ANC HEROES: THE HANI LEGACY OF THE WESTERN CAPE 1909 - 1993 by Patric Tariq Mellet
In embarking on this tribute there is no way that I can tell the whole Hani story (there are just too many avenues to explore and others can do this much better than me). I have therefore placed my emphasis on the association with the Western Cape. My approach to telling this story, is a bit off the wall, but that’s the way I relate history. The past and present inter-relate. The Western Cape story of the Hani’s involves not only Chris Hani, but the story of his father and uncle too. In the new South Africa in the Western Cape, there is no Haniville, Hani Street, or Hani Square. Yet three Hani’s played an amazing part in Western Cape history and the destiny of South Africa as a whole. The assassination of Chris Hani was the most dastardly deed at a crucial moment in our history. Two of those involved in the assassination were right wing scum from abroad who had made this country their home. The omission of the recognition of the Hani name in the Western Cape is largely the fault of Helen Zille and her ilk who have the gal to use the names of liberation heroes in an election campaign but between elections constantly denigrate these heroes and what they stood for. Today Cape Town instead gushes with hospitality that facilitates entry into South Africa of the same kind of right wing criminals, failures from oppressive regimes, fugitives from Interpol, Scotland Yard, and the FBI, of the type that assassinated Chris Hani in 1993. Camps Bay, Clifton, Constantia, Big Bay and the City Bowl crawl with these types of characters who are like parasites running shady businesses and are protected and facilitated by the mink and manure set and their dodgy legal networks, who also have their tentacles well within opposition parties. The entire focus of the DA is on making Cape Town attractive to hoards of opportunists rather than serving the interest of our poor. Their strategy supposedly is that the crumbs of this wealthy elite who buy up Cape Town and idyllic rural spots, will trickle down to the poor. In 18 years this trickle-down affect has not yet made a difference. In the meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Not too different to when Gilbert, Milton and young Chris Hani set out on their path to make a difference to the lives of the poor. The revulsion that Cape Town political godfathers (and godmothers) have for ANC heroes is not accidental. This has become the political powerbase for the New Right in South Africa. Dazzled by the mistress of spin, it is unfortunate that many of our people in Cape Town cannot see the murky and seedy world that underpins opposition politics which take us for fools. The DA makes a lot of noise about corruption associated with the majority party but the DA and a number of the other opposition parties harbour as much corruption as exists across the political spectrum. The media, controlled by the opposition just sweep it under the carpet. Notably when it comes to corruption the media pay no attention to the ‘Corruptors’ who largely are well rooted in the DA networks. For every one of the ‘Corrupted’ there is a ‘Corruptor’. But that’s another story. The duplicity which relates to the issue of ‘memory’ can be illustrated by the name-change scenario. Recently Patricia de Lille has taken the credit for the naming of Eastern Boulevard as Nelson Mandela Boulevard. May I humbly say that if the matter was properly investigated over the last 10 years, the documentation in provincial, city council and in the newspaper files, formal and informal, will show that it was I who actually first proposed and petitioned for this name change and constructed the argument for this change and continued to keep the idea alive throughout that time. I also proposed a number of other name changes including that of one of my forebears Kratoa. Owen Kinahan of the DA and other with whom I interacted in proposing the exact name, Nelson Mandela Boulevard, know this history of lobbying very well. It continued from before Peter Marais time to the present. But I supposed Patricia de Lille will revel in taking the bow. In the same vein, I ask, “What about remembering the heroic name of HANI. Most in our province do not know about the deep connection between Chris Hani, his father Gilbert Hani and his uncle Milton Hani with the Western Cape and in particular with Langa ANC branch and Kayamandi ANC branch. Thembisile Martin Hani was born in 1942 in the poor rural village of Sabalele in the Cofimvaba district of the Eastern Cape. His father Gilbert was a migrant labourer and his mother Mary lived off the land. The name ‘Chris’ was in fact that of his brother, which Thembisile adopted as his ‘nom de guerre’ when in Umkhonto we Sizwe’. His name Thembisile means ‘Promise’, and he certainly lived up to that name. He was full of promise, lived up to that promise and always kept his promise. Chris Hani’s family were Roman Catholics and thus he went to a Catholic school where he developed a love for Latin and the classics. He later