Johnson Ngwevela, 'the King of Langa', as he was affectionately known in the forties and 'fifties; died in Cape Town on the 27th July 1987. He was in his late eighties. His 'constituency' stretched from nearby Nyanga, Elsies River and Windermere to the distant areas of Paarl, Stellenbosch, Worcester and many other areas in between and beyond these better known areas in the vastnesses of the Western Cape.
He knew and visited practically everyone of the many shantytowns, in this wide expanse. Every shack was open house to this modest, caring and popular man - a leader of the most downtrodden of his people.
Ngwevela in his early years worked as peddler and labourer but later became the secretary and interpreter for Sam Kahn's legal practice. He also became the political agent for several candidates standing for office to Parliament and provincial and town councils.
But Ngwevela's main interest lay in organising the extra-parliamentary opposition to the various racist governments. He became chairman of the ANC in the Western Cape and also served for many years on the District Committee of the Communist Party in Cape Town.
In the run-up to the Anti-Communist Bill of 1950, Ngwevela was given the unenviable task of officially dissolving most of the C.P. branches in the various African areas. He met with bitter hostility from those who initially believed the dissolution to be a ruse: He promised to return and give them guidance and this he did by surreptitiously travelling at night after work for hundreds of miles over many months to persuade them to intensify their work in the ANC and this, they did because of their great trust in him.
Ngwevela was one of 12 signatories who appealed to all black people to stay away from work on July 26th in 1950 in the Western Cape when the Nats were issuing all kinds of dark threats to the oppressed masses. Later, in May 1952, he was amongst the first to receive banning orders from the ANC and many other organisations. He had already been placed on the 'black list' of 'named' Communists by the so-called Minister of Justice - 'Blackie' Swart.
Ngwevela appealed against these bannings and the Appellate Division held that the Minister could not impose such a ban without being given a hearing. As a result of this judgement scores of 'named' people were allowed to speak in public again and received 'unbanning' notices to the great embarrassment of the Nationalist government. The law was later amended to reimpose these bannings.
Comrade Johnson was the first person to defy 'the unjust laws in 1952 when he was smuggled into the packed Salt River Institute to declare the start of the great Defiance Campaign.
Ngwevela was a deeply religious man and argued that he could see no incompatibility between religion and Marxism since it was the great many similarities between the two and not the differences which mattered in the fight against apartheid.
Over the Years Ngwevela was gradually losing his sight. He was refused permission to go overseas for an operation to his eyes. The effect of the many bannings and his poor health restricted his activities but this did not prevent the authorities from interning him for the duration of the Sharpeville emergency in 1960.
In the last years of his life, Ngwevela was restricted to his home in Langa by a combination of banning orders and almost complete blindness.
We send our condolences to his widow, Isobel and family in South Africa and our special sympathy to his grand-daughter, Pauline his great grandchild in exile in our ranks of the ANC in which cause he was such a great champion
Hamba Kahle.