionary and bold affirmation of the greatest leader of the Communist Party the late Moses Kotane, by handing his widow a brand new house in Fleurhof, Johannesburg today.
Mama Rebecca Kotane (102) will now have a house, which is part of government's programme of recognising Military Veterans who sacrificed and even laid down their lives for the liberation of this country.
In a moving handover ceremony held today, and organised by the national and provincial Human Settlements Department, Department of Military Veterans, and the City of Johannesburg, speakers spoke highly of this revolutionary leader who was respected by both the comrades in the SACP and the ANC for his thoroughness, robustness, level-headedness and his profound love for his country and its people.
Both comrades Lindiwe Sisulu and Jacob Mamabolo, who head Human Settlements at national and province levels respectively, paid tributes to this stalwart and hero who made an indelible mark in the history of South Africa.
Moses Kotane was born in 1905 in the then Transvaal, and started working at the tender age of 17. In 1928 he joined the ANC, and yearning for more political refinement, joined the CPSA in 1929. In no time he became both the vice-chairman of the trade union federation and a member of the party's political bureau. In 1931 he became a full-time party functionary.
Working as both a party and a union organiser, he was also a typesetter for Umsebenzi - a publication that is still produced to this day (the latest edition came out yesterday).
In 1939, a decade after he joined the Party, Moses Kotane was elected general secretary of the CPSA, afterwards navigating the party through difficult times of disruption, intimidation and attempts to silence it for good.
Kotane was constantly harassed by the police and arrested a number of times until he decided to skip the country in 1963 and went to exile in Tanzania.
Kotane became the treasurer-general of the ANC and in 1969 he was returned to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. Later he suffered a stroke and went to Moscow for treatment where he died in 1978 and was buried there.
Kotane effectively held the highest office in the Party from 1939 up to his untimely death, thirty-nine years later.
As the SACP in Gauteng we urge our democratic government to continue honouring and remembering the legacy of the great leaders of our struggle and to continue ensuring that our history does not die, but is forever nourished by progressive programmes such as these of honouring our veterans.
Statement issued by Jacob Mamabolo, SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary, October 21 2014
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