The star Online
Friday, November 24, 2006
The body of one of the ANC's heroes who died in exile, Moses Mabhida, who was also general secretary of the South African Communist Party, is on its way home.
Mabhida died of a heart attack in Maputo in March 1986. He was given a Mozambican state funeral with full military honours, at which the chief mourners were the country's first president, Samora Machel; the then ANC president, Oliver Tambo; and the then chairperson of the SACP, Joe Slovo.
Mabhida's body was exhumed from Maputo's Lhanguene cemetery on Tuesday.
Yesterday, religious and political ceremonies were held in his honour before the coffin was flown back to his native province of KwaZulu Natal.
Speaking before an audience that included Mabhida's elderly widow and other family members, ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma declared that, although exhuming the body was a sad occasion, it was also "an occasion for us to regain our strength and inspiration, to celebrate the life of a leader and of a revolutionary".
Zuma was the ANC's chief representative in Maputo in the 1980s, and recalled how he and Mabhida had shared the same house in the Mozambican capital.
Later, Mabhida's SACP duties took him to Lusaka, where the party had its headquarters.
But when he fell ill, he asked to return to Maputo, a request that Machel readily accepted.
In addition to his role in the SACP, Mabhida was a member of the national executive of the ANC, and a senior figure in the SA Congress of Trade Unions.
"Comrade Mabhida was an example of how it was possible to be a member of three organisations and to cement the alliance between them," declared Zuma. "In this he saw no contradiction."
Inevitably, thoughts went back to the day of Mabhida's funeral, on March 29 1986, when Machel, Tambo and Slovo stood beside the grave and pledged solidarity between the Mozambican and South African peoples.
Mabhida will be reburied in Pietermaritzburg on December 1.
KwaZulu Natal Premier S'bu Ndebele said Mabhida's grave would take pride of place in the province's Heroes' Acre.