Friday 12 May 2023: It is with profound sadness that the South African Communist Party (SACP) in Gauteng Province announces the passing away of its Provincial Chairperson, Comrade Joe Mpisi. Comrade Joe passed away this morning, 12 May 2023.

The Party dips its red flag in honour of this gallant fighter of the working-class and the broader revolutionary movement.

On behalf of the entire membership of the SACP, across the length and the breadth of the province, we take this opportunity to express our heartfelt condolences to Comrade Joe’s family, especially his dear wife, Comrade Nthuseng and the children, friends, comrades and colleagues with whom Comrade Joe diligently served with to advance the course of the national democratic revolution (NDR). Our thoughts are with them during this difficult period.

At the time of his passing, Comrade Joe was serving as the Provincial Chairperson of the 12^th Provincial Executive Committee of the SACP in Gauteng Province, a position he has held since he was first elected in 2011. Comrade Joe was also deployed to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, where he was firstly elected in 2014. At the Provincial Legislature, he was heading the African National Congress’ (ANC’s) Caucus Political Education and Ideological Training. This is one of the duties he executed diligently, sometimes to the detriment of his own health. This is one of the last meetings he chaired this past Monday, on 8 May 2023. Among the deployments he held include serving as the Chairperson for the Education Portfolio Committee and the Finance Committee.

Born on 12 November 1966 in Meadowlands, Soweto, it was in the dusty streets of Soweto where Comrade Joe was initiated to the politics of the Mass Democratic Movement. He matriculated at Lamola Jubilee Senior Secondary School, where he became involved in anti-apartheid politics, including through the United Democratic Front (UDF). Subsequently, Comrade Joe joined the SACP and the ANC in the early 1980s.

Post-apartheid, Comrade Joe became actively involved in labour activism through the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (NEHAWU) where he rose through the ranks from being a shop steward up until being elected as the union’s 1^st Deputy President. It was through his work at NEHAWU that Comrade Joe fully appreciated the persistent patterns of colonialism of a special type in the workplace, as well as other aspects of society.

Comrade Joe not only appreciated the tactics used to roll back the workers’ gains won in terms of labour legislation and general rights, but he also confronted these injustices head-on. Through his various roles in the Mass Democratic Movement structures, he articulated the impact of casualisation, the dangers of the restructuring of the workplace by capitalist enterprises and how this was being used to divide the working-class.

As a direct response to these challenges, guided by both the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, Comrade Joe was at the forefront of advancing the need for the SACP to build strong and active workplace units in every workplace as a fundamental condition to transform the workplace. He was central to our congress resolution to build an SACP unit in every workplace where COSATU unions existed. This was the precursor of our Qina Msebenzi / Tia Mosumi programme of the SACP in Gauteng.

Wherever he was deployed, Comrade Joe detested ill-discipline and this earned him a moniker of the “Iron Man” or “Yster”. In his honour, we will continue to advance the socialist struggle, waged at the terrain of the NDR, as a pivotal class struggle that places discipline as a prerequisite for all members of the SACP in our province.

As the SACP in the province, we take this solemn occasion of the passing away of our Provincial Chairperson, to recommit ourselves to building a strong, united and disciplined province of the SACP that will be at the forefront of advancing a Left Popular Front and a Socialist Movement.