Modimolle, 26 February 2023
Dear Comrade Teenage
I accepted the deployment to come and speak here not because of the position I hold, but because I knew a little bit of the person I am asked to speak of.
A communist. A former MK soldier. An educator. An Activist. A leader par excellence.
One of the most favorite texts of Teenage was from Lenin’s State and Revolution, written in 1917. Allow me to generously quite from that pamphlet:
“What is now happening to Marx's theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie”
I met Teenage Monama in 1997.
It was a strange meeting.
We were walking from the ANC offices that where situated in the old civic centre.
He did not say much in that meeting.
Neither did I. I was 19. I was the Branch Secretary of the ANCYL.
I was wet behind my ears.
As we walked out of the meeting he asked who I was and invited me over for some political discussion or another.
He took quite a liking to me, and the fact that I was a canvass waiting to be crafted in an image he would later in life parade as his product.
The major discussion that evening when we got to his house was about whom he had produced, politically, in the township. “These are my products”, he proudly proclaimed.
I contested his notion of what a product is, and argued that we are but the products of our conscious being, and that no one individual can claim to singularly have produced another.
The production of the human we get to meet today is the synthesis of various factors at play in society.
I had moved from church that day straight into the ANC meeting.
I argued that, in as much as I was imbuing Dialego’s Dialectical Materialism, I was equally devouring and learning important lessons of social, anthropological and evolutionary history.
Of course you made me understand “the unity and struggles of the opposite, negation of negation” and that “man must first eat, drink and sleep before they can pursue politics and philosophy”, or that society has its base and its superstructure, and that the base influences the superstructure.
The social consciousness I was exposed to in the church was as much an important lesson about history, idealism and materialism in as much as my understanding of dialectical materialism of Dialego should not mean that I should stagnate my understanding of history to the date he wrote his masterpiece.
This evening is important for me because it marked the beginning of an intellectual sparring relationship that lasted long into Teenage’s grave.
Before this evening, I had only known him as the MK guy who trained some young people into Self Defence Units, more of a military man.
I had never understood the relationship between the military and the theoretical basis within which we need to take up arms. To me, you just had to be one and not the other.
For him to open this world to me was important because it revealed a side of him I suppose very few of us, except those who were very close to him, were aware of.
It was also important that I met him at this time because I was asking very critical questions of both my faith as a Christian, and my understanding of its relationship with the condition that black Africans in this country were faced with.
More importantly, Teenage used this evening as a way to introduce me to some of the original texts of Marxism.
I got to learn of the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, Man and Socialism that Che Guevara wrote whilst he was on the revolutionary road, The Origin of the State, Family and Private Property; that seminal work by Engels.
From memory, he recited what he declared his favourite verse from Che: ‘the basic clay of our work is the youth; we place our hope in it and prepare it to take the banner from our hands”.
If there is anything we can accuse Teenage of, and he will plead guilty, is regarding the youth as clay and preparing them to take the banner from his hands.
He knew that he is not here to stay for long.
He understood that if he does not ‘give the youth the pearls they need to confront future struggles’ he would have failed.
His involvement in training young people militarily, politically, and empowering them in whatever way he could became his lifelong mission.
The one thing that stuck with me that evening was the fact that Teenage could memorise so many verses from so many books and repeat them to us whilst he had more gin than blood in his system.
I cannot forget the twirling of his tongue when he recited word for work the first lines of the Communist Maniofesto; “a spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.”
He went on for sometime explaining what these two german philosophers whom I have never heard of meant buy this spectre, and the fact that in this case it was the manifesto that formed the party, and not the other way round.
He went on to bellow the line that follows: “All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.” ‘Spectre’. ‘Exorcise’. ‘Spies’.
He made sure that I understand how important this spectre is, and why it is important, to this day, to work for the defense of the party whom even the Pope and the Tsar were working together with the French radicals and their German police-spies to exorcise.
There was a time in our township the struggle against apartheid and those who went to the trenches in the name of this struggle were mocked.
Teenage was at the receiving end of this. Many questioned if he indeed skipped the country to go and train with uMkhonto we Sizwe.
He skipped in 1986, the year Oliver Tambo called for the country to be declared ungovernable.
He was amongst those who headed the call.
He was recruited by, amongst others, Ephraim Mohale, the late Robben Islander and exile.
He introduced me to some of the former MK cadres.
He left the country when he was not fluent in English, and was apparently one of a prolific soccer player (I must add that he played with my uncle, and always related the story of how he was by his side when he died from a knife wound, with my mother heavily pregnant with me they were preparing for the launching Congress of the Congress of South African Students).
He relished telling the stories of the launch of COSAS in 1979 as probably the best moment of his life.
The fact that he was a delegate to this most important occasion of history mattered more than him being required to sacrifice his life for the liberation of country as ex-MK cadre.
It was at this Congress that his best friend and comrade, Pholo, Ephraim Mogale, was elected as President.
Importantly, this cemented Teenage as the man of the party.
In all his talks, just as when he quoted the manifesto when it proclaimed ‘where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power?
Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?’.
I and many others became interested in joining the SACP by Teenage.
He was as communistic as the come.
Having served it as its provincial chairperson when he passed on was probably the least we could require of him, and incomparable to the massive contribution to the SACP itself.
There has always been stories of him having been detained in the ANC’s quattro, a matter he was always careful not to discuss with any and everyone.
But what always pained him the most was the fact that he had dedicated his life to the service of the people and the movement, but that some chose to single out some of these as the basis of questioning his credentials.
He believed that it was important for the movement to vet all of them, and that the risk of the enemy within was much bigger than the enemy outside.
Therefore, his detention and interrogation were an important part of this, but that none who were detained and ultimately released should be haunted by memories of that era.
