Congratulations to President Kabila and the Congolese people!

On Monday 27 November the Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced that having examined the eight objections lodged with the Court by the losing presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba and his party, the MLC, alleging election irregularities, it found the objections to be without substance.

It therefore confirmed the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission on 15 November, following the 29 October Presidential second-round elections, which reflected that Joseph Kabila had won 58.05% of the votes, and Jean-Pierre Bemba, 41.95%. Accordingly, it declared that Joseph Kabila, was duly and democratically elected as Head of State of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Two days after the Supreme Court announced its decision, the losing candidate, Jean-Pierre Bemba, having met with his MLC colleagues, expressed dissatisfaction with this decision, charging that the Court was biased. However, and of great importance, he explained that he and his party would exercise their right as the republican opposition, acting within the institutions born of the Congolese democratic process, to use peaceful and constitutional means to promote their perspective for the reconstruction and development of the DRC.

On 29 October, the Congolese electorate also voted to elect the provincial legislatures. Preparations are therefore being made to convene the elected members of these important institutions of the new DRC, formally to constitute the provincial legislatures. Once they are convened, the legislatures will then elect the representatives who will serve as members of the second chamber of the National Parliament, the Senate.

This process, which hopefully will be concluded during the month of December, will mark the last step in terms of constituting the elected national bodies prescribed by the Constitution of the DRC. As of today, the DRC now has an elected President and an elected National Assembly.

We expect that President Kabila will be sworn in as President on 6 December. This will open the way for him to appoint a Prime Minister from among the Members of Parliament, who will then proceed to compose the new Government of the DRC. December 2006 should therefore stand out as the month when the DRC will inaugurate its new, elected President, its new, elected Government and its new, elected Senate, and convene the critical first sessions of the National Assembly.

The month of December should therefore conclude a very important phase in the Congolese transition such that the Congolese people can, at last, and after many decades, say that they have put in place both legislatures and an executive born of their will, and not imposed on them by those with access to and capable of the use of force against the people.

In due course the historic importance of these developments in the DRC will become clear to all of us as Africans. We will come to appreciate the enormous effort and the extraordinary will to succeed that made it possible for the leaders and the people of the DRC to take their country to where it is today, when it has recaptured from the clutches of a disastrous past the right of the great Congolese masses to determine their destiny in conditions of democracy, national unity, peace and stability.

Once more we extend our congratulations to President Joseph Kabila on his election as the first popularly mandated Head of State of the DRC after many decades. We salute him for the contribution he and his colleagues have made to the success of the challenging mission to bring into being the new DRC.

We also congratulate Jean-Pierre Bemba for his acceptance of the historical outcome that has given him and his colleagues the possibility to consolidate and strengthen the Congolese democratic order, and expand the possibility of the Congolese people to define their future, by playing their role as a loyal republican opposition to those mandated by the people to rule. Similarly, we salute him for the contribution he and his colleagues have made to the success of the challenging mission to bring into being the new DRC.

We also salute the various formations and the leaders who guided the DRC through its transition, weathering many storms, including continuing armed violence, to the point the country has now reached, when it can proudly and justly claim its place as one of the largest democracies on our continent.

We must also salute the United Nations which has played and continues to play a critical role in the various processes that have enabled the Congolese people to make history, standing tall today as a messenger of hope, communicating the message that Africa is firmly on its way towards its rebirth.

What the people of the DRC have done communicates a message of a bright future for all their neighbours, and the imperative to seize the moment, to build a new neighbourhood of friendship and shared prosperity for the peoples of the DRC on the one hand, and those of the Republic of Congo and Angola, Zambia and Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan and the Central African Republic, on the other.

Our warmest congratulations go to the Congolese masses. Despite the painful disappointments of many decades, these great masses did not lose confidence in the capacity of their nation to pull itself out of the abyss.

