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Mayihlome News posted: "When Steve Biko died,
according to the poet, birds never sang, the wind never blew, and clouds never
gathered. It is perhaps poetic too to say that when Bennie Bunsee passed on, on
the afternoon of Saturday, 10 October 2015, young people concerned with th"
New post on http://mayihlomenews.co.za
BENNIE BUNSEE (1935 – 2015): TRIBUTE TO A SOBUKWE-BIKO WARRIOR!!!
by Mayihlome News
When Steve Biko died, according to the
poet, birds never sang, the wind never blew, and clouds never gathered. It is
perhaps poetic too to say that when Bennie Bunsee passed on, on the afternoon
of Saturday, 10 October 2015, young people concerned with the future of South
Africa and their place in it, stood up in protest to the rising costs of
university fees. They protested carrying the spirit of Bennie Bunsee with them.
Benny Bunsee’s lifestyle was theory and practice of a class of political
education – free and compulsory - and it was an act of consciousness-raising
for communities to take charge of their destiny.
Bunsee had been a torchbearer in the difficult and dark days of socially
engineered obfuscation and reactionary propaganda meant to lead young people
astray from the core agenda of the national liberation struggle. Bunsee’s
mission in life was to espouse the ideas of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, Mangaliso
Sobukwe and Steve Biko.
His sterling work in producing the non-sectarian journal of political economy,
Ikwezi, provided a platform for the Azanian Tendency to express itself openly
without any form of censorship or distortion of its views. The PAC had been
deliberately marginalised from the mainstream by the likes of the London-based
Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM), who articulated the struggle narrative with a
fixation on the Kliptown Charter. One of the ways the AAM worked was to
suppress the PAC and ZANU’s views from gaining currency in southern Africa, and
to block these organisations from forming solidarity with the people in
European countries. Bunsee was not chaffed with this form of subliminal racism.
Bunsee used his own scanty resources, out of pocket, to gather information and
encourage independent ideas from a variety of patriots to contribute a tapestry
of views and spread the network of activities in the liberation struggle.
Ikwezi is anchored on the belief that Azania (South Africa) is an African
country. Contributors included Edwin Makoti, Samir Amin, Christine Qunta, and
several other African revolutionary thinkers.
Ikwezi is the morning star symbolising the new dawn in Africa. This new phase
in history positions Africans as the levers of change – not pitiful victims –
with their destiny firmly in their hands. Bunsee edited Ikwezi from 1972 until
2015, shining the light for all to see.
Bennie Bunsee told friends recently that he felt he was getting old, but would
continue to revive the ideologies of the PAC and the Black Consciousness
Movement in new forms and develop them in the light of the current problems
facing the Azanian masses. He stated that ‘real wisdom comes out of experience,
distilled by age of more mature thought.’ He did not seek vainglorious
self-adulation or to have the media limelight shining on his persona. He
unobtrusively worked with community organisations at grassroots level in the
Cape flats. He lived his ideas.
His modern projects included the Diop/Du Bois Institute which aimed at
promoting the rebirth of African culture and uniting the African peoples in
their fight against imperialism. The institute collected more than 20 000
books, documents and literature on Africa, the African Diaspora and the global
South and intended to make a world centre for research, seminars, teachings,
and study.
On South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) television’s Morning Live
programme celebrating Africa Day in 2015, Bunsee declared his commitment as a
Sobukwe-Biko Warrior – the movement’s objective is to engender Afrikan Pride
and advance Education and Culture for Liberation. He printed and distributed
tee shirts of Sobukwe-Biko Warriors. Cde Bunsee mailed me his tee shirts and
I’m proud to be a Sobukwe-Biko Warrior.
In his early days, he was friends with Nat Nakasa - the journalist who worked
for Drum magazine and published The Classic literary journal. They both came
from Durban – and both ended up in exile. Bunsee was a journalist and a
political activist. He had been in the leadership collective of the South
African Coloured People’s Congress (SACPC) which took part in the Congress
Alliance as one of the partners. The racial patterns in the now defunct
Congress Alliance were no different from Verwoed’s apartheid prism, making
Sobukwe’s ‘apartheid multiplied’ jibe very real. The SACPC soon realised the
folly of their ways and completely withdrew from the Charterist formation, to
merge with the PAC in 1967. Bunsee worked with the likes of Moses Dhlamini,
Barney Desai and Gora Ibrahim to advance the Africanist cause on international
platforms.
