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Volume 14, No. 10, 19 March 2015 |
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Red Alert Cuban First Deputy President concludes his visit to South Africa |
By Alex Mashilo
PHOTO by Umsebenzi Online. Cuban First Deputy President of the
Council of
State
and Ministers, H.E. Miguel Diaz-Canel (Third from left) met with
SACP
General
Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande at Kempton Park next to
Johannesburg,
OR Tambo
International Airport,
South Africa.
Comrades-in-struggle for national liberation and socialism, Cuban First Deputy President of the Council of State and Ministers, H.E. Miguel Diaz-Canel and SACP General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande met at Kempton Park next to Johannesburg, OR Tambo International Airport on Monday, 16 March 2015. They were leading their delegations of state representatives and SACP Central Committee and Politburo members respectively. This during the working visit of the Cuban First Deputy President to South Africa.
First and foremost on behalf of the Cuban people he expressed a message of sincere condolences and solidarity to the people of South Africa and the families of the Minister of Public Service and Administration, African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC) member, Comrade Collins Chabane, and his two protectors Sergeants Lesiba Sekele and Lawrence Lentsoane. The three comrades were killed in a car accident in the early hours of the morning of Sunday 15 March 2015 outside Limpopo Province's capital, Polokwane, South Africa.
Diaz-Canel thanked the SACP and the rest of the Cuban solidarity movement in South Africa for support in the Free Cuban Five Campaign. The remaining three of the Cuban Five who were "unjustly" incarcerated in the United States (U.S.) were released in December 2015. Nzimande appreciated the gratitude on behalf of the movement. He said the most important factor was however the unity and resilience of the Cuban people. "Without this the release would not have happened", said Nzimande.
The meeting further discussed the Cuban Five visit to South Africa. Details are and will continue be worked out in ongoing engagements.
The release of the Cuban Five and announcements December 2015 by the U.S. and Cuba to normalise bilateral relations did not mean that the U.S. has lifted its more than 54 years of unilateral economic embargo on Cuba. There has been a few, if non-essential adjustments, mainly made to further U.S. interests, while the core content of the economic embargo remains in force.
The U.S. has over the years used its economic and other forms of power to impose imperialist expansion of its embargo on companies belonging to, or based in, other countries, effectively preventing them from trading with Cuba. In this way the U.S. economic embargo is more than a single-state unilateral measure of international illegality.
There are still South African companies, for example who, fearing victimisation and exclusion from the U.S. financial system and capital, global production networks and supply chains involving U.S. companies, are not trading with Cuba. This is internationally widespread, and even deeper in the case of other countries.
The embargo has however failed for more than half a century to achieve its main objective of regime change in Cuba, and if maintained it will continue to fail. This was acknowledged by U.S. president Barack Obama in his speech December 2015 announcing the release of the remaining three of the Cuban Five. You cannot do one thing over and over again and for more than half a century and expect different results, he said.
Cuba has mastered the art of surviving despite the embargo and its negative economic impact. In addition, new changes in the world economy are more and more taking a direction that undermines the embargo. However, there is still a bigger struggle to pursue.
The resilience by the Cuban people is both an example and a just call to the world to take its cue from Cuba, engage in, and intensify, solidarity action to bring the embargo to an end. This goes beyond an act of solidarity with Cuba alone. It is the most important struggle for a people of the world to reclaim their rights to self-determination and national sovereignty which are stifled by the U.S. through its imperialist policy.
"The SACP will remain a dependable ally in this struggle", the Party has pledged a long time ago.
The meeting came at a historic time both with regard to the Cuban socialist revolution and the South African National Democratic Revolution and struggle for socialism.
The leaders exchanged information and briefings on situational contexts and latest developments both in Cuba and South Africa. The leaders further agreed to meet again.
South Africa: National Democratic Revolution and the struggle for socialism
In South Africa, the ANC-headed alliance including the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) have developed a shared perspective to place the country's transformation on to a second, more radical phase of transition from colonial and apartheid oppression. This essentially involves the completion of the liberation process not only from national oppression but also from imperialism.