That confidence and the determination to succeed were amply demonstrated when millions voted in a referendum to approve the Constitution, and returned to the polls to elect the President, the National Assembly and the Provincial Legislatures. In their millions, the Congolese people have made the unequivocal statement that:

• they love and yearn for peace;
• they are thirsty for liberty and democracy;
• they look forward to national unity and reconciliation;
• they are confident that they will regain their dignity as a nation;
• they foresee a future of development and freedom from poverty;
• they want to see their country at peace with its neighbours, cooperating with them for mutual benefit;
• they visualise their country standing in the front ranks of the forces that are striving to achieve Africa's Renaissance.

Over the years we have, as South Africans, grown close to the Congolese people and developed a strong feeling of sisterhood, brotherhood and comradeship with them. Today there are few in our country, who are not conscious of the reality that our future is intimately related to the future of the Congolese people.

We have done what we could to travel the hard road to democracy and peace together with, and side-by-side with the Congolese people, refusing to give up because of difficulties along the way. For many years now, we have been inspired by the confidence that any people, in this case the Congolese, who could produce an African titan such as Patrice Lumumba, could not but harbour within themselves the innate strength to emerge as a winning African nation, whatever the difficulties.

Speaking at a conference in Chantilly, Virginia in the United States in April 1997, nine years ago, we said: "We are privileged to be witness to a gripping and epoch making contest which assumes many forms and involves many and all layers among the people of Zaire, to give a new birth to their country.

"As Africans, we have a vision, a hope, a prayer about what will come in the end. We see a new Zaire, perhaps with a new name, a Zaire which shall be democratic, peaceful, prosperous, a defender of human rights, an exemplar of what the new Africa should be, occupying the geographic space that it does, at the heart of our Africa.

"Much is now written about Zaire. Daily events assume proportions of permanence. The confounding ebbs and flows of social conflict are seen as defining moments. And yet, as Africans, we would like to believe that we know that, at the end, what all of us will see, thanks to the wisdom of the people of Zaire themselves, is not the heart of darkness, but the light of a new African star.

"Once more, out of Africa, out of these towns which have joined the vocabulary of places that are part of our common knowledge, Goma, Kisangani, Lubumbashi and Kinshasa, a new miracle slouches towards its birth."

Speaking in Johannesburg in September 1998 at the African Renaissance Conference, we said: "The end of a decades-old neo-colonial regime in the then Zaire had raised hopes that this equally important African country would itself seize the possibility created by this historic change to position itself as a leading fighter for the renewal of our Continent, with important positive results for the whole of Africa.

"Most regrettably, we now seem immersed in a situation of conflict which, among other things, has brought back to the national agenda of that country the enemy to progressive change represented by ethnic divisions and antagonisms. It is however clear that in the same way that we cannot avoid it, neither can the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo do without that process of fundamental transformation in the interests of the people, which constitutes the core of the vision of an African Renaissance."

Addressing the joint session of the Transitional Parliament of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Kinshasa in January 2004, I said:

"I am confident that ahead of us is a period of hope. I have seen it in the streets of Kinshasa, since we arrived yesterday. I have seen people lining the streets, waving with smiles on their faces, as we drive by. And I think they do so because they think that the only reason we could have met is not to plan war, not to perpetuate corruption, but to find ways and means by which we ensure that their lives change for the better.

"That is an expectation we cannot disappoint. It is an expectation, I am certain, we will not disappoint. We have to act with regard to one another as brothers and sisters. We have to act in relationship to one another as peers. It must therefore be possible for the people of the Congo to say to the people of South Africa, that we believe that you are doing wrong things, without any fear that the South Africans would turn around and say: These are internal matters. It must be possible for the people of South Africa to say to the people of the Congo: brothers and sisters: you are doing wrong things, without that being read as interference in internal affairs."

