Memorial Lecture on the life of Chris Hani by Zwelinzima Vavi, Chairperson of the Chris Hani Institute, at Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Soweto, April 9 2011
I bring greeting behalf of the Chris Hani Institute
Tomorrow marks the eighteenth anniversary of the brutal murder of our beloved comrade, friend and leader, Chris Hani, on 10th April 1993. By naming this famous hospital after him you are helping to make sure that we never forget his exceptional contribution to our struggle for national liberation and a better life for all.
His life continues to inspire new generations of South Africans, a glittering example of a courageous revolutionary leader of his people, personifying the noblest principles and finest traditions of our liberation and socialist movement. I urge all members of COSATU, the ANC, the SACP and all other South Africans to learn from what he taught us so well and strive to emulate his record of service to the people.
Chris's life was shaped by his childhood years, in the desperate poverty of the Eastern Cape. He knew from a very early age the suffering which his nation and his class were enduring in the dark days of apartheid. With his exceptional intellect was very soon able to analyse the nature of apartheid and capitalism and to understand to need to fight back and immerse himself in the revolutionary resistance movement.
In exile he was a courageous commissar and fighter, leading the joint MK/ZIPRA forces in the 1967 Wankie campaign into the then Northern Rhodesia. In the 1970s and 80s, Hani infiltrated South Africa many times, the first member of the NEC to cross the border from exile in the course of struggle. Hani would not ask anyone to do things he was not prepared to do himself. He always led from the front. He became a key target of the apartheid security forces and survived several assassination attempts.
He was the most loyal servant of the movement and the people but never a blind follower. He always applied his mind to the new problems and confronted them head-on. Most famously, when in exile, he spoke up, in the "Hani memorandum" on behalf of comrades who were frustrated by the ANC leaders' lack of urgency to step up the military offensive.
He decried the leadership's lack of accountability, draconian discipline, nepotism, corruption and favouritism, trends which could have destroyed the movement. For this he was jailed by his own movement, while many more senior comrades chose to ignore these problems, or worse were themselves implicated.
He used the skills he learned as a law student to represent those who shared the trenches with him. The SACP's popular slogan - "For the workers and the poor" - was not just words, but a principle which guided his life.
Back in South Africa he addressed hundreds of rallies and inspired millions to join our struggle. He was one of our very best orators and could perfectly express the aspirations of the working class and the poor. He was second only to Comrade Madiba in popularity.
Unlike some other leaders of the time, Chris was proud to be known as a communist and always nailed his red flag to the mast. He hated the exploitation of the majority by a small, powerful elite class of capitalists, and was convinced that the liberation struggle would not be complete until this system had been overthrown.
It is most significant that when many leaders were looking forward to being appointed as government ministers, Chris Hani agreed to be elected General Secretary of the Party.
While others were theorising, he led from the front, commanding revolutionary forces in the battlefield, and facing constant danger. When others were preparing for a life of luxury which they thought they were entitled to as a reward for their suffering, Chris chose to build the Party, and took a position that ruled him out of a cushy job.
All this demonstrates the long-held political practice and principle of the ANC: selflessness. I-ANC iyasetyenzelwa akungenwa ngetender!
Comrades and friends
Chris Hani would of course be impressed by the strides that the African National Congress has made in the transformation of the lives of many South Africans. We have one of the world`s most democratic constitutions, a bill of rights, and a constitutional court which checks that the laws and courts comply with that Constitution.
Over 2.5 million houses have been built for the poor, giving shelter to over ten million people. Six million households have gained access to clean water since 1994 and electricity has been connected to nearly five million homes. In 1994, only 62% of households had access to clean drinking water - today 93% do.
In 1994, only 50% of households had access to decent sanitation - today 77% do. In 1994, only 36% had access to electricity - today 84% do. By 2010, 14.5 million people were receiving social grants. Of those, 9.5 million are children less than 14 years old (compared with 2.4 million in 1996). This year the Child-Support Grant will be extended to children aged below 18 years, an additional 2-million children.
Chris Hani would have been very impressed by this progress registered in 17 short years. He would have joined us in celebrating these strides on the 27 April 2011 and every day.
He would not however be impressed by the quality of education and healthcare available for the poor majority of South Africans.
A 2007 survey showed that a staggering 2 812 471 out of 6.7 million young people between 18 and 24 were neither employed nor receiving any form of education. Skills development has a crucial role to play in job creation. Yet we lack skilled artisans and technicians, and must find ways to overhaul our FE colleges and SETAs and encourage employers to provide workplace training.
Believing that the masses are their own liberators, Chris Hani would applaud government's move from denialism to pragmatism towards HIV/AIDS and the serious efforts to get everyone tested and antiretroviral treatment given to all who need it.
But he would be furious to learn that while South Africa has less than 1% of the world's population, it still has 17% of people living with HIV/Aids, the highest incidence in the world. And that life expectancy rates are falling and now stand at 56 for women and 51 for men. The death rate has doubled in nine years!
Yet spending on health care in South Africa is higher than in many countries with better health care provision. So it is not just money, but the misallocation of resources, with a private health sector making rocketing profits and an underfunded and mismanaged public sector.
That is why Chris Hani would be campaigning with us today for the urgent implementation of the National Health Insurance system to bring the quality of public health care up to the same and better standard as in the private sector.