While there are ongoing engagements on practical measures and other policy aspects, there is a general agreement that South Africa must use its vast mineral resource endowments to build local industry and develop production locally to resolve the challenges of class inequality, unemployment and poverty, as well as to transform the structure of the country's economy and its external relationships from those of exploitation by imperialism - this is referred to as 'relative de-linking'.
The need to fully secure national self-determination and sovereignty and protect these rights from external interference and manipulation is as important for South Africa as it is for Cuba. This is one of the critical tasks facing the second, more radical phase of the South African revolution.
At the heart of this transition is the complete achievement of the goals of the Freedom Charter. The Charter was adopted in 1955 by the Congress of the People under conditions of oppression. It entails the vision for a future South Africa, this to the SACP as a minimum platform which complete achievement the Party believes will lay the indispensable basis for an advance to socialism.
Remarkable progress in implementing the Freedom Charter has been made since South Africa's April 1994 Democratic Breakthrough, but more work still needs to be done to navigate forward.
Cuba: The socialist revolution
Cuba is engaging in a new policy 'updating' its socialist model. It is also engaging in negotiations to redefine its bilateral relations with the U.S. Karl Marx's theory developed in the 'Critique of the Gotha Programme' and emphasised by Vladimir Lenin in 'What is to be done?'; "…enter into agreements to satisfy the practical aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining over principles, do not make theoretical 'concessions'", can clearly be recognised by well-trained ears in listening skills.
That's Cuba's approach.
Cuba's sovereignty and national self-determination are non-negotiable. Its destination is reserved to the Cuban people to determine. This right will neither be privatised nor outsourced in any particular manner. Foreign interference and machination will not be allowed any quarter to undermine that supreme right. The Cuban people's sovereign development path for a socialist society is irreversible, and cannot be renounced. There will be no departure from the construction of socialism in Cuba.
The main means of social production will remain in the hands of the state - that is the Cuban people organised as the state. This will not change, and will continue to serve the collective needs of the Cuban people, including quality education and healthcare for all, which are provided for free, among others.
Cuba will also continue to train medical professionals in solidarity with other people of the world, such as South Africa.
Space for socialised co-operative ownership has been developed in Cuba. This will be deepened. Adjustments have been identified and in some areas also adopted to give play to private players. This will be developed, but only in a manner that is fair to the Cuban people and doesn't undermine the Cuban revolution and the development of a socialist destination.
Previously, Umsebenzi Online published articles highlighting that the U.S. is using Guantanamo Bay as a detention camp to commit some of the worst human rights atrocities on earth. The articles called for international solidarity to bring this to an end. Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. That was the essence of the message from numerous SACP statements to the U.S. in solidarity with the people of Cuba. The same message came from many of the writers.
In his first term electioneering, current United States President Barack Obama promised to shut down the detention camp. This didn't happen. He is now in his second and last term of office and now Republicans - the opposition controls the United States' law making body, Congress. In the ongoing negotiations with the Obama administration, Cuba wants the U.S. to hand over Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba.
Another crucial item in the negotiations, which Obama promised in his first term electioneering but didn't deliver, and which Cuba wants implemented, is that the U.S. must lift its economic embargo imposed more than half a century ago. In his speech announcing the release of the Cuban Five in December 2015, Obama admitted that the isolation of Cuba did not achieve the goal sought but produced contradictory results.
Obama conceded that the U.S. was itself now increasingly isolated in the Americas, especially in Latin America. That global region has been developing alternative development and economic institutions and increasingly working as one in response to the devastation created and left by colonialism and imperialist exploitation - at the forefront of which has been the U.S.
The United States' economic embargo on Cuba has been made part of the U.S. law, but Obama as president has executive prerogatives which can go a long way in curtailing the content of the embargo. For so long as the embargo remains in force the normalisation of bilateral relations between the two countries will be impossible.
For example Cuba cannot set up an embassy in the U.S. which will not work because of the financial aspects of the broader economic embargo. If the U.S. does not lift the entire embargo there will be no other alternative to Cuba but to continue at the United Nations General Assembly to move the motion for its removal.
Alex Mashilo is SACP Spokesperson and writes in his capacity as Umsebenzi Online correspondent.