On 13 August 1998, we spoke at an event in Midrand, South Africa, hosted by our public broadcaster, the SABC, to promote the African Renaissance. On that occasion we said:

"The call for Africa's renewal, for an African Renaissance is a call to rebellion. We must rebel against the tyrants and the dictators, those who seek to corrupt our societies and steal the wealth that belongs to the people. We must rebel against the ordinary criminals who murder, rape and rob, and conduct war against poverty, ignorance and the backwardness of the children of Africa.

"Surely, there must be politicians and business people, youth and women activists, trade unionists, religious leaders, artists and professionals from the Cape to Cairo, from Madagascar to Cape Verde, who are sufficiently enraged by Africa's condition in the world to want to join the mass crusade for Africa's renewal. It is to these that we say, without equivocation, that to be a true African is to be a rebel in the cause of the African Renaissance, whose success in the new century and millennium is one of the great historic challenges of our time.

"Let the voice of the Senegalese, Sheik Anta Diop, be heard:

" 'The African who has understood us is the one who, after reading of our works, would have felt a birth in himself, of another person, impelled by an historical conscience, a true creator, a Promethean carrier of a new civilisation and perfectly aware of what the whole earth owes to his ancestral genius in all the domains of science, culture and religion.

" 'Today each group of people, armed with its rediscovered or reinforced cultural identity, has arrived at the threshold of the post industrial era. An atavistic, but vigilant, African optimism inclines us to wish that all nations would join hands in order to build a planetary civilisation instead of sinking down to barbarism.'"

What has happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo must give each Congolese, and indeed each African, a feeling of a birth in himself or herself, of another person, impelled by an historical conscience, a true creator, a Promethean carrier of a new civilisation.

Because of what they have done, the Congolese people have created the possibility for their country, and enhanced the capacity of our continent, to help build a planetary civilisation, instead of allowing humanity to sink into the shameless barbarism that every month claims the lives of thousands of innocent people in the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi localities.

Because they dared to rebel against the tyrants and the dictators, those who seek to corrupt our societies and steal the wealth that belongs to the people, the great masses of the Democratic Republic of Congo have served as a powerful propellant that will accelerate Africa's advance towards her renaissance.

Moses Mabhida

A hero of the people returns home

The body of Moses Mabhida, a giant of the liberation struggle and hero of our people, has returned home and is to be reburied on Saturday, 2 December in Pietermaritzburg. At the time of his death in Maputo, Mozambique in 1986, Mabhida was General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP).

Mabhida's remains were exhumed in Maputo last week. A farewell ceremony was held there on 22 November, followed by a national memorial service in Piet Retief the following day. Since returning to South Africa, Mabhida's remains have travelled through Mkhuze, Mpangeni, KwaDukuza and Ethekwini, where events have been held to honour and salute him. A night vigil is being held in Pietermaritzburg on 1 December. The reburial service at the Harry Gwala stadium is being held the following day.

Meeting in Ekurhuleni last month, the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) called on all South Africans "to honour this great hero of our liberation struggle as his remains are laid to rest in a free and democratic South Africa".

The NEC expressed deep appreciation to the leadership of Frelimo and the people of Mozambique for giving a piece of their land that served as a shroud for Moses Mabhida for the past 20 years.

Mabhida was a stalwart of the liberation movement over many decades, serving in senior positions in the ANC, SACP, South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Speaking at Mabhida's funeral in Maputo in 1986, then ANC President Oliver Tambo said: "A colossus because he was supremely human, Moses Mabhida has departed from our midst."

"A seeming void occupies his space, the air so still without his voice. Like the pure note of a bugle, that voice rose from the depths of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, and multiplied. It rose and grew and multiplied, reverberating from Durban's Curries Fountain until it was heard in Dar es Salaam and Havana, Moscow and Managua, London and Jakarta, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, Prague and Washington."