enrolled at the Matanzima Secondary School at Cala, in the Transkei. This is the small town in Thembuland where my great-grandparents lived and died. It has its own special and proud history of giving us liberation heroes. Chris did well at school and subsequently entered the Lovedale Institute in the Eastern Cape, from where he matriculated in 1958, aged 16. He then studied at the University of Fort Hare and later at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, where he obtained a BA degree in Latin and English. He graduated in law from Fort Hare University at only 19. As a student Chris Hani had a brief flirtation with the Unity Movement. This is how he put it – “For about six months I was in the Unity Movement. But later I began to examine the movement and I didn't see them in the mass struggle of our people. Their struggle was in the mind, in the head. The activism of the ANC began to make me shift from the Unity Movement to the ANC." After leaving university Chris moved to work as an articled clerk in Cape Town for Scheffer and Scheffer. While he first entered politics in the Eastern Cape at Lovedale and Fort Hare, it was in the Western Cape that he cut his political teeth and had his first baptism of fire. Migrant labour and the dreaded pass laws was the cross that African workers were forced to bear by the Apartheid regime. When Chris came to Cape Town the name of Hani had already made itself felt. Gilbert Hani, Chris’s father was a migrant worker in Langa which was a hotbed of political and trades union activity. Over a period of time Gilbert managed to get a business permit and made the transition to shopkeeper in Langa, selling clothes mainly to the new generation of migrant workers. With the trading as a respectable front Gilbert spent much time forwarding the aims and objectives of the ANC as part of a crop of militant ANC leaders in the area. Gilbert’s focus was opposing the propaganda onslaught on migrant workers who the regime attempted to indoctrinate with the stooge tribal Thembuland authority, Matanzima. Chris’s uncle Milton Hani was a shopkeeper in Kayamandi, but was also the chairperson of the ANC branch in the township. He was also a longstanding member of the Communist Party. His shop played an important role as the base for trades union meetings. Both Gilbert and Milton Hani were close associates of SACTU stalwart Archie Sibeko. Archie Sibeko, aka Zola Zembe was one of my mentors too as I grew up in SACTU in later years. Gilbert and Archie were once arrested on trumped up charges of murdering a policeman, but the case fell apart. Without Milton in Kayamandi and Stellenbosch the trades union push would not have been so successful at that time. Milton played an exceptional role in ANC structures. His command of English and of the most eloquent isiXhosa resulted in his commanding much respect at ANC meetings. According to Archie Sibeko (Zola Zembe) he had both a talent for expression and was a very persuasive person. Both Gilbert and Milton would give Chris Hani the kind of mentorship that one could not get at college or university. Archie ensured that young Chris was immediately inducted into the Cape Town ANC Regional Committee. When charges against Gilbert Hani and Archie Sibeko fell through, word had it that Gilbert was to lose his business license and be deported into the hands of Matazima in the Transkei. The ANC thus sent Gilbert Hani to Lesotho to receive recruits for military training. In Lesotho Gilbert used almost exactly the same cover that he used in Cape Town – a Tuck Shop. This Tuck Shop became an ANC forward base. He was to work in the underground railway for recruiting and then later deploying MK soldiers on missions into South Africa. He worked on this together with Elizabeth Mafekeng another Western Cape ANC Heroine from Paarl. Gilbert’s own son Chris Hani was to be one of those soldiers. Chris Hani was also tutored in the struggle by two other great ANC and SACTU leaders in the Western Cape – Elijah Loza and Looksmart Ngudle. They both gave up their lives to protect their comrades. Having lived their lives as activists, they were tortured to death. They made the greatest of sacrifices for all of us. Elijah Loza set up the first MK military camp in Mamre and young Chris Hani was one of his trainees. Later in 1963 Chris and 30 others went to do further military training in the USSR and in 1965 he was put in charge of establishing the Kongwa MK military camp in Tanzania. No job was too great or small for Chris who also establish basic adult literacy classes for a number of MK recruits who were illiterate. Later in 1978 when I came out to exile and joined 16 veterans of the Wankie Campaign on a training programme, at least one of those comrades was from a rural peasant background and only had the basic literacy taught by comrade Chris. People who look for what was the formula that built the calibre of leadership of the past, overlook the fact that the greatest of leaders learnt at the feet of their parents, community mentors, and exceptional older political activists