"Socialism," said Comrade Chris, "is not about big concepts and heavy theory. Socialism is about decent shelter for those who are homeless. It is about water for those who have no safe drinking water. It is about health care, it is about a life of dignity for the old. It is about overcoming the huge divide between urban and rural areas. It is about a decent education for all our people. Socialism is about rolling back the tyranny of the market. As long as the economy is dominated by an unelected, privileged few, the case for socialism will exist."
Chris would surely be devastated to find that inequality is now greater than in any other country in the world and still growing. On average the poorest 10% of earners get R1275 a month - 0.57% of total earnings, while the top 10% get R111 733 - 49.2% of the total!
Meanwhile the country's 20 richest men enjoyed a 45% increase in wealth in 2010, and the number of billionaires nearly doubled, from 16 to 31. Pine Pienaar, CEO of Mvelaphanda Resources, made R63 million in 2009, 1875 times as much as the average worker. Yet these super-rich CEOs and their lackeys in the DA, the universities and the media, lecture workers about ‘excessive' wage demands.
Chris Hani would welcome policies contained in IPAP and the New Growth Path to build an active developmental state that intervenes in the economy and sees the creation of decent jobs as its top priority.
But he would have been very disappointed to see that these developmental policies are hamstrung by conservative macroeconomic policies based on capitalist neoliberal theories, that maintain the existing unequal and exploitative economic fault lines which we inherited from the days of apartheid.
He would have reminded us of the words of ANC 1969 Morogoro Conference which we must repeat over and over again:
"Our nationalism must not be confused with chauvinism or narrow nationalism of a previous epoch. It must not be confused with the classical drive by an elitist group among the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so that they can replace the oppressor in the exploitation of the mass ......In our country - more than in any other part of the oppressed world - it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation".....
"...Our struggle "is also happening in a new kind of South Africa; a South Africa in which there is a large and well-developed working class...and in which the independent expressions of the working people - their political organs and trade unions - are very much part of the liberation front."(ANC Strategy and Tactics, 1969)"
I am sure that Tshonyane would agree that we have political freedom but must still gain our economic liberation, that we have political medals without economic jewellery.
In particular he would have been very angry that instead of us uncompromisingly taking forward all the ten demands of the Freedom Charter, we simply changed the white driver with a black driver without changing the direction of the train that had been set by the previous white driver, on the route to greater inequality, structural unemployment and poverty.
While BEE has seen the emergence of a few black millionaires, racial discrimination in the workplace is worsening. In 1964, the manufacturing sector paid whites 5 times more than Africans, yet by 2007, whites were earning 8 times more than Africans.
Chris would ask us: what was the point of passing the Employment Equity Act if we cannot use it to enforce the transformation of the workplace? He would be surprised to learn that the top managers continue to be predominantly drawn from the white population and that 62% of all promotions and recruitments were drawn from 12% of the population. Almost all the 20 top paid directors in JSE listed companies remain white males.
Crucial sectors in the economy are still dominated by a few huge conglomerates and we have failed to break the dominance of the minerals/energy and finance capital sectors.
Faced by this unfolding disaster, our leaders are increasingly making calls on the working class to sign a social accord and enter into "a chicken and a pig partnership", in which the chicken and the pig agree to equally contribute so that they have a breakfast. The chicken quickly volunteers to contribute eggs produced after some pleasurable activity, whilst asking the pig to donate with bacon, which can only happen after it has been slaughtered.
Comrades and friends,
There can be no doubt that Chris Hani would have been at the forefront of the campaign against corruption. Responding to some who expressed shock at his decision to accept the position of SACP General Seccretary, instead of angling to be a Minister, he said:
"The perks of a new government are not really appealing to me. Everybody would like to have a good job, a good salary.....but for me that is not the be-all of struggle. What is important is the continuation of the struggle... the real problems of the country are not whether one is in Cabinet ...but what we do for social upliftment of the working masses of our country."
How I wish that those who use knives and guns to fight for leadership positions in our organisations could learn from such modesty, honesty and integrity. How would he view the infighting in Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape and elsewhere? What would he think about the murders and the alleged existance of a hitlist drafted by other comrades to murder other comrades? This factional fighting for the perks of office is what he fought against all his life.
He would be horrified at the scale of greed and crass materialism of the new clique of tenderpreneurs, and all those who see access to political office as a ladder to personal wealth.
He would agree with COSATU that relegating the arms deal investigation to the dustbin of history is against everything we stand for as a movement. He would share our astonishment that billions were wasted in procuring arms instead of investing in more quality houses, education and clinics for the poor, increasing the percentage of people who can access clean water and electricity.
Chris Hani would surely agree that the ANC NGC was a success, in defending the Polokwane resolutions, calling for the reversal of the tendencies that he referred to in the 1969 Memorandum. He would also be very happy to see the ANC branches warning that ill discipline will no longer be tolerated.
Comrades and friends
As we celebrate the 18th anniversary of his assassination, and approach the critical local government elections on 18 May, we should remember Chris Hani's words to civil society organisations during the CODESA negotiations:
"This is not the time to emphasise our differences. It is our job to build on the highest level of unity we can develop to take ourselves forward, not to narrow sectarian goals but the broad democratic system that is in all of our interests."
The struggle against social injustice, poverty and deprivation can only be won through mass mobilisation and a united front, dedicated to putting an end to the capitalist honeymoon that we have been experiencing since 1994.
As a strong believer that the masses are the makers of history, Chris Hani would warn us that without mass power, we must all forget about liberating ourselves from the shackles of capitalism and apartheid. Let all of us be inspired by him and follow his example.
Thank you!
Issued by COSATU, April 10 2011
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