Teenage’s favorite text was the Communist Manifesto, which was being celebrated this week on the 21st February.
Written in 1948, Teenage used to recite its first lines: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
One of the fundamental tenets of historical materialism, the basis within which we should always keep in mind that the only way to end South Africa’s poverty, unemployment and inequality, is to end the capitalist form of relations, and therefore, class exploitation.
Yes, the dominant contradiction in South African society remains the national question.
The defining of our society, thirty years since the formal end of apartheid and the establishment of democracy, remains that of race.
It was from Teenage that some of us began to understand in simpler terms that we will not end racism and gender oppression if we do not aim our bayonets towards class exploitation.
Recently, the liberals have garnered the courage of redefining the South African problem as that of a corrupt ANC that has failed to deliver.
Apartheid capitalism and its living idealogues, architects and beneficiaries have become so dominant that you would think it is the ANC that has been at the helm of this country.
We should remember the lines from the Communist Manifesto, which Teenage would recite, that instructed that ‘the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society (read apartheid) has not done away with class antagonisms.
It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.”
We should not make the mistake of disconnecting the struggles that we are currently faced with from the damage that apartheid has created in our society.
The brutality of apartheid was not its physical torture of Teenage and many others, but also their economic dislocation and their intellectual oppression.
Apartheid hard and soft power was so good that even those whom today their quality of life has tenfold changed, are sometimes yearning for ‘the good old days’.
Perhaps, in memory of Teenage, the SACP should put more publicly, more pronounced, what the ‘new conditions of oppression’ and ‘new forms of struggle’ are.
The redistribution of wealth into the hands of all the people.
The empowerment of each individual not to be solely dependent on the state for their survival.
The protection of the child and the woman in our society from violent crimes and hunger.
The end to super exploitation of the working class and the poor.
To start building a society that was espoused in one of Teenage’s favorite text by Che, Man and Socialism in Cuba.
Again, from memory, he would repeat the following section:
“The road is long and full of difficulties. At times we lose our way and must turn back. At other times we go too fast and separate ourselves from the masses. Sometimes we go too slow and feel the hot breath of those treading at our heels. In our zeal as revolutionaries we try to move ahead as fast as possible, clearing the way. But we know we must draw our nourishment from the mass and that it can advance more rapidly only if we inspire it by our example.”
The post-apartheid road to ultimate freedom was anticipated to be a short one.
The people were mesmerised by the euphoria of democracy and the commitment and zealousness of the leadership in changing their lives and reversing the crimes committed against the people by apartheid.
Yes, we anticipated that this would not be without struggle as our democracy was a negotiated settlement.
We can feel the ‘hot breath of those treading on our heels’ as they rightfully so ask pertinent question about when we will get to the proverbial Canaan.
This means that we should urgently pause and ask ourselves the question: what are the urgent tasks facing the movement currently and how do we advance in those tasks.
Above everything else, Teenage was a communist.
From the days when he worked as a petrol attendant, to use part of his salary to pay for the schooling of his friend, Ephy Mogale, whom he served with in the National Executive of COSAS, to the time he helped establish the Communist Advancement Movement whose aim was to introduce the ideas of Marx and Engels to young people.
But more importantly, what made Comrade Teenage a communist can be summed up in Che’s loved phrase:
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.”
You cannot be a communist if you do not love the people whom you claim to lead.
This is the fundamental trait of all communist.
Our willingness to serve the people, come out of love for the people. Our hatred of corruption is borne out of love for the people.
Our passion in strengthening the alliance and all its structures, and ensuring that they are strengthened to advance the national democratic revolution.
Our confrontation to racism, and all its practices, stems from our love for the people.
Our hatred of those who beat women and children, stems from our love for the people.
Our denunciation of factions, of hunger for positions, of using money to buy our way into office, of using the offices which we occupy for self-enrichment, of manipulating branch membership so that one can be elected, of using elected offices to intentionally destroy the future of others, of loving thy neighbour, of loving thy country and of loving thy fellow human beings are the traits which propelled Teenage to be a communist.
For Teenage, as summed up by Che,
“…in a real revolution, to which one gives his or her all and from which one expects no material reward, the task of the vanguard revolutionary is both magnificent and agonizing.”
Why do we pursue political office? To what end? Is it for the service of man, for the advancement of universal freedom, or just for personal material gain? In the past, people like Teenage were killed by the apartheid regime because they joined the ANC.
Today, people kill each other just so they could lead the ANC, and not for the service to the people, but to serve their own selfish interests.
One of the virtues of Teeange was his belief of youth.
He invested his time into political education and the development of a new cadre and a new society.
Just as Che did, that
“a new generation is being born. It is a minority, but it has great authority because of the quality of its cadres. Our aspiration is for the party to become a mass party, but only when the masses have reached the level of the vanguard, that is, when they are educated for communism. Our work constantly strives toward this education. The party is the living example; its cadres must teach hard work and sacrifice. By their action, they must lead the masses to the completion of the revolutionary task, which involves years of hard struggle against the difficulties of construction, class enemies, the maladies of the past, imperialism.”
One of Teenage’s great love was poetry, and Brecht to be specific. Apparently in the camps he would be the most animated when reciting some of the works of the greatest political poetry.
Taking a line from Brecht, he used to recite in such dramatic oratory the lines
“They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad to be among the haves! But how can I eat and drink When I take what I eat from the starving And those who thirst do not have my glass of water? And yet I eat and drink.”
One of his favourite verse from Brecht was from the poem, To Posterity, and reciting it as though an instruction to the youth, he proclaimed:
You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.
For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.
For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.
But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.
A final one…from Questions to a Worker who Reads
Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.
Long Live, Jacob Leka Monama
As you repeated Che’s wisdom, “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”
