ANC salutes stalwart Sibeko
THE ANC has paid tribute to one of its longest-serving members, anti-apartheid stalwart Archie Sibeko, a recipient of the Order of Luthuli in Silver, a former MK commander and former deputy chairperson of the ANC in the province.
He died after suffering a stroke at his home in London.
Sibeko was born on March 3, 1928 in Kwezana Village, near Alice in the Eastern Cape.
He attended school at Lovedale, but moved to Cape Town where he became deeply involved in the trade union movement, alongside Oscar Mpetha and Ray Alexander Simons.
He joined the South African Railway and Harbours Workers’ Union and became its secretary.
He joined the ANC and the SACP in 1953 and was an accused in the Treason Trial in 1956, acquitted and banned, “but remained a champion in the struggle on all fronts both for workers’ rights and for political emancipation,” said provincial secretary Faiez Jacobs.
When the decision was taken to form Umkhonto we Sizwe in the early 1960s, “he was among the first to become involved in the Western Cape”.
Sibeko was again arrested, with Struggle icon Chris Hani, in 1961, but before the finalisation of the trial, the Western Cape region instructed him and his comrades to go abroad for military training.
“This involved considerable personal sacrifice, as he left behind his five young children and his expectant first wife, whom he never saw again, since she died a few years later,” said Jacobs.
He travelled to Botswana, Zambia and Tanzania, before going to the Soviet Union and Cuba for military training in 1964. On his return to Tanzania, MK’s first camp was opened at Kongwa, where Sibeko was a camp commander.
He was later deployed to Western Europe and mobilised the international trade union movement. Jacobs said his contribution to the Struggle “is without equal”. – Staff Writer