ANC Today -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 8, No. 24, 20 - 26 June 2008 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Reburial of Cassius Maake: A freedom fighter returns home * Participatory democracy: The voices of the poor must be heard in Parliament -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REBURIAL OF CASSIUS MAAKE A freedom fighter returns home The mortal remains of Job Tabane, known in exile as Cassius Maake, returned to South African soil this morning, 20 June 2008. A senior leader of the ANC, South African Communist Party (SACP) and Umkhonto we Sizwe, Tabane was assassinated in Swaziland in 1987 and buried in Zambia. His remains will be reburied in Rustenburg in the North West on Saturday 28 June. Job Shimankana Tabane was born on the 6 December 1942 at Maile Village (Diepkuil), 35 km outside Rustenburg. Maile village fell within a cluster of Batswana ba Phokeng villages under the Bafokeng Tribal Authority now Royal Bafokeng Administration. In the same year Tabane was baptised by the Hermannsburg Lutheran Church at Maile. His father was Philemon Tabane, a migrant labourer, and his mother was Sedialapa Wilhelmina Elizabeth Khunou-Tabane, a domestic worker at Melrose in Johannesburg. Sedialapa was known to every one as MaJopa (colloquial for Job's mother). Tabane started school in 1949, at Diepkuil Primary School where Gilbert Rapoo was the headmaster. Like many rural boys Tabane had to combine schoolwork with looking after his grandfather's cattle. In 1953, when he was 12 years old, Tabane left for his paternal home at Mosenthal, about 15 km outside Rustenburg, where he enrolled for Standard II at Tweetepoort Bantu School. He completed his Standard V there in 1956. At the beginning of 1957 Tabane went to Bierkraal Bantu School at Tlaseng village where he graduated with a Standard VI certificate. The following year, he joined his parents in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, enrolled for Form 1 at Moemise- Sekitla Secondary School in Hammanskraal north of Pretoria. He was a boarder in the school hostel. At Sekitla, Tabane became popular for his prowess in softball, showing characteristics that also shaped his political involvement. Young and small as he was, from mid 1960 Tabane displayed his assertiveness and bravery by openly insisting on attending the banned African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) political meetings deemed to have been reserved for senior students. It is likely that the young Tabane was recruited into politics in one of these late evening political meetings. Despite his political involvement at such a tender age, Tabane successfully completed his Junior Certificate (JC) at the end of 1960. In early 1960, however, Tabane's family life was disrupted when they were forcibly removed to Diepkloof in Soweto, under a wave of forced removals that swept the Reef from late 1950s under the Group Areas legislation. This experience left a scare in his life as it re-emerged when he joined the underground political activities. At the beginning of 1961, he enrolled for matriculation but his involvement in a food protest led to his expulsion from the school, which left him unemployed for the rest of the year. In 1962, he enrolled at Bethel Training College in Transkei. He was also expelled at the end of the year, although the reasons are unclear. This spelt the end of Tabane's schooling career in South Africa. In 1963 at the age of 21, Tabane returned to Johannesburg, where he found a job at a pharmacy on the corner of Delvers and Jeppe Street in downtown Johannesburg. Unknown to his family, his life was undergoing a radical change. The arrest of Nelson Mandela and the other Rivonia trialists scared him. He would say to his cousins that in the event he got arrested he would talk until the judges got tired of listening. This kind of talk seemed deliberately designed to hide the fact that he was becoming active in the underground. He spent most of his time reading political literature under the guise that he was studying medicine. According to his cousin, Tabane was frequently visited by older men with grey hair, which created suspicions with MaJopa. She confronted Tabane, who convincingly maintained the lie that they were teaching in medicine. She was surprised to find in early March 1964 that all the 'medicine' books just disappeared. Into exile On the afternoon of 9 March 1964, Tabane left Johannesburg by train to Zeerust en route to Botswana to go into exile. From that day, he adopted the name Cassius Maake as his nom de guerre while working for the ANC and its military wing Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK). It was at the juncture that Cass (as he was popularly known among his comrades) committed and dedicated his life to the liberation struggle. From Botwana, Tabane moved to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. In the same year he was sent to Odessa in the Soviet Union (USSR) for