SACP statement at the reburial of the remains of Moses Kotane as delivered by the General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande
14 March 2015
The return of the mortal remains of two political giants of our revolutionary struggle, Comrades John `Beaver` JB Marks and Moses Kotane is a welcome event in the history of our struggle. These were comrades-in-arms for more than forty years from the 1930s. The return of the remains happens at a propitious time, when our Alliance continues to forge ahead in leading our people towards a better future, despite a number of challenges that we face. It is an appropriate time also because it forces us to think hard on what Kotane would have done and advised in the wake of some of the challenges facing our trade union ally, Cosatu. The outstanding example they set of building a united alliance, of self-less devotion to the cause of workers and the poor is an example that requires emulation more than ever before.
Moses Kotane came from a peasant background and unlike many of us who are today fortunate to start our education at an early age, he first attended school when he had already reached age 15. Despite his late start and lack of formal qualifications, he was to become one of the greatest intellectuals and leaders of our national liberation movement, including the Communist Party. He joined the Communist Party in 1929, a year after JB Marks. This was a very important period for the Communist Party.
It was in that year, 1929, that the Communist Party became the first political organisation in South Africa to adopt a resolution calling for South Africa to become a Republic based on democratic black majority rule with equal rights for all races. This liberating idea started in 1927 inside the ranks of our Party. It was canvassed by Comrade James La Guma, who played the key role in the development of our revolutionary nationalism. La Guma took the idea to the Communist International in Moscow, the Soviet Union. At that time this organisation linked Communist Parties of all countries. To take forward the struggle, the Communist International adopted this resolution for the Communist Party in South Africa to work with the embryonic national organisations and build them into militant fighting organisations. These were the beginnings of our Alliance and Kotane was in the forefront.
Unfortunately, not everyone fully understood the essence of this new policy. It was during this period that the outstanding leadership qualities of Comrade Moses Kotane became apparent. During the deepest and longest crisis of the capitalist system in the 1930s, both the Communist Party and the ANC dwindled in terms of membership, organisation and political activity. Kotane was amongst those revolutionaries who played a leading role in re-organising both of these primary political formations of our glorious national liberation movement.
In 1934 he wrote what would become the famous Cradock letter, criticising abstract theory. He called for the Africanisation of the Communist Party; for special attention to be paid to the conditions of South Africa; and for concretisation of the demands of the toiling masses from first-hand experience. This was one of Comrade Moses Kotane`s greatest contribution to the development of our liberation struggle through the application of Marxist-Leninist theory to the practical realities of South Africa; especially the need to see the linkages between the national and class struggles.
In 1937 the ANC was revitalised at the Jubilee Conference. Comrades Moses Kotane and JB Marks worked together with other leaders of the movement, like Rev James Calata, Selope Thema and Rev Zacharias Mahabane in ensuring that the ANC is revitalized. Indeed Moses Kotane was a good communist, and all good communists are in the ANC.
In 1939 Comrade Moses Kotane became the General Secretary of the Communist Party, a position he served with outstanding brilliance until sickness and then death took him from us. As President Oliver Tambo said at Kotane`s funeral in 1978:
"If Moses Kotane was the General Secretary of the SACP, he was no lesser degree a highly esteemed and completely devoted leader of the African National Congress
Reflecting the confidence which our movement had in Moses Kotane, Chief Albert Luthuli, the late President-General of the ANC, often consulted him on complex issues calling for wise leadership and delicate decision. It was for similar reasons that, at our request, Comrade Moses left South Africa to join the external ANC leadership in Dar es Salaam in January 1963. Umkhonto we Sizwe was one year old at the time and its members were leaving South Africa in large numbers for training abroad...
In the arrangements for the political and military training of the cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the maintenance, deployment and logistic equipment of Umkhonto units, Comrade Moses worked tirelessly from the moment he arrived in Dar es Salaam in 1963 until he suffered a stroke in December 1968."
Comrade Moses Kotane was a rounded revolutionary who grasped the link between workers` struggles, national liberation and socialism. As a worker he had joined, become active in and led trade union struggles. During his leadership of the Communist Party the biggest strike in the history of South Africa - the 1946 African miners` strike led by JB Marks - took place. The Party played a key role in that strike. In 1955 the first non-racial trade union centre was established in the country, the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
Comrade Moses Kotane played a major role in organising the Congress Alliance that co-ordinated the Congress of the People which adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955. He however could not attend. He was deployed by the movement to the major anti-imperialist international conference in Bandung, Indonesia
A revolutionary who cherished the importance of the unity of purpose, unity in action, Comrade Moses Kotane led both the SACP as General Secretary and the ANC as Treasurer-General simultaneously. Contrary to the new politics of opportunism, both of the right and the infantile "left", Comrade Kotane did not see any contradiction in serving both the SACP and the ANC at the same time. Neither did he subscribe to the idea that trade unions should distance themselves, either from the national liberation movement or from the vanguard Party of the working class.
Kotane played a key role in shaping the revolutionary outlook of, amongst others, former President Nelson Mandela. When we study our history, there are a number of people who shaped the course of our struggle and who became architects of our struggle, but there is only one person who can justly claim the title of Chief Architect of the Struggle - and that is Comrade Moses Kotane.
Of course today Comrade Moses Kotane would have been much proud of the many achievements of our revolution, especially since 1994, despite the havoc that is still being caused by the capitalist system globally and in our own country. Our ANC-led government has built houses, expanded free education, built clinics and invested trillions of Rands in infrastructure.
But our economy remains unable to overcome the challenges of inequality. It is for this reason that the ANC and the Alliance have agreed on the urgency to drive a second, more radical phase of our democratic transformation. This must essentially entail shifting our economy from being a raw minerals exporter into becoming a manufacturing economy, with thriving Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises and co-operatives, and a strong trade union acting as part of the motive forces driving an industrial economy.
It is these realities and challenges that would also strengthen Malume Kotane`s communist conviction that the national democratic revolution still remains our most direct route to socialism. He would also be proud of the role played by communists in all key sites of struggle and influence, both inside and outside of the state, and that indeed we continue, together with our allies, to take responsibility for our revolution.
Some of the most important lessons to be learnt from the revolutionary life and times of Comrade Moses Kotane include:
- The importance of the principle of democratic centralism in our Alliance formations. Kotane demonstrated leadership in this principle both as strategist and tactician when our Party tactically dissolved itself after it was banned in 1950, only to reconstitute itself shortly thereafter, under new conditions of illegality and underground with stringent requirements for the cadre who would fit in the new reality. Once a decision has been taken collectively by the organisation, everybody must abide by it, even those who had argued against it. If any of the leaders disagree after the decision has been taken, that leader is placing himself or herself above the organisation, a practice that can destroy unity and cohesion in our organisations which the likes of Kotane hated thoroughly.
- Dual membership and the practice of ensuring that if you belong to more than one organisation you must abide by the decisions of all these organisations. If their decisions are in conflict with each other, those differences must be sorted out organisationally and not be reduced to individuals` problems.
- One cannot use one organisation in the Alliance in order to attack or settle scores in another.
- We must defend and build each other`s organisations in our Alliance (these are our own organisations by the way) as an important means of preserving the unity of our still much needed Alliance. Going forward, and given the challenges we have, we will need more, rather than less, of our Alliance. Those who think otherwise are thoroughly mistaken.
Issued by the SACP
Contact
Alex Mashilo - Spokesperson
Mobile: 082 9200 308
www.sacp.org.za
Twitter: @SACP1921
