From Left: Naledi Ngwenda, Dr Blade Nzimande, SACP GS and Mbali Ngwenda
16 July 2015
The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Eastern Cape wishes to express its great appreciation of the Moses Kotane Award that was posthumously conferred to Comrade Mbuyiselo Ngwenda by the SACP at our 3rd Special National Congress last week. The award was received on behalf of Mbuyiselo Ngwenda by his two children, Mbali and Naledi Ngwenda (see photo below)
From Left: Naledi Ngwenda, Dr Blade Nzimande, SACP GS and Mbali Ngwenda
Comrade Mbuyiselo Ngwenda was SACP Central Committee and Politburo member and the General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). He came from Nelson Mandela Metro, a District that is named after him in the SACP: Mbuyiselo Ngwenda District.
We are particularly pleased that he has been honoured during the time when the workers of South Africa and their giant federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) were confronted with, and in turn confronted those challenges.
He served both the organised workers and the working class with diligence throughout his life of activism, and never saw any contradiction in leading a trade union and serving in the leadership of the SACP at the same time as well as being an ANC activist. He always understood a dialectical link between a trade union, a union federation, the vanguard party of the working class and the leading component of the national liberation movement, the ANC.
Mbuyiselo Ngwenda we know would have never turned his back on the movement during trying times in the federation, during the neo-liberal offensive against our movement, during the imperialist onslaught on all the progressive international forces. He would have understood that at the centre of this counter-revolutionary forces are the two extremes, the extreme right-wing and the ultra-left, workerist demagogues. In no particular way would he have chosen both or sought collaboration or support from imperialist centres.
Ngwenda would have remained true to the founding principles of COSATU: one Industry one union; one country one federation; an injury to one is an injury to all.
We further call upon the workers to be vigilant and distinguish between the genuine revolutionaries and the unionpreneurs who masquerade as their servants. In the name of Mbuyiselo Ngwenda workers must never be fooled by any revolutionary rhetoric.
We will always remember him as the true hero of our people, a communist intellectual who contributed immensely in the working class movement and struggle. We wish to convey our greatest appreciation to the SACP`s 3rd Special National Congress for honouring this hero of our people.
As the SACP in the Eastern Cape, in honour of Mbuyiselo Ngwenda, we commit ourselves to work very hard with all the progressive forces to defend the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality in the 2016 Local Government Elections!
Issued by the SACP Eastern Cape.
Contact:
Siyabonga Mdodi
SACP Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: +2783 358 8070
Office: +2740 635 1046/42
Fax: +2786 286 1281
Facebook: SACP Eastern Cape