and trades unionists. Somehow this kind of mentorship was allowed to breakdown. Chris in turn had mentored many younger than himself. By far one of the most exceptional of those that Chris mentored was my own mentor and commissar in my party cell, the brilliant late Jabulani Nxumalo, more well known as ‘Mzala’. Chris Hani at this time became a member of the Committee of Seven, the leadership structure of Umkontho in the Western Cape. One night in1962 Chris, Archie Sibeko and James Tyeku were arrested at a police roadblock and found to be in possession of anti-government pamphlets. Faldon Mzwonke was the person who had produced the pamphlets and was picked up later. As a result they were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act and put in detention. Albie Sachs defended the group and managed to get them out on bail of R500.00. Chris slipped out of the country to Botswana to attend the 1962 ANC Conference in Lobatsi. On his return to South Africa, he was arrested at the border. He was tried and given an 18-month jail sentence. While out on bail pending an appeal, Chris Hani then went underground. Chris together with other Western Cape MK guerrilla soldiers Basil February and James April fought in the Wankie Campaign. He was the most outstanding and courageous of leaders who was Commissar of the Luthuli Detachment of the joint MK/ZIPRA group in the 1967 Wankie campaign in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). He also infiltrated South Africa many times and was the first member of the NEC to cross a border from exile in the course of struggle into South Africa. He became a key target of the apartheid security forces and survived several assassination attempts. In Wankie Basil lost his life and Chris went on to fight the good fight over three more decades before he also lost his life in the struggle. They died for us and our freedom. Chris lived as he died and fought not only the injustice of our enemies. He stood up for what was right, inside the ANC during very difficult times. He did not turn a blind eye when he saw unacceptable actions. Oh how the calibre of his leadership is missed in these trying times. Interestingly this comment of Chris Hani calls on us to keep a balanced view in the midst of differences within the ANC: “Let's accept that there will always be a struggle within the ANC (not necessarily a hostile struggle) for the predominance of the ideas of the various classes within the ANC; there'll always be an attempt to balance these tendencies within the ANC. The ANC has always got to have these tendencies, otherwise it wouldn't be the ANC." Chris suggested that different positions within the ANC may well be what makes it tick as an organisation. In looking back we can sometimes be romantic about the past. In all of its 100 years the ANC has had vigorously argued tensions and differences within its ranks. This is not the problem. What can be a problem is when these differences are not well managed and we begin to tear the movement apart by bad behaviours. Note too what Comrade Setsubi, one of Chris Hani’s close MK comrades had to say about him: “But what made Chris an outstanding leader and a skillful commander was that he could recognize his own mistake immediately even before some of us could detect it. He would never defend his own obvious mistake like most other leaders, nor shift the blame to somebody else for his own mistake. Rather, he would make us aware of that minor mistake he had made. At the same time he would remark that every mistake one makes must be a source of lesson for every one so that it is never repeated. He would teach that she or he who does not commit mistakes is the one who does nothing in the face of adversity but is an armchair boardroom located 'pseudo revolutionary'. But professional revolutionaries that are engaged in a bitter class struggle on a daily basis to transform and re-make the concrete world a better place for all are bound to sometimes make mistakes”. There are many lessons to learn from Chris Hani and there is obviously much, much more to this story, but this article is only dedicated to highlighting the Western Cape roots of the Hani story – an oft forgotten part of the tale, yet these were the formative years of our greatest revolutionary. Chris Hani returned to South Africa, following the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, and took over from Joe Slovo as head of the South African Communist Party in 1991. He was also an ANC NEC Member and the Chief of Staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Chris Hani was assassinated on 10 April 1993 outside his home in Dawn Park, in the Johannesburg. Many places have since been named to honour the Hani legacy – none of them in Cape Town. Amongst the places named in Chris Hani’s honour are Haniville outside of Pietermaritzburg, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto and Chris Hani District in the Eastern Cape. Sent from my iPad -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. 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