Dear Comrade General Secretary
COSATU on behalf of its entire membership joins millions of South Africans in remembering and saluting the immense contributions made by comrade Joe Slovo in our struggle to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of apartheid and colonialism.
It is now ten years since his passing ? leaving us a legacy that we would cherish as long as we live. He left us a strong and united SACP, ANC and tripartite Alliance. He left us a revolutionary movement that is truly non-racial and democratic in character. He made an immense contribution in theorising our struggle. He will always be accredited for helping shape the ANC into a revolutionary movement with a strong working class bias that analysed our society from the class perspective. He belonged to the generations that moulded the SACP into a vanguard of the working class that recognised that the struggle for socialism cannot be divorced from the struggle to liberate Africans in particular and Blacks in general from national oppression and minority misrule.
Joe Slovo was a towering intellectual giant whose visionary leadership, acute working class instincts helped steered the revolutionary alliance from many of what seemed to be insurmountable challenges it had faced.
Joe Slovo was only 15 when he a worker, in a union, elected a shop steward, and leading a strike. He later joined the Communist Party. In his memory we shall also raise our flags on the 09 January 2005 to salute the heroes and heroines who started the strike in Coronation that quickly spread to engulf Durban and the entire South Africa. It is these Durban strikes together with the strike that Joe Slovo led at only 15 that COSATU accredits for its very existence. Coincidentally the 6 January also marks the dismissal of 26 000 workers who had been on a strike at the Impala Platinum mine in 1986. In his name, we salute all heroes and heroines of the working class.
Joe Slovo volunteered to go to war against the Nazi fascists. He was always organising. In the army he organised for the Springbok Legion, which was the nearest thing to a union in the armed forces at the time.
When he returned he was able to go to Wits University and study law. So he became an advocate. An advocate is like a shop steward, with a bit more study.
He did not draw back from the workers? struggle. Instead, he went deeper. He stayed in the Communist Party and joined the underground SACP when the old CPSA was banned. He was a working class hero.
Now, in 2005, as we stand paying respects to Joe Slovo ten years after his death, we can look at the strength of the organisations of the working class, and give thanks to the likes of Joe Slovo.
COSATU is now the largest of these organisations of the working class. It is not a political party. It is a Trade Union federation, one of the largest in Africa and one of the most militant in the world. As such, it is an indispensable component of the tripartite alliance with the African National Congress and with Joe Slovo?s party of the working class, the SACP.
COSATU was founded in 1985 when Joe Slovo was on of the top leaders of our liberation struggle. He was at that time General Secretary of the SACP, Chief of Staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe, and a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress.
Joe Slovo?s life was full of action and South Africa owes him many debts. We as COSATU want to acknowledge him as a working class leader at the highest level and as one of the fathers of COSATU. We as COSATU will never forget him.
Joe Slovo started as a plain worker and union member, and went on to top leadership positions in the ANC, MK and the SACP. In remembering Joe Slovo, we as COSATU are also reminded that the working class is the uniting factor in our continuing liberation alliance in South Africa.
Joe Slovo lived that unity and exemplifies that unity, based on the working class.
The working class honours its heroes. The working class knows that its heroes have higher nobility than any lord, chief, or king. The heroes of the working class make rich men look cheap.
Joe Slovo was one of those, and we honour him, forever.
Yours comradely
Zwelinzima Vavi
General Secretary