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Issue 9, Vol 9: 5 April 2012 *In this issue:* - Reminiscing about the departed to educate the living: Lest we forget the revolutionary spirit of Moses Mabhida [image: By Sikhumbuzo Mdlalose]*Reminiscing about the departed to educate the living: Lest we forget the revolutionary spirit of Moses Mabhida* Imposed upon our epoch is to be better equipped to undo the ills of the past, but at the same time not debunking progressive elements of the very past. The eminence of national oppression and class exploitation represent the dual character of our extermination as an African race and within that race: women to the extreme. The thought of being a liberator and a fighter (with the collective) for liberation within a capitalist economy like ours, has to be preceded by comprehension of material conditions giving rise to national oppression and class exploitation, and not only that, but the correct tools of analysis, especially if such liberation has to be total: political and economic / national and class. Not all conviction results towards partaking in the struggle against national oppression and class exploitation except revolutionary conviction. Not all passion except revolutionary passion, not all devotion except revolutionary resolve against the victimhood of land dispossession and dehumanisation, sufficing any manifestation of love for the revolution. All that we have is the heritage epitomised in our sung and unsung heroes and heroines of our struggle who did not only make history but sought to change it for us and generations to come and to treat it as our springboard from which we should consolidate our advance to a liberated and a classless society. Not any massive amount of political extinction, of social pacification and of physical brutality succeeded in vanquishing dedication to the course of liberation embroiled within the spirit of our departed heroes and heroines of our struggle. We dare to remain selfish about the selflessness characterising our departed revolutionaries. The Land Act of 1913 was to be an enabling instrument used by white colonists to forcibly remove and steal Moses Mbhida’s family land and that of his surrounding communities. Imagine how ill-dignifying it is to be dispossessed of your own land and reduced to a herd-boy earning one shilling a week. Worse of all, to be denied access to education as a result of such a contract of employment. It all had to be part of Mabhida’s unpleasant experiences. But from a dialectical construction, Moses Mabhida was groomed by this negation not only to understand it but to negate it. “Moses Mbheki Mncane Mabhida was born on October, 14, 1923, at Thornville in the district of Pietermaritzburg, Natal, of peasant stock....One of his teachers was, the outstanding political leader, Harry Gwala, influenced him into joining the ANC and the Independent Trade Union Movement and also explained to him the vital role played by the Soviet Union during the second World War. In December 1942, Moses Mabhida joined The Communist Party. “After the Defiance Campaign of 1952, during which 8000 people went to jail in protest against the apartheid laws, the Pietermaritzburg District Committee of the Communist Party suggested that Mosses Mabhida should give up his job and start working full-time for the trade union movement. He started with the Howick Rubber Workers’ Union and the Chemical Workers in Pietermaritzburg, Durban and other part of Natal. Moses played a big part in the preparations for the historic Congress of the People in 1955 where the Freedom Charter was adopted. 1955 was also the year of the foundation of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). As an active trade unionist Moses Mabhida was invited in SACTU’s first congress in Johannesburg in March and was elected one of the four Vice-Presidents” cited from the *Communique of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party on the death of General Secretary Moses Mabhida, March, 1986* *What there is to learn from Mabhida* The teachings on and obedience to iron discipline remains equally relevant today as it was before the democratic breakthrough, and so is political education especially among the youth structures of our movement and the working class at large. National oppression of our people and the might of white monopoly capital shall never be shaken by those who do not share the strategic objectives of our National Democratic Revolution which are none other than nation building and the attainment of socialism. How we understand the plight of the working class and the poor has to be expressed from within the innermost content of the two diametrically contradicting class forces: the exploiting class (the bourgeoisie) and the exploited class (the proletariat). Apart from the fact that his father was the leader in the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) founded in 1919, Moses Mabhida emerged as one of organic intellectuals that our movement had ever produced. The existential experience of land dispossession and denied access to education never deter him from selflessly serving the people of his country in the struggle for freedom and socialism. Being a generation of Harry Gwala, he never harboured any remorse or hatred towards being taught by Harry Gwala but he took that opportunity as a necessary learning curve that later equipped him