The PAC took him to a Party School of the Chinese Communist Party for further
ideological training. He came to be an expert theoretician on New Democracy and
the dialectical concept of Contradictions. Some of his comrades found him very
abrasive and uncompromising. Revisionists called him a super-revolutionary
behind his back, while he attacked their ‘clever talk’ as a betrayal of
socialist principles. To Bunsee, every concept was up for rigorous scrutiny.
He cited the late Cosma Desmond, a priest and a longstanding PAC militant, as a
selfless and dedicated man of socialist principles, and ‘a genuine Africanist’.
Clearly, Bennie Bunsee never took prisoners and he made short shrift of any
position that violated the cardinal principles behind the African Revolution.
He associated himself with great intellectual forces like Cheik Anta Diop, WEB
Du Bois, Theophile Obenga, Ivan Sertima and others. In his seminal article,
“The African Nature of Ancient Egypt”, Bunsee asserts the beginnings of the
grandeur of African Civilisation. It points to Africa as the birthplace of the
human race.
There is no gainsaying how Bunsee would have reacted to the British Prime
Minister, David Cameron’s recent address to the parliament, in which he asserts
that slavery (and colonialism) happened a long time ago and that ‘as friends
[the UK and Africans] can move on together to build the future’. Bennie Bunsee
is on record as having stated that ‘the case for reparations for damages caused
by colonialism and slavery continue to this day’. The legacies of colonialism
and slavery are alive and well in the new South Africa, today.
In an op-ed column in the Cape Times, Bunsee wrote:
“Here in the Cape, we have a province and city which is the most racist in the
country. Whites have cornered the best of everything while black people are
huddled in the dry, decrepit areas and slums of Guguletu, Langa, Bonteheuwel,
Mitchels Plain and Ryland. ... Can it honestly be said that black people have
gained much (since 1994)? On the contrary, whites have consolidated their
colonial hold over the country in the name of democracy and human rights.”
The gist of the article was appealing to the conscience of the African
intelligentsia to speak truth to power. He derided ‘the silence of the
intellectual lambs’ and called this negative behaviour a grave danger to the
ongoing struggle. This Cape Times article was written in 2008. In the spring of
2015 the so called ‘born-free’ generation are saying exactly the same thing -
in the protests they have staged in tertiary institutions, the National
Assembly and the Union Building. The #FeesMustFall campaign is not an isolated
event. It is a fitting tribute to the memory of Bennie Bunsee.
The silence of the African lambs, as Bunsee observed, must come to an end. The
Sobukwe-Biko Warrior has spoken. Long live Bennie Bunsee.
He was laid to rest and cremated in Cape Town on Thursday, 15 October 2015.
By Jaki Seroke
The writer is a PAC stalwart and Chairperson of the Pan Africanist Research
Institute (PARI).
Mayihlome News
| November 8, 2015 at 4:21 pm | Tags: #FeesMustFall, AAM, Anti Apartheid
Movement, Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, Azania, ‘born-free’, Barney Desai, Bennie
Bunsee, Bonteheuwel, Cape Times, Cape Town, Cheik Anta Diop, Chinese Communist
Party, Christine Qunta, Congress Alliance, Cosma Desmond, David Cameron, Drum,
Edwin Makoti, Gora Ibrahim, Guguletu, Ikwezi, Ivan Sertima, Jaki Seroke,
Kliptown Charter, Langa, Mangaliso Sobukwe, Mitchels Plain and Ryland, Moses
Dhlamini, Nat Nakasa, PAC, Pan Africanist Research Institute, PARI, SABC,
SACPC, Samir Amin, Sobukwe-Biko Warrior, South African Coloured People’s
Congress, Steve Biko, The Classic, Theophile Obenga, WEB Du Bois, Whites, ZANU
| Categories: Feature Articles, Historical Perspectives, Obituaries
| URL: http://wp.me/p4RIso-Zn
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