Moses Kotane and JB Marks had a profound influence on thinking in the struggle. With the return of their remains, the alliance should examine if it has remained true to their vision, writes Zweli Mkhize.
Johannesburg - The return of the remains of the heroes of our struggle for freedom and democracy, JB Marks and Moses Kotane, is a time for both celebration and reflection for the people of South Africa. These stalwarts – who were forced to leave our land, and wage the struggle to free our country from colonial domination, racial discrimination and oppression – are returning to lie in eternal rest in a free and democratic South Africa.
South Africans must reconnect with the rich history that the lives of these heroes represent as well as the values that defined their conduct as individuals. Their lives were closely interwined throughout their struggle, as they served in the same structures together, shaping the course of history. They were comrades and fellow combatants who remained united in life and in their deaths, returning together to be honoured by the people they served.
President Nelson Mandela described them as “men of great intellect and confidence who taught us through force of example that mere formal education was not the real test of political leadership”.
Kotane was the general secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa and treasurer-general of the ANC. Born in Tamposstad, in the then-Western Transvaal in 1905, to a devoutly Christian peasant family, Kotane was largely self-taught. He received only a few years of formal schooling, but became an insatiable reader. Later, as a young worker, he enrolled in the communist-run night school in Ferreirastown, Joburg, where he became known for his ability to master the most abstruse political writings.
John Beaver Marks was born in 1903 in Ventersdorp, of working class parentage. His father was a railway worker all his life, his mother a midwife who lived to the blessed age of 105. After receiving a basic education at a country school, Marks went to a training college where he received a diploma in teaching. During this time he was active in the Industrial and Commercial Workers` Union, the Communist Party, the League of African Rights and the ANC.
While studying at the Lenin School in Moscow, which he and Kotane had the opportunity to attend, Marks learnt the Russian language, an asset that proved valuable.
Marks and Kotane had entered politics in 1928, at a time of the rise in the militancy of black workers spurred by the emergence of trade unionism.
In his biography of Kotane, Brian Bunting writes: “(This was) a time when controversy was raging over the nature of the South African revolution and the relationship between the national and class struggles, precipitated by the adoption of the famous ‘Native Republic’ resolution by the sixth Congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in 1928.
“Thus our revolution has always been focused on achieving the liberation of all the people of South Africa, blacks in general and Africans in particular, uniting all people across all classes and strata, with bias to the working class and poor, particularly in the rural and peri-urban areas.
As its general secretary, Kotane led and guided the Communist Party of SA through the most tumultuous eras of legality, illegality, and exile. He combined strong convictions as a Marxist with a commitment to the goals of nationalism. He held a firm belief in the importance of an African leadership and initiative in the struggle for equal rights.
Although he occupied leading positions in the Communist Party and the ANC, his loyalty to one did not appear to be subordinate to his loyalty to the other. He was a strategist whose focused, incisive and analytical mind helped to keep our liberation movement a few steps ahead of the regime.
Marks’s greatest personal triumph was in the organisation of the African Mineworkers Union, with a membership of more than 50 000 workers. He would later become its president. This was the first real trade union organisation of African mineworkers in South Africa.
Under his inspiring leadership up to 100 000 African mineworkers responded to the call to come out on a historic strike directed at the heart of the cheap labour system. Ten mines were shut down and 11 seriously affected.
The government responded with brute force. African mineworkers were attacked and in the next few days nine were killed and 1 248 injured, according to official figures. The strike was broken and mineworkers driven back to work through the barrel of a gun.
The strike achieved little improvement in working conditions, but signalled rising militancy among the working class and generated support from political organisations and social formations, heralding a more militant programme of action to challenge the government and thereby consolidating and uniting all liberation forces.
After the banning of the ANC, Marks and Kotane were dispatched to join the movement’s president, Oliver Tambo, and other leaders to help build international solidarity against apartheid.
Speaking at Kotane’s funeral, Tambo said: “We shall never forget that during the three years ending in December 1968, two political giants of the South African revolutionary struggle, JB Marks and Moses Kotane, comrades in arms for more than 40 years, operated from a small country town – Morogoro, in Tanzania – sharing a small office and sleeping in two small adjacent rooms, now worthy of preservation as national monuments.
“It was during these trying years that the supreme qualities of leadership of Moses Kotane and JB Marks emerged and made their mark on all the younger men and women who lived, worked or associated with them – all except confirmed and incorrigible counter-revolutionaries.”
South Africa remains the poorer with the departure of these compatriots. Let us drink deep from the fountain of their wisdom and draw lessons to enable us to take South Africa forward. These giants were among the most outstanding internationalists of our movement. They understood the interconnection between the struggles of the oppressed people, peasants and workers in South Africa and the world over.
They built networks and support for our struggle across Africa, Europe and Asia, making the struggle a cause for all the people of the world. As we reflect, let us proclaim our most sincere gratitude for the international community who fought side by side with us.
We must reflect on whether our alliance continues to produce leaders imbued with the intellectual capacity, revolutionary morality, integrity, humility, dedication and selflessness that these revered leaders possessed. It is important we engage on how we ensure that leaders at all levels of our alliance are not prone to the temptations and trappings of power due to access to resources – corruption among them.
Factional divisions that have a potential to tear our movement apart must be eradicated. We must rededicate our efforts to building a cadre of competent, incorruptible and professional leadership to take our country to greater heights. Challenges that appear from time to time among ANC structures, Cosatu, and other formations must be dealt with – to entrench the lasting legacy of these comrades.
We need the courage to lead boldly and with decisiveness to lift our economy, eradicate poverty and create jobs that will wipe the frustration and desperation from the faces of our youth. The mining sector must be rapidly stabilised as we seek solutions that benefit mining companies, mineworkers and surrounding communities alike. As they come home, Kotane and Marks should see the difference between the conditions in the mines today compared with those of 1946. We dare not betray them.
South Africans must have unity of purpose around the implementation of the National Development Plan. Delivery of houses, proper sanitation, electrification, and roads etc must be hastened for our people to enjoy a better life – that is what the struggle was about.
We must celebrate the ultimate defeat of the obnoxious system of apartheid. We must also resist all efforts to wipe away from our collective memories the atrocities and humiliation of oppression. We must reconcile all our people and build unity among all our communities, for although we feel deep in our souls the pain of invisible scars of torture, we were not broken and our spirit as a people was not defeated.
* Mkhize is ANC treasurer-general
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media
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