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A nation that forgets its past has no future! Remembering
Chris Hani in the context of 10 years of our freedom
By Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
Before his death, there was no election date. His death stirred a nation,
believer and non-believer, rich and poor. In our anger, shock and sorrow we
were drawn together. His death carved the election date in stone. He died for
all of us
As we move forward to elections and a new South Africa, let us never
forget the ideals for which our fallen comrade lived and died. from a leaflet
on elections issued in April 1994.
This Easter weekend we commemorate the 11th anniversary of Chris Hanis assassination.
It was a slaying that was intended to spark a race war and capsize the negotiations
process, postponing the first ever non-racial elections in our country, perhaps,
forever.
As we commemorate Cde Chris, we cannot forget the contributions made by thousands
of dedicated freedom fighters and millions of people who were struggling against
oppression on a daily basis. In particular we also remember that revolutionary
leader of our people, Cde Oliver Tambo, former president of the ANC, who also
passed away within 2 weeks of the assassination of Cde Hani. Amongst these
heroes and heroines are several thousands of communists who worked side by
side with other democrats and all our people for the vision of a democratic,
non-racial and non-sexist society.
In the days following April 10 1993, millions of grieving South Africans poured
on to the streets of our country in a massive but disciplined demonstration
of popular power in protest against this cowardly asssassination of Cde Chris.
On Wednesday 14th April 1993 and again on Monday 19th April, the day of the
funeral, four million workers stayed away. These were the two largest stayaways
in the history of our struggle. In addition to workers, millions of students
and unemployed also observed the two days.
In the end, the assassination achieved exactly the opposite outcome from that
intended by the killers. Within weeks, an obdurate apartheid government was
finally forced to concede a firm election date (April 27) one year hence.
We know who pulled the trigger, but we should also never forget the sustained
character assassination and disinformation campaign that was also waged against
cde Chris personally in the months before his death. Richard Ellis, correspondent
for the London Sunday Times, and apartheid disinformation specialist, wrote
an article titled South Africas Saddam stakes his claim in January 1993.
The regime spread a lie that Hani was assembling a renegade army of MK and
Apla dissidents in Zimbabwe, and that he was planning a bank robbery! The
disinformation machinery had him firmly in their sights.
The apartheid government and much of the liberal media were hoping to detach
so-called ANC/SACP hawks from so-called ANC doves. They hoped to achieve
some kind of negotiated elite pact between moderates. Writing in January
1991, senior NP journalist Piet Muller said that the transition to a new South
Africa
requires a consortium of political forces, made up of both white and
black leaders
This consortium will decide that it has sufficient legitimacy
to proceed on its own with a political settlement. It also follows logically
that such a consortium, he added chillingly, would accept responsibility
for the violent repression of radicals and revolutionaries. (Rapport, January
20, 1991).
Of course, nowadays it would be hard to find anyone who did not speak well
of Chris Hani, the MK combatant, energetic organiser, SACP general secretary,
peoples hero. But there is praise and
well, praise. Some of the praise
keeps Hani and all that he stood for buried, decisively, on the far side of
April 1994. Comrade Chris is honoured as a romantic fighter, an admirable
idealist who would not really have coped with the supposedly sober, pragmatic,
post-1994 reality. His killing is remembered as something tragic, but somehow
fitting (because it fits the idea of a revolution completed, an elite-driven
transition, a business-as-usual view of our country and world).
This is why it is crucial to assert, once more, that Chris Hanis ideals and
struggle are alive and more necessary than ever. Part of this struggle is the
struggle to remember what actually happened in the early 1990s. Consider, for
instance, what Jonathan Oppenheimer, son of Nicky and heir to the family fortune
recently said: In the run-up to the 1994 elections, we found uniquely a positive
way to build a new constitution, which allowed us to transform the apartheid
past to this wonderful nation that we are today
That was a miracle.
This is one memory of our recent past no struggle, no assassinations, no
dispossession, no illegitimate profits, just a miracle. Jonathan Oppenheimer
would like us to believe that the revolution never happened, just a miracle.
