NtateMokgatle

1911-1985

Obituary in Sechaba, May 1985

In March 1985 Comrade Monyadioe Moreleba Naboth Mokgatle was buried in London. All those who were there said: Lihambile iqhawe lamaqhawe.

Monyadioe Moreleba Naboth Mokgatle (or Ntate Mokgatle as he was popularly known) was born in Phokeng in the district of Rustenburg, Transvaal, on April 1, 1911. Like all African boys in the countryside he looked after cattle, attended school and church and later went to look for work on the neighbouring white farms and towns, and in 1930 left the town of Rustenburg for Pretoria. It was the first time that he found himself inside a train, and he had not been to a "European city" as large as Pretoria before, and was not used to houses or places with numbers on, and all this seemed very confusing to him.

"Tribal and rural life was behind me, and before me was a long period of urban life with complications, trials, webs of pass law restrictions, colour discrimination and uncertainties..." wrote Ntate Mokgatle in his book, The Autobiography of an Unknown South African, published in 1971.

1930 was the year of depression. Many Africans were out of work or could not find any; some of them were thrown out of their jobs to make room for white workers; hard manual jobs like working on the railways, road-making, digging trenches and sweeping streets, which were considered suitable for Africans only, were taken away from them and given to whites; the authorities even incited white families to boycott factories, bakeries, butcher shops, laundries and so on, which kept on employing African labour instead of white labour. Notices appeared in the windows of many places stating that the work done there was only by white labour.

There were other problems such as getting work, or a stamp on his pass for tax, a permit to stay and/or work in Pretoria. This is how Naboth Mokgatle was introduced to Pretoria. It was a harsh introduction to the black working class of South Africa.

Mokgatle`s first job was at the wage of fifty shillings (£ 2.10.0) a month. When he protested to his employer about something or other he was told; "Shut up, do as you are told, or else I`ll call the police." The police listened only to the story of the employers.

In November 1930, Mokgatle went to visit his mother`s cousin who lived in another area of Pretoria, at Bantule. On his way between Marabastad and the Indian Bazaar (at the end of Boom Street) he saw a large gathering of people with police nearby. Out of curiosity he went to see what was happening. It was a joint open-air meeting: the ANC, the ICU, the Radicals and the Garveyites - the last of whom were followers and admirers of Marcus Garvey. The theme was the burning of the passes by the Africans on December 16, 1930. Hertzog`s government, and especially Oswald Pirow who later prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial, were the main targets. On December 16, 1930, Mokgatle, together with a number of unemployed Africans, burned his pass amid the singing of the African national anthem: Nkosi Sikelel`i Africa, and the flames which swallowed Hertzog`s and Pirow`s effigies. This is how Mokgatle was introduced to ANC politics.

Mokgatle had other problems to solve. In the process he asked himself questions he could not properly answer: why was the college called Pretoria Technical College when, because of colour discrimination, not all the children of Pretoria were admitted to it? Why did the white students of this college buy food from African women when their parents looked down on African women and regarded them as no equals of theirs?

The ANC in Pretoria was revived by ANC leaders from Johannesburg, R.V. Selope-Thema, Mvabaza, Sikota, Kumalo and others. That was the period of the emergence of the Bantu World, the "African" newspaper owned by the Chamber of Mines in Johannesburg and edited by Selope-Thema. This was also the period of the rise of Nazism in Germany, a development which forced Mokgatle to compare the treatment of the Jews to his. What about the barbaric attack on Ethiopia by Mussolini`s hordes?

It was at this time that he met Archie Levitan and Chekonovsky, people who introduced him to Lenin, the October Revolution; told him about the Communist Party of South Africa, the need for African trade unions and night classes to combat illiteracy amongst the Africans. They told him about the need to strengthen the ANC. He also met Lee, Miss Kahn, Sam Woolf, George Findlay, Franz Boshoff and other "well-known Communists in Pretoria." He says: "I became a Communist at heart, but not officially; I carried no card." It was only later that he joined the Communist Party, attended its annual conferences and became a member of the Pretoria District Committee (and even its chairman) until the CP was dissolved in 1950. He also attended the Party school in Johannesburg, where he met people like Harry Gwala, Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana and others. As a full-time secretary of the Distributive Workers` Union, he worked with other trade unionists such as J.B. Marks, Gana Makabeni, Daniel Gosoni, Dan Tloome, Stephen Tsefu, David Koza, James Phillips and many others. The list looks like a political Who`s Who.

Bannings, arrests, police harassment and deprivation made life impossible for Ntate Mokgatle. In 1954 he received an invitation to attend an international conference of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Rumania. He left South Africa at 43, without a passport - only an affidavit he typed himself - no luggage, no visa, no medical certificate, and with only three shillings and three pence in his pocket. He had problems on his way - he never reached Rumania and instead went to Britain; he could not go back to South Africa.

Since then he lived in Britain with his family which joined him later. In Britain he was not only an inspiration to the young black South Africans who came much later than he; he was also a mine of information on the political developments in that country. In him was embodied part of the history of the ANC, the Communist Party and trade unionism. In his background, experience and life style he was a precursor of what was going to happen later.

It is for these reasons that we say:

Tsamaea ka khotso, Ntate Mokgatle!