John Beaver Marks and the struggle for freedom in South Africa
By Chris Che Matlhako
Plans are afoot to lay to rest in his birthplace in Ventersdorp, the repatriated remains of great South African revolutionary, John 'Beaver' (JB) Marks, after a similar moving service for Moses Kotane. These were leading figures of the national liberation movement, led by the African National Congress (ANC). They were buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. On a state visit to Russia, President Jacob Zuma presented the Russian authorities with a request to allow for the repatriation of their remains to South Africa, where they will reburied at their respective places of birth. 'JB' Marks died while convalescing in a sanatorium in Moscow after a spell of illness in Tanzania in 1972 - where he was stationed at the ANC External Mission headquarters, whereas Moses Kotane died in 1978 in Moscow.
They held senior positions in the both the ANC and the SACP, and thus reflecting that the deep relationship (i.e. national and class) between the ANC and the SACP - which is deliberately misrepresented in some circles - was forged in unity in action across the trenches of struggle for over decades. Walter Sisulu credits Kotane as a 'giant of the struggle' because of his revolutionary and non-dogmatic approach. As promising young party members, 'JB' Marks and Kotane were sent to Moscow to study Marxism-Leninism at the International Lenin School. In Moscow, Kotane studied under Endre Sik, 1967 recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize and other Marxist theorists. Kotane, representing the Communist Party, attended the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. The conference laid the basis for the development of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
That they were buried in a Moscow cemetery - far away from their homeland, is a reflection of the difficulties of the political struggles of persecution and repression on the home front, and the deep bonds of friendship and fraternal relations between those who shared the vision of an egalitarian society against national oppression, discrimination and exploitation internationally. Both men's political lives were deeply interwoven and interconnected in many ways, and they shared deep convictions.
They dedicated their adult lives to bringing about the realisation of freedom, peace, equality and prosperity for the deprived and downtrodden marginalised majority in our country. They dedicated their lives for a non-racial, non-sexist and egalitarian society.
They were leading cadres of the national liberation movement during the most difficult period of the 1930s through to the banishment and exile period, and served the movement selflessly. Both had a long history of courageous leadership of the cause of liberation, and their lives were of dauntless championing of the aspirations of the working people. Marks and Kotane were unapologetic communist and staunch activists for socialism! They were amongst the leadership of the Communist Party throughout the two decades preceding the dissolution of the CPSA (Communist Party of SA) in 1950, and later assisted with reconstituting the Party (as the SA Communist Party) after it had gone underground, and remained at its head during the following two decades as well.
"But the best element in the Communist Party", writes Brain Bunting; "… were toughened and strengthened in the fires of conflict which raged in those days, among them Kotane, Nzula, Mofutsanyana, Marks, Johannes Nkosi"; referring to the challenges of the times in the late 1920s and early 1930s. "It was men like these who made it possible for the Party to survive repression and internal dissension, who rooted the Party in reality and gave it the mass base necessary to implement the directives embodied in the Native Republic resolution of the Comintern", recalls Bunting.
Both men played crucial roles in the struggle for national liberation, social emancipation and as such, deserve to be properly placed in the post-apartheid democratic South Africa, for which they dedicated their entire adult lives towards. They played important roles in the movement - through membership and leadership in the ANC, the trade union and the communist party, and can arguably be said, to have contributed enormously towards defining the post-apartheid nation and the struggle to overcome racism and inequality. To this end the democratic South Africa is indebted to their life-long contributions and their legacies should be preserved. They laid the basis for democratisation and progressive trade unionism and were torchbearers in many ways for the struggle for democracy, progress and development of the people of our country as a whole.
Perhaps, the repatriation will serve as an important pointer towards proper appreciation, of the telling contributions of both Marks and Kotane in the liberation struggle and their unrelenting commitment, towards building a society, where racial exploitation will be obliterated. This potentially, could also be the beginning of a process to overcome the political cleavages of Cold War paradigm that characterised the racist colonial-apartheid regime, and to put matters in their proper context with respect to the struggle for national liberation in South Africa and its links with other struggles around the world.
