22 October 2002
The South African Communist Party invites the public, the media, its alliance partners, members, supporters and activists to a memorial service for the late Comrade Wolfie Kodesh to be held as detailed below.
DATE - Thursday, 24 October 2002
TIME - 12h00 - 14h00
VENUE - 10th Floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg
Comrade Wolfie's funeral will be held at 15h00 on Friday in Cape Town at the Maitland Cemetery.
Messages of condolences can be sent to kodesh@sacp.org.za for publication on the SACP website.
Refer to the SACP statement (pasted below) on the death of Comrade Wolfie Kodesh issued on 19 October 2002.
SACP STATEMENT ON THE DEATH OF COMRADE WOLFIE KODESH
19 October 2002
Wolfie Kodesh, life-long Communist, died in Cape Town on Friday 18th October, he was aged 84. In his life and personality, in his easy-going non-racialism and unpretentious passion for justice, Wolfie Kodesh embodied many of the values that have made an indelible mark on our country.
Nelson Mandela in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, remembers Kodesh particularly from the two months they spent together, sharing Kodesh’s one-room bachelor flat in Berea, Johannesburg. It was 1961 and Mandela was on the run and in hiding. “I fear that I took over his life, infringing on both his work and pleasure, but he was such an amiable, modest fellow that he never complained.”
“Amiable”, “modest”, “a mensch”, “one of the ouens”, these are the words evoked by all who knew him. Wolfie Kodesh was born in Benoni in 1918. His paternal grandparents had fled the pogroms in Eastern Europe. His father was South African born. His mother, Fanny Shapiro, was from the East End in London. The father ran a hansom cab business, and also kept cattle and horses, but the business folded during the Depression years, and the parents separated.
Wolfie, his twin sister and brother joined their mother in Cape Town. Relatively destitute, the mother opened up a corner shop in the heart of what was then Woodstock slum. The family lived in the rat-infested back-rooms. Wolfie had many graphic stories about life in the early 1930s in Woodstock and neighbouring District 6. It was a formative period in which Wolfie developed a first-hand and never to be forgotten acquaintance with poverty, a spontaneous, unpretentious non-racialism, and a life-long hatred of rats.
In 1938 his sister began to work as a typist for Communist Party general secretary Moses Kotane. This family connection, and life in general led to Wolfie’s increasing politicisation, and he joined the Communist Party of South Africa at this time. He began to sell the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in the streets of Woodstock, District 6 and the Bo-Kaap.
In 1940 he joined the army and fought in the Ethiopian campaign against the Italians. He was later deployed to Libya, and was with the Allied forces involved in the liberation of Italy. Wolfie carried his political passions with him into the army. He participated in the drawing up of the “Soldiers’ Manifesto” of the Springbok Legion. He was particularly aggrieved that black South African soldiers could not carry weapons. Indeed, his first experience of detention came while he was in the army. He was arrested, placed under a six-bayonet guard, and charged with “mutiny” for having spoken with black soldiers and agitated for equal pay. The charges were eventually dropped.
After the War, Wolfie returned to Johannesburg, and he and his brother inherited his father’s successful brick-works. But the other brick-work owners were appalled that “this bloody communist” should be in their midst. After 18 months, Wolfie reached an agreement with his brother, was paid out for his share, and he returned to Cape Town in 1947. There he worked full-time for the Communist Party.
In particular, he worked on the weekly Guardian, both as a journalist and as an active newspaper seller. He wrote, in a direct accessible style, about social conditions in the slums of Cape Town, and in the burgeoning shanty-towns around Elsies River. He used the newspaper to run a campaign for decent dust-bins in the Bo-Kaap – it was his passionate hatred of rats that kept him focused on that campaign. All over the Cape Town slums he was known as Mr Guardian. The poet, and diminutive James Matthews got his first break as a writer, when Mr Guardian came upon a street fight, with this “little man” trying to lift a huge rock to beat up his opponent. Mr Guardian calmed things down, and got James Matthews a job on the Cape Argus.
After the banning of the Communist Party in 1950 things became more complicated. In 1953 a banning order was served on Wolfie and he could no longer openly work as a journalist. He continued, nonetheless. After the Guardian was banned, he served as one of the directors of the New Age. Working with Ruth First, he helped to expose the plight of workers on potato farms, and they also wrote the first major expose of the Broederbond, having spent months monitoring its Braamfontein offices. With increasing restrictions on journalism, Ruth First’s father, Julius, set Wolfie up in a laundry collection business.
The always affable Wolfie used his laundry collection work to move freely around, collecting money for progressive organisations, secretly distributing literature, and generally organising. With the 1961 State of Emergency, Wolfie’s finely honed social skills and ability to “make a plan” became an invaluable resource. It was in this period that he had Mandela (“David”) staying in his bachelor flat in Berea. Wolfie was adept at providing logistic support to activists on the run. He bought and sold second-hand cars, keeping the movement supplied with an ever-changing variety of vehicles. He grew a beard, and wore false-bottomed shoes in an attempt to make himself a little taller. At one point he was sleeping rough on a golf course.
He was finally detained in May 1963, and later in the year he was illegally deported to the UK. In exile he worked in the MK camps, and he headed logistics in Lusaka. He never married (saying it would be unfair to any spouse), and never had any of his own children, but he was everybody’s uncle. ANC President, OR Tambo asked Wolfie to look after the material needs of the new 1976 recruits arriving Lusaka. One of them remembers being full of wild ideas and hot-headed black consciousness militancy. “This affable, middle-aged guy came around to our safe-house in Lusaka and says in a joking way, I don’t know what’s so special about you guys, but the old man has asked me to keep an eye out for you. And that’s exactly what he did, over many years.”
Wolfie Kodesh returned to South Africa on a brief trip in 1990. One of the first things he did was to take a train trip from Cape Town to Simonstown. He took a photo of every single station on the way. In 1991 he returned permanently to Cape Town.
Earlier in this month he was admitted to hospital for an operation. He insisted on going into a public hospital, Groote Schuur. According to friends, he was more worried about the hard time nurses were having than his own situation. When he heard about Groote Schuur’s current financial difficulties he spoke with doctors, advising them on how to develop a campaign and win public support.
His funeral will be held at 15h00 on Friday 25th October, at Maitland Cemetery.
Mazibuko K. Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information & Publicity South African Communist Party
3rd Floor, COSATU House, 1-5 Leyds Street
Braamfontein, 2017, Republic of South Africa
Tel: 27 11 339-3621/2, Fax: 27 11 339-4244 Cell: 083 651 0271
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za