to serve with distinction across all components of the tripartite alliance. He never arrogated himself above others and above these organisations. He never used positions to which he was deployed as instruments of administering patronage and divisions within our movement. He dared to serve and dedicate all of his life to the noble course of the liberation of all humanity. His was a character categorically illustrated by President Samora Machel: “Moses Mabhida has bequeathed us his example as a determined fighter for the ideals of freedom, justice, democracy, socialism and peace. “In all his dealings with us he displayed his simple, modest and fraternal nature and showed his love of mankind “In the most difficult moments we went through together he radiated always his calmness, the breath of hope and the certainty of victory” Having fought “for the ideals of freedom, justice, democracy, socialism and peace” Baba Mabhida displayed the importance of sacrifice and selflessness as underlying features of a true revolutionary. As a former leader of the African National Congress, which celebrates hundred years of relentless struggle for liberation this year, it suffices to assert that Mabhida understood very well the relationship that exists between the national struggle and class struggle. From this we are drawn into reaffirming our historical analysis that the advent of national oppression acted as a reinforcing tool towards continued class exploitation. Unity among Africans in particular and particularly during the time when the ANC was founded became the basic weapon with which we aimed to confront the colonist government. The then Communist Party of South Africa had to broaden the concept of this unity by ensuring that it cuts across racial lines and beyond. It was these historical milestones that came to produce leaders like our Moses Mabhida. The generational relay of leadership and of our struggle demands that we should never derail from the teachings of our past. It demands us that we should build from where our heroes and heroines left without distorting the founding ideals of our movement in which Mabhida himself immensely contributed. If we are to see ourselves in Mabhida, how dare would we allow divisions to symbolise our movement, how dare would we allow our movement to be pregnant with money launderers who subject our constitutional structures to the highest bidders during conferences? Greed and lust for power to advance personal interest over those of the poor and the working class majority seems to have surfaced in our movement in unprecedented limits like venom in a human body. While reminiscing about the revolutionary spirit of Moses Mabhida as a symbol of unity in our organisation we should never tire in dislodging the enabling factors of this venom. The jewel of struggle for socialism and the revolutionary legacy epitomised in our struggle heroes like Moses Mabhida should not only be praised for the sake of it but should be revitalised so that it continues to inspire our generation for the attainment of our strategic objective of advancing to socialism. Class contradictions as permeated by a white dominated capitalist economy of our country presuppose the existence of socio-economic inequalities that continues to embroil black people in general and African working class in particular into social extinction. The analogy of concrete labour and surplus labour which entangle the working day, as illustrated by Karl Marx, continues to imprint foolproof exploitation of the working class as it did during the trying times of apartheid. In saying that “no amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses” I V Lenin was simply enlightening us on ensuring that the struggle for national liberation devoid of socialist orientation will remain shallow and as dead as the night. *Working class unity, our only locomotive * The challenges that afflict working class organisations in our country demand us to draw lessons from a correct and dynamic theory of working class struggles and the practical experiences from which we should draw new theories that would determine relevant forms of struggle as commensurate to prevailing material conditions. No matter how radical it may seem but if any theoretical analysis regarding our challenges is utterly derived from utopian currents, we might as well be arriving at wrong conclusions or no conclusions at all. Already it was Joe Slovo who retorted that we should not ask wrong questions for we will get wrong answers. On the similar vein, it could be equally worrying to give wrong answers to correct questions. The unity of the ANC, SACP and COSATU bears not only an historical significance but is confounded on the concrete political and economic realities of our country and is reinforced by proper articulation of ideological literature and practical experiences within the movement itself as well as external factors, indeed some of them beyond control. In remembering Moses Mabhida we should concern ourselves with these issues for purposes of saving our movement not only from our detractors from outside but even from internal elements who by intent or by design seek to entrench themselves as radical architects of working class struggles while vilifying our beloved Party and the ANC like nobody’s business. The Congress of South African Trade Union remains a steadfast ally of our movement and remains