JB Marks - a progressive nationalist, trade unionist, internationalist and African Marxist
JB Marks was a member of the ANC, a trade unionist and a Marxist-Leninist during a very critical period in the history of our country. Born to mix parentage in Ventersdorp, 'JB' Marks qualified as a teacher and threw himself into trade union and political work with enthusiasm and boundless energy. A youthful Nelson Mandela remarked in the 'Long Walk to Freedom', that 'his long close friendship with JB Marks was sparked by the 1946 strike of African mineworkers' that 'shaped his political development and direction of the struggle'. "The mineworkers strike, in which 70 000 African miners along the Reef went on strike, affected me greatly. At the initiative of JB Marks, Dan Tloome, Gaur Radebe and a number of ANC labour activists, the African Mineworkers Union (AMWU) had been created in the early 1940s", Mandela writes.
As president of the AMWU, 'JB' Marks led and organised one of the largest such actions in South African history - mineworkers' went on strike for a week and maintained their solidarity. The state brutally supressed the strike and arrested the leaders. After the strike, fifty-two men, including 'JB' Marks and Kotane, and many other communists, were arrested and prosecuted, first for incitement, then for sedition. It was a political trial, an effort by the state to show that it was not soft on the Red Menace.
"The year 1946", writes Bunting, "… was to be a watershed in black politics in South Africa, dominated three big campaigns whose echoes were to reverberate for many years afterwards; the passive resistance campaign directed against General Smuts Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Bill, the resumed anti-pass campaign, and the great strike of African mineworkers which took place in August". "The miners' strike and the court cases which followed it were a symptom both of the growing unity between the anti-government forces in South Africa, and the determination of the Smut's government to smash them - a mission later undertaken with even more vindictiveness by the Nationalist government", remarks Bunting.
JB Marks was a leading figure in the ANC having been the president of the Transvaal and later treasurer-general, chairperson of the SACP, former president of the Transvaal Council of non-European trade unions and president of the African Mine Workers Union (AMWU). He found no contradiction in forging these ties to ensure that the struggle for national liberation and social emancipation in South Africa was based on the correct ideological-political lines.
"After listening to SP Bunting addressing a meeting of workers at a mine where he was employed, JB Marks joined the Communist Party in 1928 and devoted himself thenceforward to the fight for national and social emancipation, undeterred by the fierce hostility of white racialist towards the revolutionaries of our country"; observes an obituary delivered in August 11, 1972 at his funeral in Moscow. Mandela also writes; "A friend once asked me how I could reconcile my creed of African nationalism with a belief in dialectical materialism", expressing the interconnectedness of the struggle for national liberation and for social emancipation.
As chairperson of the Communist Party and a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, he played an indispensable role in helping to guide our whole liberation movement through one of its most difficult periods. Together with others, 'JB' Marks was instrumental in organising and coordinating the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s. He was arrested and convicted under the suppression of Communist Act with Mandela and Sisulu from the ANC, Yusuf Dadoo, Yusuf Cachalia and Ahmed Kathrada from the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), but their sentence of nine months of hard labour was suspended.
'JB' Marks also survived a bullet whilst addressing in a gathering in Potchefstroom with Edwin Mofutsanyana. Like many of his comrades at the time, he was subjected to numerous and repeated bans and restrictions on his activities and movements, but continued to operate underground until he was instructed by the ANC NEC to leave and join the headquarters of the External Mission in Tanzania in organising the resistance.
'JB' Marks was an outstanding internationalist and as chairperson of the SACP, he ardently supported the struggles of other oppressed peoples elsewhere in the world and promoted the unity of the international communist movement. He was an embodiment of the shared experiences of the oppressed and marginalised in our country and shining example of dedication to a cause as noble as the struggle for freedom from hunger, poverty and marginalisation.
'JB' Marks is among the modern pioneers in the struggle for national liberation and social emancipation. Together with Moses Kotane, as Dr Yusuf Dadoo - former chairperson of the SACP wrote; "There is perhaps no man who symbolizes as much as he does all that is best in the glorious traditions of the South African working class and national movement"
Cde Chris Che Matlhako is SACP Central Committee and Politburo member, fulltime Secretary for International Relations.
Rename North West Province after Moses Kotane and the amalgamated Ventersdorp-Tlokwe Municipality after JB Marks
By Madoda Sambatha
North West Province has received with pride the remains of two of the greatest heroes of our nation, Comrade Moses Kotane, rightly characterized as Chief Architect of the Struggle and his closest collaborator, Comrade John Beaver (Uncle JB) Marks. Moses Kotane was born at Tamposstad in 1905 and J.B. Marks at Ventersdorp in 1903. Both of these towns were, at that time, part of Transvaal, but are now part of North West Province.
