Nelson Mandela made it clear throughout his political life
that his contribution in the struggle against apartheid always involved working
with comrades. Included were his close
friends Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu and he expressed his love for Bram
Fischer in Long Walk to Freedom. There were many others, two of whom were
comrades Ruth First and Joe Slovo. First
and Slovo married in 1949, but their relationships with Nelson Mandela started
earlier, in the mid-1940s, while all three were students at the University of
Witwatersrand. Besides collaborating on
various protest actions, they were often together at Ismail Meer’s flat, the
hub for young revolutionary South Africans in Johannesburg between 1943 and
1946. Mandela as well as other comrades
described Meer’s flat as “dreary,
badly furnished, and depressing,” yet Nelson Mandela recalled, “There we
studied, talked, and even danced until the early hours in the morning. It became a kind of headquarters for ‘young
freedom fighters.”
Madiba
also became acquainted with Slovo because they were both law students at
Wits. Joe Slovo described Mandela at the
time, “A very proud, self-contained black man, who was very conscious of his
blackness.” Slovo’s description is
intriguing because when the men met Mandela was wed to African
Nationalism. Also, it was Nelson
Mandela, on more than one subsequent occasion that described Joe Slovo as nonracial
man. Ruth, Joe, and other comrades
helped to convince Mandela that imperialism, class disparity, and racism were
all connected.
In
the beginning, Mandela and most of his ANC colleagues viewed resistance as a
nationalist struggle with a goal of black emancipation. Joe Slovo and Ruth First were members of the
Communist Party of South Africa and their position stated that a nationalist
movement could not end oppression because it did not address the essential
issues of world imperialism and a class-divided South African society. But Ruth
and Joe, and people like Rusty Bernstein and Jack Simons, worked hard to build an
alliance, as did ANC members like Walter Sisulu and eventually Nelson Mandela.
In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela
writes that his friendships with Moses Kotane, Ruth First, and Ismail Meer
helped him to reconsider his position. The
understanding between the ANC and CP was that South Africa represented a unique
struggle referred to as “colonialism of a special type.” Jack Simons reflected
that it was the commonly shared understanding of the organizations that there
was a direct relationship between the “national libratory struggle and the
struggle for socialism” that brought the SACP and ANC together and nurtured
resistance politics and actions throughout the struggle against apartheid. Almost
fifty years ago, South African historian and Mandela biographer, Mary Benson,
concluded that the alliance of white communists and the ANC led “to a large
extent to the refusal of so many African leaders to turn racialist.”
“Good-looking,
very proud, very dignified, very prickly, rather sensitive, perhaps even arrogant.
But of course he was exposed to all the
humiliations,” was how Ruth First described Nelson Mandela in the late
1940s. Mandela also remembered meeting
Ruth and Joe. “I met Joe Slovo and his
future wife, Ruth First,” recalled Mandela. “Then as now, Joe had one of the
sharpest, most incisive minds I have ever encountered. He was an ardent Communist, and was known for
his high-spirited parties. Ruth had an outgoing personality and was a gifted
writer.” Besides her work as a
journalist, academic, and writer, Ruth First edited Madiba’s manuscript that
was smuggled out of prison in the 1960s and became the book, No Easy Walk to Freedom. She also wrote the preface and reminded
readers that “some of his speeches are missing or unavailable because in police
files.”
Ruth
and Joe were both involved in the Defiance Campaign in 1952. Led by Nelson
Mandela,
whom Joe referred to as the “Volunteer-in-Chief,” black South Africans
protested against pass laws and other racist affronts. The ANC ended the campaign in 1953 when over
8,000 people were arrested, many of whom were flogged during their detainment.
Ruth and Joe also represented the alliance in their professional lives: Joe in his
legal representation of black South Africans and Ruth in her work as a
journalist and managing editor of The
Guardian. There were many ANC
actions that led to the government pressing charges against Nelson Mandela,
Ruth First, Joe Slovo, and 153 comrades who went to court in 1956 in the now
infamous Treason Trial. Joe spoke of
Madiba’s position before and during the trial saying that Mandela “did not harbor any illusions about the
ultimate possibility of converting the ruling class without a tough
revolutionary struggle.”
The
Treason Trial, officially named Regina v. Adams and 155 Others, began on
December 19, 1957, with a preliminary hearing. Besides Madiba, Ruth and Joe, defendants
included, Lilian Ngoyi, Moses Kotane, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Gert
Sibande, Rusty Bernstein, Z. K. Matthews, Ahmed Kathrada, Paul Joseph, Jack Hodgson,
Helen Joseph, Chief Luthuli, and many others – all Madiba’s comrades. Of the
156 people charged, 105 were black, twenty-one Indian, seven coloured, and
twenty-three white. Racialism even determined making bail — blacks paid 50
pounds, Indians and coloureds 100 pounds, and whites were charged 250 pounds.
