Eric ‘Stalin’ Mtshali: Communist and guerilla who gave no quarter 1933-2018
Clashed with Tambo when he insisted on being trained behind the Iron Curtain
● Eric “Stalin” Mtshali, who has died in Durban at the age of 84, was part of the unit that planted the first bomb of the armed struggle against apartheid, in December 1961.
He was a member of the Natal regional command of Umkhonto weSizwe, which had been formed several months earlier.
It was commanded by Curnick Ndlovu with Billy Nair as his deputy.
Other members were Ronnie Kasrils and Bruno Mtolo, who subsequently gave evidence against Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia trial and against his Durban MK comrades at the Pietermaritzburg sabotage trial.
By then Mtshali had gone into exile. He was sent out of the country early in 1962 for further military training.
As was often the case with members of the MK underground who were instructed to leave, he wasn’t able to say goodbye to his wife, who died eight years later without seeing him again.
The intention was that he’d return after a year so that MK would have an experienced military expert at leadership level within the country.
Instead he became stranded in Dar es Salaam after clashing with the leader of the ANC in exile, Oliver Tambo, because he resisted being sent to Egypt or Ethiopia for military training as many exiles were.
Mtshali, given the name “Khehla” (old man) because of his beard and pipe, insisted on doing his military training in a socialist country such as Cuba or the Soviet Union, which is where he was eventually sent.
After completing military training in Moscow he became chief of personnel for MK in Tanzania, and the first editor of MK’s weekly journal, Dawn, which he helped start with Chris Hani in 1964.
He was involved in ferrying arms into Zambia in preparation for the disastrous Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns of 1967 and 1968, in which hopelessly unprepared but extremely brave MK fighters under Hani’s leadership were sent to Rhodesia to establish a route into SA with guerrillas from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union.
Most of them were killed or captured. In 1971 he was part of a group of MK guerrillas trained in Somalia for an operation in which they were to be landed with arms and ammunition on the Transkei coast to start a rural insurrection.
Their boat, the Aventura, a small, Soviet-owned, and as it happened not entirely seaworthy vessel, had major mechanical problems and long before reaching SA it broke down and the mission was aborted.
Thereafter Mtshali, who was a leading member of the SA Council of Trade Unions (Sactu) before going into exile, was sent to Prague in what is now the Czech Republic for eight years as Sactu’s representative at the World Federation of Trade Unions.
In the late ’70s he was deployed full-time at Sactu’s headquarters in Lusaka, returning to
In the 1990s Blade Nzimande admiringly named him ‘Stalin’ in recognition of his hardline defence of socialist countries
SA in 1991 after the unbanning of the ANC and SACP.
Mtshali was born in Clermont, Durban, on November 20 1933. He was 16 when the Durban riots erupted in 1949 with clashes between Zulus and Indians.
He saved several people from death or injury when he opened the door of the store in which he was working in the central market area to allow those fleeing for their lives to take refuge.
At 18 he became a stevedore, loading and unloading cargo ships. His leadership skills were recognised and in 1951 he became an organiser with the Dock and Harbour Workers’ Union.
Later he organised textile workers and in 1955 helped to establish the SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union.
He was recruited into the by-then-banned SACP by firebrand Harry Gwala in 1957. He was proud that he’d become a communist party member before becoming a member of the ANC, which happened in 1958.
He was a member of the central committee of the SACP in exile for many years. At the Kabwe conference in Zambia in 1985 he voted against a motion to open the ANC to all races, although the motion was supported by the SACP central committee.
His once warm relationship with Joe Slovo cooled somewhat.
His inflexible approach regarding national liberation and the class struggle strained it further.
He was closer to younger comrades in the SACP, notably Blade Nzimande, who in the ’90s admiringly named him “Stalin” in recognition of his hardline defence of socialist countries and unwavering adherence to the principle that the working class should lead the national liberation struggle. In quiet moments he’d hum “Comrades, the bugles are sounding”.
He was re-elected to the central committee from which he’d been ejected in exile.
After the 1994 democratic elections he became deputy commissioner of criminal intelligence in KwaZulu-Natal and from 2004 to 2014 was an ANC MP.
In 2015 the government awarded him the National Order of Mendi for Bravery in silver.
He is survived by his wife Gcinile and a daughter .