military training. There he was joined by a group of young men from Dinokana in Zeerust. As these young men were recruited from cattle posts, they were illiterate, which became a problem because they were to learn English in their military training. It is here that Tabane's teaching acumen and skills became apparent. Dedicated and selfless as he was known to be, he committed himself to translate and interpret the English lessons in Setswana for his compatriots. He thus became their teacher, translator, mentor and friend. After training at Odessa, Tabane moved back to Kongwa, Tanzania where for many years he continued with the literacy training programme, largely focused on arithmetic, mathematics and English. Subsequently, he was summoned to the ANC Headquarters in Dar es Salaam where he was put in charge of Radio Freedom, the voice of the ANC and MK. At Radio Freedom, he was very passionate about his job and successfully formed a dedicated team of radio announcers. At this time he was also closely working with South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). In 1972 Tabane was sent back to the Soviet Union, this time to Moscow, where he attended the Young Communist League Party School commonly known as Komsomol. This was meant to prepare him for bigger tasks to follow. The changing political landscape in Southern Africa around 1975-1976 that led to the independence of Mozambique and Angola with the fall of the Portuguese military regime and Soweto student revolts, offered Tabane an opportunity to prove his mettle as a leader. Tabane was posted to Angola to open an ANC office in Luanda, where he became the ANC's Chief Representative (the equivalent of ambassador). There were many difficulties, but Tabane handled them steadily, with a soft voice, humble character, patience, a quiet laugh, but with resolute determination and commitment. His natural leadership character assisted him to triumph in the mammoth task of establishing camps for the avalanche of 1976 students swelling the ranks of the ANC. He also became the key negotiator between his organisation, the Cuban and the Angolans. In 1978, Tabane was recalled to Zambia where he was entrusted with a senior position in MK structures of the Deputy Secretary of the Revolutionary Council (RC), and fulfilling other functions in military headquarters. Among others, he became the head of ordinance charged with the responsibility to register and record movement of arms and other military equipment, setting up deadletter boxes, identifying infiltration routes in the frontline states, and deploying combatants when necessary. Tabane's loyalty to the movement led to him serving in the Politico Military Council (PMC). In early 1982, his devotion to duty led to him and his senior commander, Joe Modise, being arrested and sentenced to a six month prison term in Botswana for illegal weapons transportation. Tabane was also a father and a husband. On 20 June 1979, he married Thokozani Grace, aka Nozipho Modisane. In this marriage they were blessed with two children, a daughter, Phakiso, born on the 22 December 1979, and a son, Karabo, born on 1 February 1982. It was no surprise when, at the Second Consultative Conference of the ANC, held at Kabwe in Zambia in June 1985, at the age of 43 years he was elected to become one of the youngest members of the National Executive Committee (NEC). He was also a senior member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP). Here was a man of humble origins who rose through the ranks by dedication, courteousness, diligence, and the will to succeed from the lowest levels of the ANC and MK to become a national leader. What made Tabane a great leader among others was his philosophy that Òwhen you are in a leading position always respect those under you because tomorrow they are your leadersÓ, from which he never strayed in action or in words. Tabane's exemplary life was cut short when, on 9 July 1987, while performing duties in Swaziland, the taxi in which he and fellow combatant Peter Sello Motau were travelling was forced off the road and they were gunned down. They both died on the spot and a hero, soldier, revolutionary, and philosopher was lost. Today, more than two decades after that fateful day, we celebrate his return home. