*MEMORIAL LECTURE DELIVERED BY BUTI MANAMELA, NATIONAL SECRETARY OF THE YOUNG COMUNIST LEAGUE OF SOUTH AFRICA* *19 APRIL 2011* *CAPE TOWN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY (BELLVILLE)* *“ALUTA CONTINUA: The Struggle Continues”* 1. Greetings to all leaders of the YCLSA, SACP, COSATU, ANC, ANC Youth League, SASCO and all other structures present today. After everything I have said today, at the end, I will take the pleasure of inviting you to vote for the ANC on the 18 May 2011.
2. Mark Twain once remarked that “frankness is a jewel only the young can afford”. Allow me to be young. 3. This month we are remembering Chris Hani and also campaigning for elections. We are remembering a man whose death led to the setting of the election date as pressure mounted on the apartheid regime. 4. We are remembering a man who fought both *violently* and *peacefully*against the apartheid system and the system of capitalism. 5. We are remembering an “A” student of Fort Hare; a devout alter boy; a dedicated underground activist; a committed MK soldier and its Chief of Staff; one of the best Communists born on our land and the most active of ANC members; tried and tested to his death. Thus, in Hani we learnt the BEST of all his world and thus, we say, WE WANT TO BE LIKE CHRIS! 6. As I am speaking to students, I wish to remind you that we are remembering someone who became the best in everything he was. Whether in church, in university, in the army, in the Party, in the ANC and everywhere else he served he sought to be the best. 7. In what you do today as students, you should seek to be the best. No longer can we excuse mediocre performance in class using our activism as reason for our failure. We can love our education, but not to the point of wanting to repeat every year of study in the name of lifelong learning. If you stay more than three or four years at university, it must be because you are completing your Masters of Ph.D os studying an additional degree. 8. This is even more of a challenge for young communists who, because of the privilege of studying at university, to be the best and exemplary to everyone. *The Struggle Continues* 9. We are living in interesting times. It is therefore opportune that as we commemorate and celebrate Martin Thembisile “Chris” Hani, we get ceased in the moment of cherishing that which his life has brought, but also pick up the spear and continue with the struggle he fought up to his death. 10. The blood of Chris Hani brought the symbolism of democracy: universal franchise; consultative and inclusive lawmaking process; freedom of association; freedom of the press and many other rights as contained in the constitution of our country. 11. His death therefore brought into being a democratic government whose existence it owed to the people Chris Hani led, and whose sustenance will be tested from time to time through elections and popular participation. 12. It is because of the death of Chris Hani and many others that today millions of South Africans owns houses, have access to clean running water, have access to electricity, have access to quality education and health care and many other socio-economic needs provided for by our democratic government. 13. More importantly, the dignity afforded by the democratic government through ending apartheid meant that never will our people suffer the humiliating acts of carrying their *dompass*, being interrogated about where they work, being forced to move from one place to another through the Land Areas Act. Today, we have a democracy. *Political Power means nothing without Socio-economic transformation* 14. We have consistently labelled all of these as *“POLITICAL POWER”*. Many have even gone on to suggest that we have attained POLITICAL POWER but do not have ECONOMIC POWER. 15. This is part of the interesting times we live in. However, this may not be true, and we will deal with it later on. But the essence of what I am conveying today is that POLITICAL POWER is useless if it does not address the SOCIO-ECONOMIC conditions of the majority of our people, and is ONLY empowering sprinkles of the black and middle class. 16. However, part of the interesting times we live in includes the deepening class contradiction and widening inequalities of our society within both the former oppressor and the former oppressed. 17. On a daily basis, we see signs and scars of apartheid replayed on television and radio; playing themselves in the “democratic courts”; in squatter camps; in the streets in our townships; in the rural villages; in the workplaces; in colleges and universities; in almost every facet of our lives. It is dejavu once again. 18. When our history and heritage of struggle is criminalised through seeking to ban individuals from singing historical songs, even when a drop of blood has not been shed as a result of the song, that is dejavu. *Where is political power in this?