Cde Mdu Sibeko
Contrarily I found that many people who knew Vusi Make closely had
complementary remarks about him, his ideas and his influence as a leader. At
his funeral service in Evaton a few years back, the then State President Thabo
Mbeki made an appearance as an ordinary mourner and stood to listen to all the
speakers. The two had a long history of sharing platforms on behalf of their
parties and they obviously respected each other despite the different
viewpoints. Make was among the youngest in the Treason Trial, was very
eluquent and he was no push over politically and his physical weight merely
made the statement true. With David Sibeko they were called the Baby
Elephants, and they formed a powerful duo in diplomatic circles. We must
promote the footage from UN platforms to see the stuff they were made of.
His weakness was obviously his love for the finer things in life. Everybody
said Vusi Make loved money and did not like to account for its use. I once
jokingly referred to him as a petty bourgeois and he responded by saying I was
very wrong, he couldn't be a 'petty bourgeois' but a fully fledged national
bourgeoisie who was patriotic and democratic. He had an Oxford University
degree and served as director in a top French investment bank. He said to me
that his status in society was in no way small. We laughed about it. He was
not a snob and he could talk tsotsi-taal with most of his friends in Alex (like
abo-Sgubhu Mabiletsa) without making them feel belittled. I sat in with them
when the late Joe Modise was Minister of Defence and we would talk through the
evening about life in exile and so on. Post-1994 I'd worked for a defence
sector company as marketing manager and had a range of football stadium suites
entertain my clients. Most of the exile regiment would really say
complimentary things about Bra Vusi.
For me, his contributions in the campaign to save the PAC from derecognition
from the OAU and the UN will always stand out. The ANC and social imperialism
had combined to attack the PAC on the basis that the ANC was the sole
representative of the SA people and on the Soviet -backed programme of the
'Authentic Six' liberations movements in Africa.
As a revolutionary intellectual he applied an objective evaluation of events
and argued that in every information that we received, whether from friendly
forces or from the enemy, it must go through a filter of critical tools of
inquiry. It must be interpreted, analysed, evaluated and an inference must be
drawn based on the laws of evidence and conceptual and contextual consideration
upon which our judgement must be based. We must separate fact from fiction.
Vusi Make believed it was wrong to impose yourself upon others in an
organisation. We should instead persuade others to see our point of view.
This approach is fair and should be the hallmark of our conduct in dealing with
the internal affairs of the PAC.
Some elements in the PAC in exile had a tendency to oppose all intellectuals,
and they disregarded the process of political discussions. They also formed
regional and tribal cliques and agreed with their kith and kin all the time, at
the expense of a national approach and Party unity. This political influence
was from associations with Pol Pot, for instance, who destroyed all educational
institutions and the money economy in Kampuchea as bad Western influences. The
Cultural Revolution and its excesses in China was not analysed critically.
Party discipline meant taking orders from office bearers and suppressing all
other views. This blinkered approach is still practiced today. This is
because we refuse to learn. Let us take the undemocratic processes that led
to the 'watchdogs' phenomenon, and the lack of transparency in the
decision-making process when the activities of APLA where opportunistically
terminated, and even the current impasse where PAC constitutionality and
legitimacy of leadership is not observed. You will notice the same foolish
approach. These misconceptions must come to an end. If we refuse to apply our
minds politically we will not revitalise the PAC.
If we learnt from the positive contributions of Party leaders such as Vusi Make
even minimal damage would be prevented.
Izwe lethu iAfrika
Jaki seroke
Jaki Seroke
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