Reflecting on the many roles Mabhida played in the organs of the liberation movement, Tambo said: "This combination of functions sometimes surprised and puzzled our friends who wondered why Comrade Mabhida had to serve in so many senior positions in different organisations. But, above all, it enraged our enemies. This combination of functions in one leader of our people upset our adversaries because it reflected the permanence and acceptability among our people of the idea and the practice of the unity of the revolutionary democratic, the socialist and the trade union movements in the South African struggle for national liberation."

"It was part of Comrade Mabhida's greatness that, having quite early on understood the importance of the unity of these great movements, he succeeded in ably serving each one of them individually, and all of them together, as a collective front for national and social emancipation."

Moses Mbheki Mncane Mabhida was born at Thornville near Pietermaritzburg on 14 October 1923, into a peasant family that was later forced off the land. He started going to school in 1932 and benefited from several years of study interrupted by periods during which he had to work as a herder. One of his teachers was the late stalwart Harry Gwala, who encouraged him to join the ANC and trade union movement. It is therefore fitting that the reburial service of Mabhida is being held at the stadium in Pietermaritzburg named after Harry Gwala, the same place where the ANC launched its successful election campaign in 2004.

Mabhida joined the Communist Party in 1942. After many unionists were banned in 1952-1953, his colleagues in the newly revived underground party urged Mabhida to undertake full-time union work. He started with the Howick Rubber Workers' Union and the Chemical Workers in Pietermaritzburg, Durban and other parts of the then Natal. In the next decade, he organised scores of workers across the province.

He was a central participant in the development of SACTU and was elected a vice-president at its first congress in 1955. He also served as secretary of the ANC's Pietermaritzburg branch in the mid-1950s, and had a close working relationship with ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli. Mabhida became a member of the ANC's National Executive Committee (NEC) around 1956, and in 1958-1959 was acting chair of the Natal ANC.

A week after the declaration of the 1960 state of emergency, Mabhida was sent abroad by SACTU to represent the organisation internationally. For the next three years he organised international solidarity activities in Prague with the World Federation of Trade Unions, and with the developing African trade union federations.

In 1963, following his re-election to the NEC at the ANC's Lobatse conference in October 1962, he was asked by Oliver Tambo to devote himself to the development of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Mabhida then underwent military training, and as MK commissar became the chief political instructor of new military recruits, and later served as the commander of MK. Mabhida's repeated re-election to the NEC, his appointment to the Revolutionary Council on its creation in 1969, and later to the Politico-Military Council which replaced it, reflected his popularity among ANC members.

After the ANC's First National Consultative Conference at Morogoro in 1969 he was instrumental in setting up the ANC's Department of Intelligence and Security. He was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party in November 1979, replacing Moses Kotane, who had died the previous year. In the 1980s, Mabhida continued his work with political and logistical planning for MK, based at various times in Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland. In 1985, while on a mission to Havana, Mabhida suffered a stroke, and after a year of illness, died of a heart attack in Maputo and was buried there in March 1986. He was given a Mozambican state funeral with full military honours.

In 2002, Mabhida was posthumously awarded the Order of the Baobab, one of the national orders, awarded to South African citizens for distinguished service well above and beyond the call of duty.

"It is rarely given to a people that they should produce a single person who epitomises their hopes and expresses their common resolve as Moses Mabhida did. In simple language he could convey the aspirations of all our people in their magnificent variety, explain the fears and prejudices of the unorganised and sense the feelings of even the most humble among our people," Tambo said.

"Moses Mbheki Mabhida will be there when the trumpet sounds the salute to freedom," he said.

More Information:

• Communique of the SACP Central Committee on the death of Moses Mabhida
• Speech by OR Tambo at the funeral of Moses Mabhida, March 1986

Gauteng survey

Who are the ANC's members and what do they think?

The ANC in Gauteng has recently released the results of an extensive survey on the profile of members in the province and their views on the organisation, its direction and other topical issues.

While the ANC has a number of organisational structures and forums for branch members to articulate their views, the survey provides a more analytical insight into who are the ANC's members and what they think. Because the survey was restricted to Gauteng, it reflects only a particular section of the ANC's national membership.