It is important to note how radically divergent these complacent and self-congratulatory
views are from, for instance, the ANCs 2004 election manifesto a peoples
contract to create work and fight poverty. The ANC and its alliance partners
are, naturally, proud of the huge changes achieved since 1994. We certainly
intend to celebrate the first decade of freedom. But the tone and content of
our perspectives are so very different from Oppenheimer, Aluta continua,
is our message. Learning from experience: we can do more, better, is the
point.
The recent media images in our newspapers say it all. President Mbeki talking
to poor whites in Cape Town, or engaging a lively rural community, or squatting
on the floor of a modest township home, listening to the concerns, frustrations
and aspirations of ordinary South Africans. These are not just photo opportunities,
they capture what the president and tens of thousands of ANC and alliance activists
have been doing, day in and day out, door-to-door, over many months.
We can think of no better way of honouring Chris Hani. After all, it was exactly
what he was doing in the weeks and months before his own tragic death. It is
what the SACP is going to be doing in the next few days before April 14, and
beyond!
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The SACP, together with the Young Communist League, calls on workers,
the poor and the youth of our country to vote in millions for the African
National Congress on the 14 April 2004. Let every worker vote count and
let the voice of every woman, our youth women be heard.
As the ANC gathers today, South African communists have, together with
the workers and the African National Congress, travelled the length and
breadth of our country. We have listened to organized workers, farmworkers,
domestic workers, students, unemployed youth, burial societies, street
traders, stokvels, owners of spaza shops and indeed to all sections of
the working class, in their workplaces, their homes, in the streets and
in mass meetings. From this experience we come out convinced that only,
and only the ANC, is best capable of responding to the needs of the workers
and the poor, the challenge of poverty eradication, creation of work
opportunities, a comprehensive HIV/AIDS strategy, learnerships for youth
as part of an overall thrust towards sustainable livelihoods, households
and communities.
The ANC has, over the last ten years proved itself in practice, that
it is the only organization whose commitments has brought significant
socio economic improvements to millions of our people. Indeed still more
needs to be done, and only the ANC can!
A nation that forgets its past has no future. It is for this reason
that we also take this opportunity, during this month of April, to honour
and remember all our heroes who sacrificed to liberate our country, and
contributed towards its reconstruction over the past ten years. In particular
as the SACP, together with millions of other South Africans, remember
and honour that great revolutionary and gallant fighter, Cde Chris Hani,
whose cowardly assassination directly led to the securing of 27 April
1994 as the date for our first ever democratic election! In the name
and memory of Chris Hani, the SACP shall intensify the election campaign
over the next nine days under the banner of the Chris Hani Election Trail!
As the SACP we are calling upon the workers and the poor to vote for
the ANC for the following five main reasons:
For a strong public sector The rich can buy what they need from the
private sector. The workers and the poor need a strong public sector
for education, health care, water, sanitation, policing housing and social
grants. Over the last 10 years government has learnt that only in those
areas where it has taken a direct lead, that we have changed the lives
of our people for the better electricity, housing, telephony and water.
For worker rights The ANC government has passed many laws to strengthen
worker rights, including sectoral determination for the most vulnerable
workers, farm and domestic workers
For land and agricultural reform The ANC manifesto commits the ANC
government to redistribution of one-third of agricultural land by 2014.
The SACP welcomes this and commits itself to mass mobilization of rural
motive forces to ensure that indeed this goal is realized!
For jobs and sustainable livelihoods We welcome and support the commitment
of R100 billion for extended public works programmes. We call upon the
working class to use its organized muscle to pressurize private capital
to invest more in infrastructure, in our townships and rural areas for
job creation and work opportunities. We must roll back the profit grabbing
rich and push for labour intensive methods in our economy
Power to the workers and the poor The ANC commits itself to the promotion
of credit co-operatives, small businesses, self employed youth, expansion
of social grants, and creation of 1 million job opportunities. Let us
mobilize the worker and the poor to pool together their resources, in
burial societies, stokvels, pension and provident funds to create work
opportunities and sustainable communities.
The SACP commits itself to organize the working class to take responsibility
for its vote for the ANC, by ensuring that it is this class, acting in
concert with government and all progressive forces, that should be at
the head of the implementation of the ANC manifesto.
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