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6 January 2014 NEHAWU tribute to Cde Joe Slovo "Cde Joe Slovo showed us that revolutionaries do not sulk or run away because the world is not built to their specifications" Today, the 6th of January 2014 marks the 19th anniversary of the passing away of Comrade Joe Slovo; one of this country's foremost thinkers and revolutionaries. Our union pays its tribute and also celebrate the life and legacy of this shrewd and humble leader of the tripartite alliance and the people's liberation army, Umkhonto Wesizwe. This anniversary takes place at a time when the alliance is faced with serious challenges because of divisions and breakaways in some of the affiliates of the federation and the emergence of two extreme and opposite tendencies crystallising within our movement; namely, the "reformist opportunism" and "workerism". These twin dangers within the ranks of our movement are threatening to derail the revolution and compromise the implementation of the radical second phase of transition. If the reformist opportunism is a threat to the agenda of a radical second phase of the transition due to its strategic location within the state, ultra-leftism represents a threat to the revolution because of its location within the primary motive force of the revolution (the working class). Its divisiveness undermines the necessary unity and cohesion. Its divisive agenda within the trade union movement weakens the capacity of the organised workers to play their role in building working class hegemony as a guarantor for the radical second phase of the transition. As workers, we have a responsibility to learn from the past in order to analyse the present and to act strategically to change the future. To do this, we have to summon from the grave the sensible theoretical contributions of Cde Joe Slovo, who elaborated on the folly of reducing the working class struggle to a single corner in his paper, The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution. In it he wrote: "It is equally obvious that if the working class and its vanguard and mass organisations were to get locked up with themselves, the greatest harm would be done to the cause of both national liberation and social emancipation. By rejecting class alliances and going it alone, the working class would in fact be surrendering the leadership of the national struggle to the upper and middle strata. This would become the shortest route towards a sell-out reformist solution and a purely capitalist post-apartheid South Africa under the hegemony of a bourgeois-dominated black national movement. Along this path, 'class purity' will surely lead to class suicide and 'socialist'- sounding slogans will actually hold back the achievement of socialism." This incisive theoretician understood Karl Marx and Frederick Engels's assertion that the working class must build its hegemony if it is to become the ruling class. They argued that: "...the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, [it] must constitute itself the nation." The workers and the working class should take heed of this message, especially at this time when there is a growing anti ANC and anti-alliance narrative inside and outside the movement. This year, 2014, also marks the 20th anniversary of our democracy and freedom and therefore imposes upon our movement the need to take stock with regard to the progress that has been made since 1994. The workers have an immediate task of taking responsibility for the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) and refuse to be misled by those, who want to deny that any progress or gains, have been made since 1994. To honour this African revolutionary, theoretician and leader, we must guard against committing political cowardice by retreating when things are not perfect. We cannot dessert the revolutionary alliance because there are setbacks, but we have to contest and remember that we do not call ours "a struggle" for nothing. Revolutionaries do not sulk or run away because the world is not built according to their specifications, but they work and fight to change it. As the working class we know from our bitter experience that producing an inspiring and uniting manifesto is one thing, ensuring that it is implemented is another. A radical second phase of the transition would not take place just because we wish so, since such a structural transformation is bound to temper with the entrenched class interests. We therefore have to ensure maximum unity and cohesion in the people's camp and in which the working class must occupy the front ranks. When, we commemorate this 19th anniversary since the death of Cde Slovo, we must do our utmost best to fight divisions and disunity amongst the organised workers and also remember what he taught us ,when he said that the revolution cannot be advanced in just one single corner, but that it had to be fought in all terrains of struggle. We will continue to celebrate the life and teachings of this leading patriot and nation builder and will forever take lessons and inspiration from his humility and sacrifices. He was an embodiment of our movement as a whole, both theoretically and practically, having cut his political teeth in the elementary stage of the development of our trade union movement. He was a militant democrat within the ANC and also one of the consummate Marxist-Leninists that the SACP has ever produced. We owe it to him and many others to ensure that our NDR deepens uninterruptedly towards socialism. Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat Office -- -- You are subscribed. 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