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY The voices of the poor must be heard in Parliament Over the past fourteen years, Parliament has passed numerous pieces of legislation not only to address the legacy of the past, but more importantly, to lay a policy foundation for the birth of a South Africa able to take its rightful place in the family of nations. As we progressively unshackle ourselves from the past, and march along the journey to realise the better day visualised and codified in our Constitution, it is indeed correct that at particular moments we pause to evaluate the kind of progress we are making. The cause for the pursuit of humane aspirations has made great progress in our country. We cannot and should not allow the challenges of the time to blind us of the immense strides we together have made. In the adoption of Parliament's mission and vision, we have laid a solid foundation in locating the institution at the heart of the process of transformation. The Constitution requires Parliament to facilitate public involvement. Our committees allow for public involvement, and there exists therefore, a limited degree of the participatory aspect of democracy. By and large, the output of committees is good. However, public participation in committees is impacted upon by the broader social and economic realities. The fact that large sections of our communities are poor and live in underdeveloped areas, while a minority is well off and owns the means of livelihood, defines which section can in a sustainable way consistently take part in committee public hearings and exert meaningful influence on the general course of the evolution process. To realise fully the demand that 'The People Shall Govern' requires Parliament to make its contribution through finding creative ways to reach out to the people. One of the challenges relates to the issue of expanding the capacity of the institution's detailed programmes further to solidify the link between all the people and their Parliament. The interaction between the institution and the well off sections of our communities is generally substantive and robust, while the engagement with the poor tends to be intermittent and more about the immediate needs. Therefore in a country where the majority of citizens do not have the means to participate directly in the affairs of their Parliament, the constituency aspect of our work becomes critical. The institution should therefore provide more and varied support towards the realisation of this objective. We acknowledge the work that has been done, as well as ongoing efforts to deepen contact with the people. These include the People's Assembly, the Women's and Youth Parliament and similar endeavours. Nevertheless, we need a paradigm shift in this regard. The capacity of these programmes to have a lasting impact on the lives of the poor is limited. A lot of resources are provided to support a Member of Parliament. However the work of an MP in their constituency receives inadequate support. In so doing, it is not just the MP we are under-resourcing, but such inadequacy extends the life of the marginalisation we aim to end. Over and above the strengthening of the human and material support to Parliamentary Constituency Offices, we should reshape constituency work to help build an active populace, so that all our people, rich and poor, can develop the sense to view themselves not only as subjects of the country, but, more importantly, perceive themselves, feel and live as citizens of the country. Our detractors at times accuse us of what they refer to as the lack of confrontation in Parliament. The proponents of this approach seek to persuade MPs to present stage-managed stunt shows, the shouting and hurling of thinly veiled insults against the executive, in the hope that this theatrical conduct will convince the electorate that the executive is being held to account. We are not in Parliament for that. The people of our land expect us to debate meaningfully the progress we are making in the process of realising the humane society visualised in our Constitution. Furthermore, the need to account cannot be a one-sided show. As MPs and political parties, with the same vigour we demonstrate when we call the executive to account, we must also be prepared to account regularly to the electorate. This elevated democratic institution of our people must live up to its codified social duty as a forum for public consideration of issues, the passing of legislation and the scrutiny and overseeing of executive action. Within this context, it should be expected and indeed welcomed by all, that we shall continue to perform our functions dutifully and to express our views openly, without fear or favour. This as part of fulfilling the mandate our people have bestowed on us, but also to contribute to the national effort aimed at building a culture of free, open, meaningful and vibrant societal debate as a fundamental element of a democratic life. We now need to strengthen the participatory aspect of our democracy. We need to take deliberate action to ensure the involvement of the poor, the vulnerable and marginalised, as part of deepening democratic practice and strengthening social cohesion. * Nathi Mthethwa is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) and Chief Whip in the National Assembly. This is an extract from a speech during the budget vote debate of the Parliament of South Africa, 10 June 2008. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2008/at24.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html To unsubscribe yourself from the ANC Today mailing list go to: http://lists.anc.org.za/mailman/listinfo/anctoday