* 19. When police unleash violence against our people, and even kill an unarmed protestor whose intention was to defend an old and ailing man, that is dejavu. *Where is political power in this?* 20. When the people of Diepsloot or Joe Slovo informal settlement have to beg to their government to create a proper human settlement where they can feel the ‘wind of change’ brought by the blood of Chris Hani as it is felt in Sandton and Camps Bay, this is dejavu. *Where is political power?* 21. When students have to justify their right to education as enshrined in the Freedom Charter and the Constitution of the country, this is dejavu. Where is political power? When mothers and their daughters travel 20km to fetch clean drinking and cooking water, are subjected to rape and abuse, have to bribe counsellors to get *a* tap or *a* house or *a* road; this is dejavu. *Where is political power?* 22. We can easily say that the death of Chris Hani opened two roads, one easy for the end of violence and the conclusion of negotiations and the other, the other being more arduous, rough and possibly too difficult to fathom, that of a violent overthrow of the apartheid state or that of negotiations—and that is the road never taken. 23. We will never know what would have happened if Chris Hani never campaigned for the suspension of the armed struggle and pushed for a chance to be given for a peaceful transition. As to whether some of the set-backs our democracy have suffered would have been there is a matter we can leave to academics to theorise. Ours is to deal with the present and the now. *Election Time: A time for the truth to prevail* 24. We took this route. The route filled with sunsets and sunrise clauses, tied our hands and sealed our fate into poverty, exploitation and unemployment. We can implore on a section of our people to be patient, and say that it takes time to reverse 400 years of colonialism and apartheid whilst others leisure in the new wealth accumulated by the new and black bourgeoisie. 25. But all of these do not speak to what Chris Hani stood and fought for. His was an insistence that wherever we are, “The Struggle Continues”. Whether we are Members of Parliament, we are in cabinet, we are presidents, we are in business or in the factory floor, the struggle continues. 26. Many may say this is unnecessary and untimely diatribe directed at the ANC, and that saying these things during an election period will not help. But that is not the case. It is exactly during elections that the truth should be spoken to power by our people for it is the time when we listen. 27. This is also directed towards the ruling class, the capitalist class, those who have taken the rest of the cake and some of whom their personal wealth are even bigger than that of the state. The days of opulence, wealth and over-accumulation will gradually come to an end as long as our poverty, misery, landlessness and unemployment does not come to an end. 28. We should also as the National Liberation Movement take the blame of not having intensified the struggle for social transformation and the socialisation of society and its leaders into new values that the movement has historically espoused. 29. The blame of not having effectively mobilised society towards and for *change. *The fact that the signs and scars of apartheid remains visible in sections of our society; that economic inequality remains persistent; that our democratic rights and our history remains threatened by the “democratic courts”; that the acceleration towards a socialist society remains stagnant, is an indictment on all of us. 30. At times when we are called upon to mobilise for an ANC Vote, it is just at that time when we are required not to offer lies to our people but to openly confront our failures and seek to collectively resolve all of them. It is time to empower the ANC and the Alliance by exposing the weaknesses and failures of our democracy and directing them towards using the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ political power in order to accelerate change. 31. Formal political power is that which we have in parliament, cabinet, government and state institutions. This, in our country, is the most visible and easily blamed form of power. 32. But it also holds the responsibility to change the lives of our people but has often been subjected to rules, bureaucracies and countless excuses of laws whose main intention has visibly become the perpetuation of the benefits accorded to those who benefitted under apartheid. 33. Informal power is the power that is concentrated in the streets, in the colleges and universities, in the workplaces, in the villages, in the courts and everywhere else. This in power that lies within us to drive the change that is needed in our lives. 