4 April 2016
The South African Communist Party (SACP) sends its heartfelt condolences to the family, comrades and friends, our entire ANC-led national liberation movement, democratic and peace loving South Africans at large, for the sore loss suffered from the fall of our stalwart for national liberation and socialism, Comrade Shirish Nanabhai. Comrade Shirish, who was conferred the National Order of Mendi for Bravery in April 2014 by President Jacob Zuma, passed away over the weekend. A communist activist, Comrade Shirish was one of the first SACP members to work at the Party`s headquarters in 1990 after unbanning.
A freedom fighter, saboteur against the apartheid regime, Comrade Shirish joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1962. He was arrested just five months later for sabotage and sentenced to ten years imprisonment which he served mostly on Robben Island. He was released from prison in 1973 and placed under house arrest until 1978. The arrest and other human rights violations committed against him and countless other revolutionaries never deterred him. He did not demobilise.
Comrade Shirish`s undying revolutionary spirit saw him instead continuing the fight against colonial oppression and social inequality. He pursued the solutions of our struggle for national liberation and social emancipation. He maintained his belief as an African communist in the specific conditions of South Africa that the successful completion of the national democratic revolution and the indispensible basis it must herald - of an advance to socialism - are the primary answers to the national and social questions South Africa had, and still have, to resolve.
Comrade Shirish is being laid to rest today in Johannesburg.
The SACP says:
"Hamba kahle Mkhonto"!
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