All of the people charged were released on bond within two weeks of arrest. Despite prison conditions that mirrored South
African societal racism, Nelson Mandela described the experience as “the
largest and longest unbanned meeting of the Congress Alliance in years.”
People
from all over the country gathered to honor and support leaders they viewed as
people’s heroes. Leaflets were distributed and placards read, “We Stand By Our
Leaders.” Singing and chanting went on throughout the trial days, and if
anything, the crowds increased during the nine months of the trial’s
preliminary stage. The people who gathered were clearly angry, yet there was
still a celebratory spirit that was also shared by the defendants. Nelson
Mandela, Rusty Bernstein, and Walter Sisulu, as well as Joe Slovo, described
laughter and singing as they were driven to and from the Johannesburg Drill
Hall in gray prison vans. Joe served as one of the defense lawyers even though
he was a defendant, and witnessed the disorganization and incompetence that
guided the beginning of the trial. He equated the continuing mishaps as
directly corresponding to the farcical nature of the charges and the trial.
In
his 1958 book, The Treason Cage,
Anthony Sampson wrote about Ruth and Joe in biographical chapters as leaders in
the movement against apartheid. Interestingly, Sampson did not do the same for
Nelson Mandela. In Sampson’s subsequent book, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, he explained in a rather
tongue-in-cheek manner that at the time he believed that Mandela was too
detached to be a future leader. He wrote that the names First and Slovo “were
often on African lips,” and noted that “Ruth First, though only thirty-two, was
already part of South African history.”
Sampson concluded, acknowledging the importance of both Joe and Ruth to
black people and the struggle:
They
were attractive, definite people, who epitomized what Africans required from
Europeans: they gave large, expansive parties in their low modern house near
Sophiatown, where all the races came together in a pocket of racelessness, and
they worked with a sense of common purpose which helped to obliterate any resentment
of domination or bossiness. Joe Slovo had what Africans most admire—a sharp and
fearless legal brain, which could bully police witnesses and open up the cracks
in the law, and the dislike of the workings of the state that Africans
instinctively feel. Ruth First was the Johannesburg representative of New Age which voiced the scandals so
discreetly hushed-up elsewhere. In its foreign policy New Age was as obedient to
Moscow as the Daily Worker, but in
its home reporting it reflected what all Africans were saying, and what many
white Liberals would have said if they dared. Ruth First had the aura of New Age about her.
On
April 13, 1958, the charges against the majority of The Treason Trial
defendants were dropped for lack of evidence.
Ruth First spontaneously announced that there would be a celebratory
party at their home. Walter and
Albertina Sisulu attended as did many of the other defendants and people from the
Treason Defense Fund, including Ambrose Reeves, the Bishop of Johannesburg.
According to Sampson, one of the attendees was an American named Millard
Shirley who was later identified as a CIA operative. Notably missing was Nelson
Mandela, who immediately went into hiding after the verdict. If later reports
are correct, it was Shirley who provided the tip to the Special Branch that led
to Mandela’s arrest in 1962.
Both
during and after the trial, Ruth First continued her radical journalism. Nelson Mandela as well as revolutionary
leaders throughout the continent aided her in this work. More specifically, as the editor of the
paper, Fighting Talk, from 1955 to
1960, when the newspaper was discontinued because of the apartheid regime
declaring a state of emergency, Ruth was able to attract an incredibly eclectic
group of writers. The list of South African struggle stalwarts is impressive in
itself -- Tambo, Kotane, Luthuli, Matthews, Mbeki, Dadoo, and of course Nelson
Mandela. But she also attracted from
afar—Kenyatta, Ben Bella, Nkrumah, Touré, and Nyerere. Never before had there
been a list of revolutionary African leaders who wrote for the same
publication. Fighting Talk also published
Father Trevor Huddleston’s farewell to South Africa in 1955 and letters from
South African writer Eskia’ Mphahlele, who at the time was in exile in Ghana.
Although
underground, Nelson Mandela was politically involved meeting with comrades and
planning struggle. The meetings included
Joe Slovo and Ruth First. After the
infamous Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, an ANC and SACP joint committee that
included Sisulu, Mandela, Nokwe, and Joe convened at the Slovo home in
Roosevelt Park to plan a nationwide general strike memorializing the murders at
Sharpeville and Langa. They decided to forcefully proceed on an anti-pass
campaign. Chief Luthuli publicly burned his passbook in Pretoria. There were
demonstrations throughout the country and for a moment some government
ministers appeared to realize that a relaxation of apartheid oppression might
be necessary to avoid revolution. In
addition to the mass demonstrations, the United Nations, the U.S. State
Department, British Parliament, and the Dutch condemned the South African
government. Members of Parliament publicly blamed the victims. A week later
both the ANC and PAC, like the SACP, were banned as the government declared a
State of Emergency. Police followed with pre-dawn raids arresting 19,000
members of the SACP, ANC, PAC, Congress Movement, Non-European Unity Movement, Liberal
Party, and others who challenged, or who the government believed challenged,
the apartheid state.
