Home of Legends fit host for Jan 8 statement

WHAT has come to be known as the ANC’s January 8 Statement will be delivered this year at the annual rally to be held at the Absa Stadium in East London on January 13 2018.

This date and day, and the event marking it, has become highly significant to the organisation. The movement was formed on January 8, 1912, and the history of the statement can be traced to exile times.

In exile, it became tradition for Oliver Tambo, the president of the ANC, to outline the organisation’s programme on January 8 on Radio Freedom, the organisation’s mouthpiece.

The first January 8 statement was issued in 1972. Members of the ANC scattered across the world listened attentively to their radios as Tambo outlined the movement’s plans for the year. ANC cadres were of course, expected to put into effect the outlined vision.

This tradition has been upheld by the ANC, now the governing party, into democracy. Nowadays the president of the movement outlines the milestones expected to be achieved by the government in the forthcoming year.

No doubt the newly appointed president of the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa, will do just this when he delivers his statement in East London on Saturday.

Clearly, the Eastern Cape is appropriate for this vital keynote speech, considering the significant role played by the province in the struggle for liberation.

Many heroes who fought against colonialism and neo-colonialism hailed from the Eastern Cape, earning it the apt title of the Home of Legends.

Nineteenth-century Xhosa chiefs including the gallant Maqoma fought tenaciously against colonial conquest here. From 1779 to 1879 eight frontier wars were waged between the Xhosa people and the colonisers, leading to deaths, displacement, land dispossession, and in many cases incarceration of the leaders on the notorious Robben Island.

Tambo himself, who insisted that January 8 become an important day on the ANC calendar, was also born and bred in the Eastern Cape. From his humble beginnings in Bizana, Tambo rose to become an esteemed statesman, holding the ANC together in exile in desperate and dangerous times.

Other ANC stalwarts from the Eastern Cape include the late President Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Walter Sisulu and Wilton Mkwayi, charged with high treason in the mid-1960s and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island.

Other high-ranking ANC and sometimes Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) members from the province who left an indelible mark in the struggle against racial oppression include Dr Walter Rubusana, Chris Hani, Arnold Stofile, Thabo Mbeki, Zola Skweyiya and Joe Gqabi – the only national executive committee member to be assassinated in exile.

Others like Vuyisile Mini who was involved in ANC underground activities in Port Elizabeth were executed by the apartheid state.

Many Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) members from the Eastern Cape also struggled heroically against apartheid. In fact, most of the PAC members that the regime hanged in the 1960s came from the Eastern Cape, particularly Transkei.

Also prominent was Mfanasekaya Gqobose,a high-ranking member of the PAC who later played a significant role in the repatriation of the organisation’s archives to the University of Fort Hare in the 1990s.

Others included Templeton Ntantala, the commander of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), the PAC’s military wing and an uncle to Pallo Jordan, a leading ANC intellectual, and Sabelo Gqweta, another APLA commander held in high esteem, whose nom de guerre was Sabelo Phama.

Leading Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) members also came from the province. The movement’s icon and martyr, Steve Biko, from Ginsburg township, ensured that the BCM remained a dominant force in the1970s, announcing “black man you are on your own”.

His friend and comrade Barney Pityana comes from Port Elizabeth, one of the most militant centres of resistance.

Surely all of this explains why the Eastern Cape is indeed called the Home of Legends and indicates why it is entirely appropriate for the ANC to chose this province to host the January 8 rally and statement this year.

The role of women in the struggle against apartheid is often downplayed. Yet outstanding women gave it their all. Some from the Eastern Cape women who distinguished themselves include Winnie Madikizela Mandela, originally from the Transkei; community activist Epainette Mbeki, who lived a simple rural life in Ngcingwane village, in Dutywa, running a spaza shop and demonstrating that selfsufficiency was possible.

Another female community activist is Brigalia Bam from Tsolo. From the late 1960s to the 1980s she worked in senior positions at the World Council of Churches in Geneva for women’s rights, returning in 1988 to work with Frank Chikane in leading the South African Council of Churches. In post-apartheid South Africa she became the first black, female chairperson of the Independent Electoral Committee (IEC).

Phyllis Ntantala was also in these ranks. A member of the Unity Movement, she studied at Fort Hare and was a pioneering champion of women’s rights who also translated some of SEK Mqhayi’s poems from Xhosa into English.

Lesser known figures include Freda Bokwe, the daughter of Lovedale Presbyterian minister John Knox Bokwe, composer of the well-known hymns, Vuka Deborah and Plea for Africa. Freda is buried in Gaborone alongside her husband, ANC stalwart ZK Matthews. In Botswana she is hailed as one of the finest librarians the country has ever had.

The Thunyiswa sisters, Kholeka and Edith, from Port Elizabeth, were two of the 20 nurses sent by the ANC to Tanzania in 1962 at the request of Julius Nyerere to help strengthen the health system of that newly liberated country. History has been harsh on these nurses: their heroic deeds do not receive the public recognition they surely deserve.

Mission stations such as Lovedale, Clarkebury and Healdtown and, importantly, Fort Hare, which also had a missionary tradition, profoundly influenced many Eastern Cape activists.

Though these were centres of excellence, equipping black students to “take their place” in the society, undercurrents of racism resulted in student militancy.

Fort Hare in particular was a hotbed of student politics. Many like Robert Sobukwe the founder of the PAC, Ambrose and Tennyson Makiwane from Transkei, Joe Matthews, the son of ZK Matthews, and Thenjiwe Mtintso were leading figures in student politics during their time at Fort Hare.

The role of the University of Fort Hare in not only producing politicians but also renowned intellectuals such as professors ZK Mathews, Leonard Ngcongco and AC Jordan, the author of the classic, The Wrath of the Ancestors, cannot be underestimated. To this day, Fort Hare continues to produce leaders, intellectuals and others who are advancing humanity in their respective fields.

In fact, Oscar Mabuyane, the newly elected chair of the ANC in the Eastern Cape and host of this year’s January 8 statement rally, was a student at Fort Hare.

The attention of the world will undoubtedly turn to the ANC rally in East London on January 13. As a nation we should bear in mind the role played by the host province in producing leaders and intellectuals, some of whom shaped the direction of the ANC.

This is the kind of history and heritage that ought to form part of the curriculum in schools and universities, enabling our young people to appreciate our free society and to understand why, in particular, the Eastern Cape is so rightly viewed as the Home of Legends.

Advocate Sonwabile Mancotywa is CEO of the National Heritage Council