The decision has already been made that their graves, each at the place of birth of the two heroes, will become national heritage sites with statues over the graves - as was the case at their former resting place in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow where they lay next to some of the greatest figures in Soviet and Russian history.
We thank the government of the Russian Federation led by President Vladimir Putin for looking after the remains of our heroes so well and for the dignity and honour with which they were returned. We further wish to thank our President, Comrade Jacob Zuma, for his personal role in bringing the Comrades home and also Comrade Nathi Mthethwa, Minister of Arts and Culture for his part in organizing this. We also thank the Kotane and Marks families for their co-operation in this important national event.
The role of Comrade Kotane played in reviving the Communist Party of South Africa (as it was then) during the 1930s when it had dwindled into a tiny sect and also of reviving the ANC which had virtually disappeared during the same period forms a decisive part of the development of our struggle, as did his correct understanding of the unity between the national liberation movement, represented by the ANC, the trade unions and the Communist Party, not just in theory, but also in action; while Comrade J.B. Marks simultaneously played a very big role in building the trade union movement as well as being a senior member of both the Communist Party and the ANC.
Moses Kotane became General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1939, retaining this position when the Party revived itself underground in 1953 as the South African Communist Party following its tactical dissolution in 1950. He remained in this position until his death in 1978. Kotane was also Treasurer-General of the exiled ANC from 1963 to 1973.
In 1942, J.B. Marks became President of the Transvaal Council of Non-European Trade Unions and in the same year became President of the African Mineworkers Union, which, in 1946, organized the first massive African mineworkers' strike which involved approximately 100,000 workers. Later in 1955, he became a founder member of the first non-racial trade union federation in South Africa, SACTU. He also served as the Chairman of the underground SACP and was for many years President of the Transvaal ANC.
Following the banning of the ANC in 1960, Kotane and Marks were sent together by ANC President O.R. Tambo to open up the ANC External Mission in Tanzania. In 1968, Moses Kotane suffered a stroke and was sent to the Soviet Union for treatment; he was to stay there until his death in 1978. Similarly, J.B. Marks fell sick in 1971 and was also sent to the Soviet Union for treatment, unfortunately dying there the following year.
President Oliver Tambo delivering the ANC address at the funeral of Moses Kotane on 26 May 1978 in Moscow, said
"We shall never forget that during the period of the three years ending in December 1968, giants of the African revolutionary struggle, JB Marks and Moses Kotane, comrades in arms for more than 40 years, operated from small country town - Morogoro, in Tanzania- sharing a small office and sleeping in two small adjacent rooms, now worthy of preservation as national monuments. It was during these trying years that the supreme qualities of leadership of Moses Kotane and JB Marks emerged and made their mark on all young men and women who lived, worked or associated with them all except confirmed and incorrigible counter-revolutionaries".
In 2013, Comrade Thandi Modise, at that time Premier of North West Province, calling for a provincial name-change, stated:
"We cannot be a 'direction' or a position on the compass when we have (the) calibre of leaders from our province like Malome Moses Kotane."
This same sentiment was echoed by the current Premier Comrade Supra Mahumapelo in his State of the Province Address on 6 March 2015.
In light of this statement, and also in recognition of the repatriation of the bodies of Comrades Kotane and Marks, the SACP at its recent North West Provincial Congress held from 30 January - 1 February 2015 agreed to change its name to Moses Kotane Province of the SACP. We are further calling on all sections of the ANC-led Alliance to guide our government to make this the official name of our province.
Likewise, when the current Ventersdorp and Tlokwe municipalities are united, the SACP Moses Kotane Provincial Executive is calling for the new, united municipality to be named after J.B. Marks.
Further, we are recommending that the name of the current North West University be changed to Moses Kotane University and that Vuselela Technical and Vocational Education and Training College be re-named J.B. Marks Technical and Vocational Education and Training College.
Message from the SACP Moses Kotane Province, for and on behalf of the leadership, members and the working class by the SACP Provincial Secretary, Comrade Madoda Sambatha.
