On the day the police swooped on the leading members, Comrade Moses had gone to Maritzburg and managed to escape arrest. Up north, as Comrade Wilton Mkwayi left the Treason Trial court, he saw police standing at the door of their transport. He asked: “What’s going on here?” A policeman threatened to arrest him for “obstruction”. He apologised and the policeman ordered him to go away, and so he escaped detention under the Emergency. The government has lived to rue the day these two trade unionists were not drawn into the police dragnet. SACTU [the South African Congress of Trade Unions] lost no time in sending them overseas to establish a mission at the headquarters of the World Federation of Trade Unions.
During the years that Comrade Moses headed this mission abroad, it carried out a campaign to draw the attention of the world’s organised working class to the plight of the black working class in South Africa. Comrade Moses soon gained the respect and confidence of those with whom he came into contact. At international conferences the delegates from Africa always elected him to be the spokesman for Africa. The combined campaigns on various international fronts by the ANC, SACTU and the CP have ripened into today’s international pressures to destroy apartheid.
COMRADE MOSES: THE LASTING LESSON HE TAUGHT US
The problems created by legalised racism, the institutionalised separateness between blacks and whites in South Africa, are not often well appreciated. The fact that over the years each of the four main racial groups has built up its own organisation purporting to advance its own interests has kept apart groups that should have been bound together to fight the common enemy. This problem has spilled over even into the CP, which has been non-racial throughout the years. Some of its members are white and enjoy all the privileges of whites while the black members suffer all the hardships of oppression and special exploitation.
It has been the task of the members of the CP, especially the black members, to lay bare the tricks of the oppressors and themselves be a living example of how a member of the CP can work in the national liberation organisation in a manner that inspires confidence and trust. It was on this absolute trust between the ANC and the CP that these two organisations have built the alliance that has shaken the very foundations of apartheid, and the National Party government is today fighting for its very survival.
To his very last breath Comrade Moses has been foremost in bringing about the successes we see today.
Let us take up the lesson and accomplish what he has taught us.
Our condolences go to his family.
[Moses Mabida died on 8 March 1986]
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