16 December 2020
he South African Communist Party expresses its message of sincere condolences to the Shope family, relatives and friends on the passing of Ambassador Lenin Magigwane Shope. It was with great sadness that we learnt of the sore loss. While the Shope family is the most affected, the passing of Ambassador Shope represents a great loss to the South African democracy and society at large. A seasoned diplomat, Ambassador Shope represented South Africa in Cuba, Italy, Australia, and Botswana. At the time of his passing, in Dakar, he was South Africa's Ambassador to Senegal.
In his own right comrade Lenin was a stalwart of our struggle for liberation, democracy, and social emancipation. As President Cyril Ramaphosa stated in the government's condolences statement to the Shope family on 5 December 2020, comrade Lenin was educated in Cuba from 1976 and trained as an engineer at the Technological University of Havana from 1982 to 1986. That was during the apartheid era when in South Africa the apartheid regime intensified oppression, the marginalisation of the oppressed, and the development of its beneficiaries through the underdevelopment of the oppressed.
Through its regime of white privilege and associated job reservation, the colonial and apartheid ruling class historically prohibited the oppressed, also the worst and brutally affected by capitalist exploitation, from education and training in pivotal fields of study. The government of Cuba, in support of a future, democratic South Africa, expressed active solidarity with South Africa's oppressed by offering access to education and training in those fields, including in engineering and health sciences, among other forms of support.
Conservative sections of apartheid's beneficiaries have to this day never forgiven Cuba for the support it has given to our national liberation and social emancipation struggle. It is in this context that they continuously do their level best to try and discredit Cuba on all fronts, including by attacking its international human solidarity programmes and the use of its scientific advances such as in genetic engineering, biotechnology and other medical and health sciences. Others do this in ways that reflect possible collaboration, as subordinates, with foreign regimes that actively supported apartheid (by among others listing as "terrorists" our struggle stalwarts and those who offered their solidarity with the struggle). They do this (in terms of political economy) also in ways that indicate support for market dominance by transnational monopolies headquartered in those countries.
The struggle is not over. In memory of comrade Lenin, the SACP calls upon the working class and all democratic organs of the South African society in support of transformation towards universal social emancipation to intensify international solidarity and the struggle against imperialist domination and exploitation.
Ambassador Lenin Magigwane Shope passed away early this month. His funeral service is taking place on Wednesday, 16 December 2020 in Johannesburg.
The SACP says:
Hamba kahle Mkhonto.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
EST. 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA | CPSA
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