as such beyond individual personalities who might be holding ulterior motives as regards the founding principles and collective decisions of the federation. It stands to reason to even recall that individual affiliates are also bound by the collective decisions of the federation between congresses. Under the leadership of COSATU, a significant majority of the South African workers constitutes a potential force of working class revolutionary agitation. However this potential needs to be enhanced with political education as regards Marxism –Leninism. Propaganda work aimed at incubating the working class will go a long way in preventing ideological deviations and factionalist criticism that might arise against the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. *“In the practical struggle against factionalism, every organisation of the Party must take strict measures to prevent all factional actions. Criticism of the Party’s shortcomings, which is absolutely necessary, must be conducted in such a way that every practical proposal shall be submitted immediately, without any delay, in the most precise form possible, for consideration and decision to the leading local and central bodies of the Party. Moreover every critic must see to it that the form of his criticism takes account of the position of the Party, surrounded as it is by a ring of enemies, and that the content of his criticism is such that, by directly participating in the Soviet and the Party work, he can test the ratification of the errors of the Party or of individual Party members in practice. Analysis of the Party’s general line, estimates of its practical experience, check-ups of the fulfilment of its decisions, studies of methods of ratifying errors, etc, must under no circumstances be submitted for preliminary discussions to groups formed on the basis of “platforms”, etc., but must in all cases be submitted for discussion directly to all members of the Party” **V I Lenin, 1921, at the Tenth Congress of Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)* In the aforesaid congress Lenin even went further in emphasising the importance of understanding the role of the Communist Party in relation to the working class devoid of the party membership since the lack of such understanding might lead to syndicalism and anarchism. Basing his argument on Russian conditions similar to ours, Lenin also extrapolates how syndicalist and anarchist elements tend to narrowly distort the role of the Communist Party in state administration: *“The wrong understanding of the role of the Communist Party in its relation to the non-Party proletariat, and in the relation of the first and second factors to the whole mass of working people, is radical theoretical departure from communism and a deviation towards syndicalism and anarchism...Instead of studying the practical experiences of participation in administration, and instead of developing this experience further, strictly in conformity with successes achieved and mistakes ratified, the syndicalists and anarchists advance as an immediate slogan “congresses or a congress of producers” “to elect” the organs of economic management.”* As the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and former Deputy President of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, comrade Mabhida understood the leading, educational and organising role of the Party as the vanguard of the working class. Although he never lived to see the practical experience of the ANC / SACP alliance in action even in government but as a disciplined cadre and leader of the Party as we came to know him, he would have allowed himself to be bound by the collective decisions of the Party regarding its role in government. In reinforcing the unity of the working class organisations particularly COSATU and the SACP, we need to take advantage of the up-coming National Congresses of these two beloved organisations in July and September this year, and solicit common understanding and well conceived approach towards the ANC National Conference in December in terms of policy development and policy review on our shared vision of a developmental state. Without the unity of the South African working class organisations, the working class and the poor stand to suffer and bear the brunt of continued exploitation and also loosing on the collective consolidation of working-class-friendly platforms in the ANC as well as in government. While we are busy as the working class organisations castigating and destructively criticising ourselves, we must not lose sight of the fact that our class enemies and their agents continue to consolidate their vicious anti-working class programs of profit maximisation through the exploitation of working class and the poor. In memory of Baba Mabhida we should continue to consolidate the unity of the Party and all components of our movement for the implementation of our South African Road to Socialism as a program with which we aim to build socialism. “Socialism is the future, Build it now” ***Sikhumbuzo Mdlalose is the PEC Member of the SACP in KZN and is the National Committee Member & Head: Office of the National Secretary of the YCLSA (This abridged Memorial Lecture was delivered in uMzimkhulu District of the SACP on the 1st April 2012)* -- 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. 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