LEGACY REMAINS
A FEW days ago the tombstone of Chris Hani, the late general secretary of the SACP, was desecrated by faceless people.
Hani, the commissar and chief of staff of Umkhonto wesizwe, was a selfless leader and committed communist who placed the interests of South Africa ahead of those of his own and of his family.
Hani was a visionary who could apply revolutionary theory to predict the future course of events and a leader who at the same time knew how to follow.
Hani was a loyal cadre of the revolutionary movement and was loyal to the Marxist-leninist principles of accountability and control and, above all, of democratic centralism.
While at first he disagreed with the ANC’S unilateral decision to suspend the armed struggle he demonstrated true loyalty and revolutionary discipline by supporting, defending and implementing that decision because it was a collective decision taken by or in consultation with the majority of the leadership.
Hani was murdered by Clive Derby-lewis and Janus Waluz who still owe the nation answers; we need to know who they collaborated with in the assassination of Comrade Hani.
Hani’s tombstone was desecrated in a similar fashion to that of another SACP stalwart, former general secretary Joe Slovo, whose tombstone was damaged on the eve of the 16th commemoration of his death.
Elsewhere, in Chicago, a memorial sculpture unveiled in 1889 to honour workers who died fighting for an eight-hour working day, was vandalised each time it was rebuilt until police guards were posted to guard it 24/7.
The barbaric and cowardly acts by these faceless people shows that they fail to understand that though they might kill our heroes and vandalise monuments built in their honour, they will never kill their ideas, their legacy and what they stood for.
The message we want to send to these vandals is that we will continue to build more monuments to the heroes (black and white) of the working class. such as a monument to the 153 mine workers who were murdered and buried in mass graves by the capitalist apartheid regime during the 1922 Rand Revolt.
Those who feared Hani in life still fear him in death, but to millions of South Africans Hani remains our hero, loved by many and hated only by class enemies of our revolution.