34. It is this power which, even when Andries Tatane is killed whilst exercising it, we should never retreat but march forward towards change in our society. It is the power that we have to ensure that we hold elected representatives accountable. It is the power that we have to ensure that those who are corrupt are brought to book. 35. It is the power that we have to ensure that counsellors who sleep on the job are removed, and place in their positions those who will represent the need, interests and aspirations of our people. It is the power to drive the struggle towards economic emancipation. 36. This is the class power to ensure that a socialist system is put in place over the barbaric, unwanted, hated, oppressive capitalist system that we live under. We must use this power to say “The Struggle Continues” and it is in our hands. 37. The power of the people is irreplaceable and incorrigible. It is not a threat to democracy or the movement; it is in itself democracy in the making. Only the capitalist class, the class that Chris Hani dedicated his entire life to bring to an end, can be scared by this power. *The end of white wealth is the end of all Poverty* 38. Many if not all of us here today may not have had the experience that Chris Hani had under apartheid, in exile, in the camps or living under the threat of assassination after the unbanning of the ANC and SACP. We may seldom experience the visible signs of apartheid which are still hidden in the farms, the villages, the townships and the factory-floors. 39. But in reality, we see its scars. We are the first generation of a post-apartheid country. The death-marks of apartheid are written all over our poverty. Our destiny, our future, is written in the fate of our parents. 40. This applies to both black and white ‘children of Mandela’. We are still a country of two classes and of two nations. In the townships, our fate is illiteracy; unemployment, poverty, crime, drugs, prostitution, teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and all the hallmarks of a capitalist society. 41. In the suburbs, the fate that belies there is that of university degrees, opulence, huge inheritance, quality healthcare, quality university education and all the hallmarks of the ruling class. 42. Our struggle is not to substitute poverty and wealth in racial or class terms. We are not for black wealth and white poverty, a disjuncture undertaken immediately after 1994. This has failed. In fact, the challenge we face is the unity of the “children of Mandela.” As we liberate ourselves from poverty and want, we also liberate others from the fear of crime and violence. 43. We only have a few black people empowered by the democratic dispensation, a reflection of the failure of Black Economic Empowerment, whilst we have the rntire nation overwhelmed in black poverty on the one hand and white wealth on the other. Our struggle is to build socialism, whose principles are enshrined in what Chris Hani said: “Socialism is not about big concepts and heavy theory. Socialism is about *decent shelter for those who are homeless*... *water for those who have no safe drinking water*... *health care*, *a life of dignity for the old*... overcoming the *huge divide between urban and rural areas*... [and] *decent education* for all our people. Socialism is about *rolling back the tyranny of the market*.” 44. For us to break the poverty in the townships, we have to break the over-accumulation of wealth in the suburbs. We have to stop the overaccumulation within the Oppenheimers, the Ruperts, the Rembrandts and even their colonial connections in Britain, US and France if we are to empower our people and create an equal society. 45. Of what use is political power if it does not restore the land, its mineral wealth, its financial institutions into the hands of the people. Of what use is it if it does not stop the law of inheritance. As long as economic differences still remains in terms of black and white... and “as long as the economy is dominated by an unelected, privileged few, the case for socialism will exist.” 46. The remembrance and celebration of Hani cannot end with laying wreaths at his graveside, or merely giving talks and romanticising about him; or exchanging slurs and comparing leaders; or dividing the movement further. 47. Remembering Chris Hani should be about healing the scars of apartheid. We cannot only do this by trying to ban struggle songs, but can only do this through empowering our people. The only reason that Afri-Forum wants to ban the song is not for its fear, but of the fear of their opulence in the midst of poverty and landlessness. 48. Remembering Chris Hani should be about remembering the people, their plight, their hopes, their aspirations and ensuring that all of these are realised. Remembering Chris Hani means putting the struggle for socialism first wherever we are, whenever we are there and whatever we do. This is what the people expects from us, and this is the mandate Chris Hani left to us. Buti Manamela National Secretary, Young Communist League. -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