The study used a number of methods to understand the "values, attitudes, needs and objectives of ANC members and branch office-bearers". These included in-depth interviews with leaders of Alliance partners, focus groups, participant observation at branch meetings, and a structured survey of paid-up ANC members and branch officials.

Explaining the value of the survey, ANC Gauteng Provincial Secretary David Makhura said: "It is in the interest of progressive parties and movements that systematic studies are undertaken to track the positive or negative impact of social transformation processes on the forces that purport to be agents for change. Such studies will help to identify the conscious intervention necessary to mitigate and minimise the negatives while reinforcing and enhancing the positives."

"Research cannot replace grassroots organising and direct interaction with households through door-to-door work. It can only perfect mass work and make such work more responsive to community and membership concerns. Taken together with the ongoing Imvuselelo Campaign aimed at strengthening the grassroots structures and involving the membership in community development work, the issues raised by the membership in the survey constitute a strategic agenda for the Gauteng structures towards the Centenary of the ANC in 2012."

The survey indicates that ANC members in Gauteng are "irrepressibly positive". Nine out of ten ANC members and branch leaders believe the ANC has changed for the better since 1994. Just 1 in 20 believe that it has changed for the worse. According to the report: "There is a visibly positive energy in the Gauteng membership that gives the leadership a solid foundation on which to base future interventions."

The ANC's members in Gauteng span a number of generations of the movement. A quarter of branch members and leaders joined the ANC before 1969. Very few joined in the first half of the 1970s, rising to 17% between 1977 and 1989. Just over a quarter of current members joined between the unbanning of the ANC in 1990 and the first democratic elections in 1994. A further 17% have joined since.

Over a third of these members also belong to the ANC Women's League, and just over a fifth belong to the Youth League. Many are also members of Alliance formations, with 29% being members of the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO), 16% also being members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and 14% being members of affiliates of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

The economic position of ANC members in Gauteng differ widely, with poverty a daily reality for many. A quarter of members do not have access to running water. Using the 'expanded' definition, 42% of members are unemployed. A quarter of members have a monthly household disposable income of between R1,000 and R3,000. Around 23% have less, and 28% have more. A further 24% did not answer the question.

A substantial part of the survey deals with the state of branches and the strategies used to strengthen them. The impact of regional and provincial deployees was widely appreciated. A large proportion of members, 58%, thought the ANC leadership should communicate with members by visiting branches. Others, 36%, thought branch meetings were the best way for the ANC to communicate with members, while 4% preferred briefing documents, and only 1% e-mails.

Importantly, 87% of members said the 50/50 gender quota was a good thing, while 5% thought it was bad.

In identifying the main issues facing their communities, almost half mentioned unemployment, followed by crime, HIV and Aids, poverty and poor services. Members expressed a high level of confidence in the national parliament, followed by the provincial administration and councillors. The police, by contrast, were rated particularly low on the confidence scale.

"The implication - explicit in the qualitative report - is that the ANC is and will remain the key force for progressive change, and needs to deepen its pro-poor stance and speed up delivery... But there is a second dimension to this, an internal one, where respondents are aware that the ANC's political project can be de-railed by on-going internal disputes, lack of consultation, and so on. And the point that respondents are making is that the ANC must get its own house in order if it is to meet the massive challenges that face it now, as well as new challenges it will be facing by 2012.

"The survey has shown conclusively that the ANC in Gauteng has a powerful human resource base - a membership that is optimistic, committed, pro-poor, active, and deeply embedded in civil society... In short, a membership base that any political party anywhere would envy. What matters is that the ANC provides appropriate leadership to focus members' energies on the tasks at hand and join with the membership in fighting for a better life for all, rather than allow on-going politicking to dissipate energy and commitment."

More Information:

• Profile and perspectives of ANC membership in Gauteng, November 2006

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