to set up an illegal printing press for the Movement, and when an illegal radio was commissioned, she played an important part in the preparation of the script for broadcast. She lined up material for an illegal publication which was intended for translation into the main African languages: Why You Should Be A Communist. Under trying conditions she kept a steady nerve. When the post-Rivonia “Mfecane/Difaqane” gathered momentum and she had herself spent about four months in detention, she left the country to continue the struggle from outside the borders. This gave her an opportunity to develop yet another dimension in her varied contribution to the struggle. She engaged in research work, on the basis of which she wrote books on problems affecting the African continent.
AT HOME
Those who knew her as the tough politician she was or as the journalist who used her pen so effectively to destroy the myth of the race superiority of the whites, might have found it difficult to think of her as a woman who had a home to run and a mother who had children to rear. She invited friends to her home and as a host she was always warm. Her idea of what a new South Africa should look like was reflected in the relaxed atmosphere one experienced in her home.
WEEP NO MORE
Comrade Ruth is no more, but to those who would shed tears we say: Weep no more. She lived a full and fruitful life. Her life holds lessons for us, the living: to hold back nothing of ourselves to ensure ultimate victory for the cause of the struggle against fascism. Comrade Ruth dedicated her life to this noble cause, and in thinking of her, let our resolve to bring about the liberation of the masses of the oppressed and exploited peoples of this land – whatever the price – be strengthened. She has shown us: “We must be free or die.”
Forward to Freedom.
Amandla! Matla!
[Ruth First died on 17 August 1982]
Reply to P.W. Botha’s offer
to release on condition we
renounce violence
All of us endorse fully the reply made by Nelson Mandela [February 1985] to your offer of a conditional release. In doing so we would like to emphasise that our organisation, the African National Congress, was founded on the policy of non-violence in its search for freedom for the oppressed people of South Africa. This policy of non-violence was borne out by almost fifty years’ record of peaceful struggle.
With the coming into power of the National Party in 1948, the ANC was subjected to all forms of harassment by the police. It was the NP government that set up, for the first time in South Africa, a special branch of the police, similar to the secret police of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Our leaders were subjected to police harassment and many of them were banned, house-arrested or banished to remote areas of the country.
The reign of the National Party saw the worst forms of racism in the country. The bloodbaths of Sharpeville and Langa stand as a ghastly record of NP rule by the gun. When the ANC decided to protest against the blood-letting on 28 March 1960 by destroying the pass – that badge of bondage – the NP government replied by banning our Organisation. The peaceful protest of the people against the declaration of a Republic, without a mandate from the people of South Africa, in May 1961, was visited with police mass raids and the mobilisation of the army.
All this showed clearly that the NP government did not countenance any opposition by the oppressed to its apartheid regime. When it should have heeded the just and democratic demands of the people, the NP government went ahead with the implementation of the Bantustans and Urban Bantu Councils, which were established on the same model as the ghetto Jewish authorities under Nazi Germany.
Even the longest road has a turning. The oppressed had to decide whether they were to live and perish on their knees or stand up and fight rather than surrender.
You, Mr President, are now saying we must desert our people and all that we have lived for; we must desert what our people are struggling for at this very moment. You say we must undertake not to be arrested again. Who of the oppressed black people and democratic white people can escape the wide dragnet of the draconian apartheid laws?
Only those who have sold their souls can imagine they are safe; only the puppets can imagine they are safe. The vast minefield of apartheid laws makes your offer a mockery. It is patently clear that you do not intend your offer to be accepted by an organisation as principled as the ANC is. Your offer is intended to provide your imperialist friends with a pretext to continue to support the National Party regime.
Our people are today dying daily of police bullets in the townships. School children are undergoing the rigours of indefinite detentions. All this takes place despite the fact that we are arrested and kept away for more than twenty years. It is clear therefore that it is apartheid that is the cause of all this violence in our country. It is apartheid that must be renounced and dismantled if there is to be peace in this country.
[September 1985]
Comrade Moses Mabida:
In Memoriam
COMRADE MOSES MABIDA: HIS ORIGINS
In paying our last respects in memoriam to Comrade Moses, it is well to remember that it is not the amount of words we say here that will measure the depth of our feelings at the loss to the liberation struggle of the peoples of our land. His life and struggles are an open book for all to read and evaluate.
Often we walk along the pavement, stop at a display window and admire a beautifully tailored woollen suit – a finished product. It never occurs to us at that moment that the finished product is made from the wool shorn from a sheep, leaving it exposed to all the weather changes.
Comrade Moses was born and brought up in his early years in a small peri-urban location which, for all practical purposes, borders on peasant areas outside Maritzburg. Look at the lifeless, uninspiring conditions in which the children born and bred there live. Look at the drab surroundings into which the children of our oppressed peoples were born and reared: the slum conditions of our ugly townships in the urban areas. But the weight of such squalor and oppression has not overwhelmed them. They have risen to stake their rightful claim to their birthright: Inkululeko, Tokololo, Vryheid, Freedom.
And Comrade Moses emerged from their ranks and they elevated him to the highest positions to lead them.
Comrade Moses – the secretary of the working class party, the CP. Comrade Moses – a member of the National Executive of the ANC – the spearhead of the struggle for national liberation.
COMRADE MOSES: THE MAN
Comrade Moses Mbeki Mabida will long be remembered by those who knew him personally. He was modest and unassuming in his daily relations with those who came his way. I don’t know how much his teacher at school – Comrade Henry Gwala – contributed towards his quality which endeared Comrade Moses to all who met him. At almost all the Organisation’s meetings Comrade Moses was a delight to listen to when interpreting from English to Zulu. Invariably he improved on the English version.
COMRADE MOSES: IN ACTION
His public life started at an early age when he was still a student. He joined the CP and the ANC. After leaving school he became an organiser of the Transport Workers’ Union in Maritzburg. During the early 1950s he moved to Durban where he became the secretary of the Railway Workers’ Union until he left the country in 1960. In Durban he rose to the provincial executive of the ANC where he worked very closely with Chief A.J. Luthuli, then President-General.
