SACP Tribute and farewell to cde Dan Mohapi, SACP Deputy Provincial Secretary of Gauteng Province
By Blade Nzimande General Secretary
On behalf of the South African Communist Party, I would like to first express our most sincere condolences to the wife and family of our departed comrade Cde Dan Mohapi. We hope that our message of condolence will somehow go some way in lessening the pain of losing a husband, a father, a brother and son of the Mohapi family. Of course the pain of the family cannot be likened to any other pain that maybe felt outside his immediate family. But we wish to say that as the SACP we are deeply pained by the loss of Cde Mohapi, who was the Deputy Provincial Secretary of our Party in Gauteng. The loss to the Mohapi family is also our loss.
We are also saddened that Cde Mohapi leaves us at a time when we have also recently sad farewell to some of the dedicated leaders and cadres of our Party. Already since the beginning of the year we have buried Cde Juda Tsotetsi, the Provincial Secretary of the SACP in Mpumalanga Province and Cde Simphiwe Mnguni who was a SACP PEC member in the Eastern Cape and Provincial Chair of SADTU. Cde Mohapi, together with these comrades, formed part of the core of the cadreship that had devoted itself to rebuilding SACP structures since the unbanning in 1990.
Cde Mohapi was part of that special generation of the class of 76, which took up its stones against the repressive apartheid regime, and changed forever the direction of the national democratic revolution. This is a generation which joined MK, built progressive youth and student formations, joined and built the progressive trade union movement, and formed the backbone of the movement`s cadre that finally produced the 1994 democratic breakthrough in 1994.
Cde Mohapi was the personification of our Alliance. When he was unemployed after school, he did not sit back but volunteered as an organiser for the trade union movement, including rising to General Secretary of the National Unemployed Workers` Co-ordinating Committee. He later worked for the Construction and Allied Workers` Union, a COSATU affiliate, rising through the ranks of COSATU itself and in 1996 elected COSATU Wits Regional Secretary.
Cde Mohapi also represented that special generation of trade union activists who understood the relationship between workplace struggles and the broader national liberation struggles. It is important that we remind ourselves about this, since there is now a tendency amongst some of our comrades in government today to want to reduce trade unions to workplace structures only, thus wanting to reverse the proud record of comrades like Cde Mohapi, who understood workers in their political context.
The contribution of Cde Mohapi to our struggle must always act to remind us about the centrality of the working class, especially its organised contingent, in both the African National Congress and our national democratic revolution. The 1994 would not have taken place had it not been for the enormous contribution by the working class in our revolution in general and the ANC in particular. This should act as a warning that none of us must think that we can consolidate this revolution by seeking to marginalise the working class in our broader struggle and in matters of state.
Cde Mohapi was a dedicated ANC cadre who died as a serving ANC MPL in the Gauteng province. He had served the ANC in the legislature with distinction, as chairperson of initially the Economic Affairs Portfolio Committee and passed away as Chair of the Portfolio Committee on Public Transport, Roads and Works.
Cde Mohapi was the Deputy Provincial Secretary of the SACP in Gauteng Province, thus completing his work in all the alliance structures. Like all good communists Cde Mohapi enjoyed a good debate, exploring the challenges facing the national democratic revolution and the role of the Party in this regard. But like all true communists debating for him was not for debating sake but to map out the strategy, tactics and programme of the SACP in the current period. Like a good communist, when defeated in a debate, he would not sulk, but would go out and implement decisions even if he had argued against those prior to their adoption.
Indeed there are many ways through which we should honour a cadre and leader like Cde Mohapi. For us as the SACP it is significant that Cde Mohapi passed away on the very eve of the March 1 local government elections.
The best way to honour him therefore is through earnest implementation of the SACP`s 2006 PoA, that of building developmental local government through the mobilisation of our people in their various localities. To ensure that our 2006 PoA is seriously factored into the Integrated Development Plans (IDPs).
To be exemplary like Cde Mohapi, we expect all those communists who have been elected as ANC councillors to lead by example. We expect those communists to observe to the letter and in practice the ANC`s code of conduct for councillors. In honour and memory of Cde Mohapi we expect these communists in councils to serve the public without expectations of personal material gain. We expect them to continue residing in the wards in which they were elected. We expect them to hold at least four report-back meetings per year. Most important for the SACP we expect them not to use their positions to pursue private capitalist interests. They must choose either to be capitalists or serve the public as their sole pre-occupation.
In honour of Cde Mohapi`s role in the SACP, we expect all our branches and councillors to use their positions to integrate SACP campaigns into the programmes of local government. We expect them to ask hard questions as to what the bankers of our municipal funds are doing to uplift poor communities. If those banks are redlining our poor communities, send them packing into credit bureaux lists, they do not deserve to be used as banks handling municipal funds.
In memory of Cde Mohapi we expect all communist councillors to ensure that all IDPs seriously integrate the land and the agrarian question, with clear plans of land redistribution for agriculture and to transform the apartheid human settlements, and to provide decent housing for the workers and the poor.
Communists should be in the forefront of ensuring that in every local government`s procurement strategies, promotion of co-operatives must be a priority. The award of tenders cannot just continue to go to individual business entities, without also giving tenders to co-operatives, as part of our strategy to fight poverty and create sustainable livelihoods.
To us some of these and other initiatives are an essential part of developmental local government that is responsive to local developmental challenges. Local government is not only about delivery of services, important as these are, but also about developing localities such that there are jobs and other opportunities for sustainable livelihoods.
In other words, to honour the memory of Cde Mohapi it is important to use developmental local government as an important terrain and building block, to build elements and capacity for socialism. The many problems we face in our country today are a direct outcome of the capitalist system. Our goal is for a socialist South Africa as the only rational alternative to the barbarism of capitalism.
To approach our tasks this way will ensure that struggles of comrades like Dan Mohapi would not have been in vain.
Go well Cde Dan, we will all miss you.
Socialism is the future, Build it Now!
