LEGACY OF PILLARS OF THE STRUGGLE
Commemorating stalwarts Kotane, Marks
NOTHING illustrates the demonstrable impact of the ANC’s early risers, Moses Kotane and JB Marks, on the exactingly bitter course of South Africa’s history, better than the calibre of those who learnt the ABCs of the Struggle at their knees.
To put it another way, an appreciation of the legacy of Kotane and Marks is enhanced by a clearer understanding of, among others, their political incubation of the revolutionary personality of the Struggle.
This is personified by the generation of Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and scores of others who, thus prepared, saw the Struggle through.
It was with this historical understanding of the roles of these two giants of the Struggle in mind that the late Struggle stalwart comrade Walter Sisulu once suggested that when South Africa achieved its freedom a monument should be built for both Marks and Kotane.
Sisulu has been described, quite correctly, as one of the key architects of our nonracial, nonsexist democracy.
Yet if our nation today bears the hallmark of Sisulu’s vision and organisational acumen, its firm foundations were laid, to a large degree, on the lives and work of Marks and Kotane and the influence they had on the thinking of the young Sisulu.
In 1944, Sisulu was among a number of young African intellectuals including Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and AP Mda who founded the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).
Though they had the support of the then ANC president, Dr AB Xuma, in forming the league, they were impatient with the older leadership of the organisation.
Militant African nationalism was the declared creed of the ANCYL. Their 1944 manifesto said: “We believe that the national liberation of Africans will be achieved by Africans themselves. We reject foreign leadership of Africa.”
They rejected communism because they regarded it as a foreign ideology.
Sisulu ’ s thinking at that stage largely reflected this.
During his term as the league’s first treasurer, he was well known to be against any form of contact or cooperation with whites.
This was in contrast with Xuma’s approach. Xuma developed tactical alliances with the likes of the Indian Congress, resulting in the Doctors’ Pact of 1947.
He was also hesitant for the ANC to adopt the programme of action proposed by the ANCYL, prompting the league’s leader to campaign to replace Xuma with Dr JS Moroka at the 1949 ANC national conference.
As the ANCYL sought to wrest control from Xuma, the events that followed were greatly influenced by two older and more measured men with different ideological convictions.
Marks and Kotane were leaders of the ANC and the Communist Party. Kotane was the Communist Party ’ s general secretary and Marks would later become its chairperson.
Both hailed from what is now North West from working-class families. They drew their political inspiration from the Russian revolution of 1917.
The ANCYL made significant gains in the 1949 conference, with a number of leaders elected to the ANC national executive committee and Sisulu was elected secretary general.
The ANCYL’s programme of action, with its emphasis on mass organisation and direct action, was adopted in large measure as the programme of the ANC.
Working with experienced leaders like Kotane and Marks, Sisulu was challenged to reconsider his outlook on the world. In the process, his tools of understanding and analysis became sharpened and refined.
He was able to acknowledge that class oppression was as much a feature of South African society as racial oppression, and that the two were linked.
The political approach which Sisulu took as secretary general drew much on the thinking and work of Kotane and Marks, who acted consistently and resolutely to promote unity among all the forces of change.
From Kotane and Marks, the generation of Sisulu learnt that freedom has to be fought for. It requires organisation and the mobilisation of all forces for change, commitment and energy, and an enduring faith in victory. These lessons are as relevant now as they were then.
As South Africa finally reburies the mortal remains of these impeccable revolutionaries, the advice of Sisulu assumes a particularly pointed if poignant dimension.
One cannot think of any better way of memorialising both Kotane and Marks than through erecting monuments to their memory lest we rob future generations of the totality of the human story as it unfolded in our historical landscape.
Such a monument would not only celebrate their worthy lives but the ideals they stood for.
It would serve to warn all of us never to stray from the course of lifting humanity to a higher plane of existence, morally, philosophically, economically and politically.
It would also be a standing reminder that in our efforts to bring about a united, democratic, nonracial and nonsexist future, “the struggle continues, victory is certain”.