In
1961, Joe Slovo was directly involved in the forming of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK),
the underground military operation, that though formed by ANC and SACP leaders,
initially claimed itself an independent organization, a distinction that Joe referred
to as a “necessary fiction.” He called MK “the people’s war.” Nonviolence as a
tactic was criticized in a paper by Michael Harmel, a member of the SACP
Central Committee, as being unrealistic at a time when the government treated
passive resistance as treason. Using this paper as a foundation, leaders in
both the ANC and SACP agreed that it was time for armed struggle. Thus, with
some funding from African states and Communist governments, Umkhonto we Sizwe
was secretly launched, with Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo as the High Command.
Their deputies were Govan Mbeki and Jack Hodgson. Contacts made previously by the
SACP enabled cadres to be sent to China for six months to train as soldiers.
The extended plan was to station the cadres in other African states for further
training and planning for armed struggle against the apartheid regime.
Tactically, Mandela and Slovo chose to initiate the mission with a sabotage
campaign within the country. Regional commands were formed throughout South
Africa to engineer local acts of subversion. The plan was to bomb government
buildings and infrastructure—with no attacks on places inhabited by people.
Even within this campaign a small bit of hope remained that the oppression might
end without all-out armed struggle. The apartheid regime did not agree.
Ruth and
Joe helped organize the purchase of Lilliesleaf, the property that the
government raided in 1963. This lead to
the infamous Rivonia Trial in 1964, when top ANC leaders, including Nelson
Mandela, Govan Mbeki, and Walter Sisulu, were convicted of sabotage. At the
conclusion of the trial, except for Bram Fischer, the leaders of both the ANC
and SACP were either incarcerated or in exile. Despite valiant attempts, the
struggle inside South Africa was moribund. As Gregory Houston writes, “It was
one of the most severe blows that MK, the ANC and SACP underground would
suffer.”
While
Nelson Mandela was underground in 1961, Ruth arranged for a television
interview with the future president and British reporter Brian Widlake. It was
in this interview, much to the dismay of some of his ANC brethren, that Mandela
publicly broached the possibility of moving past nonviolent resistance. “If the
government reaction is to crush by naked force our non-violent demonstrations
we will have to seriously reconsider our
tactics. In my mind, we are closing a chapter on this question of non-violent
policy.”
Evident
to most people in the struggle by 1962, Nelson Mandela was the leader of the
resistance. The future president’s underground freedom ended on August 5, 1962,
after he had gone to speak at a meeting in Durban. As noted, Mandela’s
whereabouts were probably revealed to the Special Branch by Millard Shirley,
the CIA operative who attended Ruth and Joe’s Treason Trial party. Knowing that
Shirley was at the party and that he was the person who exposed Nelson Mandela
is one of many events that justify Joe Slovo often using the term, “Keystone
Cops,” as a descriptor of some resistance actions—before, during, and after the
early 1960s.
Following
Mandela’s arrest, Joe Slovo was not only one of Madiba’s lawyers, he was also
fully involved in a strategy to assist in his escape from prison. A working
committee that included Joe Modise, Harold Wolpe, and Joe met at Rivonia where
they reviewed various schemes. Most of them were unrealistic. For example, one proposal
was for Arthur Goldreich, nominal owner of Rivonia, and in the not too distant
future a prison escapee with Harold Wolpe, Abdulhay Jassat, and Mosie Moola, to
devise a mask so that Mandela could impersonate a fellow prisoner. After much
discussion, Wolpe, Modise, and Joe agreed on an intricate plan to facilitate
the escape during Mandela’s trial. The
plan became moot. On the eve of the trial the South African government
transferred Nelson Mandela to Pretoria to face his charges. Not only was the
escape strategy defunct, Joe was no longer able to serve as Mandela’s attorney
due to his latest banning order restricting him to Johannesburg. He appealed to
the court in hope of being permitted to travel to Pretoria for the trial. Joe’s
request was denied. This virtually ended his vocation as an attorney; he no
longer could represent the people he had served throughout the country.
Ruth
First and Joe Slovo had departed the country by the time Nelson Mandela was
sentenced to life in prison in 1964. Joe
had left in 1963, before the Rivonia Raid, and was on a mission with J. B.
Marks to introduce Umkhonto we Sizwe to newly independent African
countries. Ruth was imprisoned in 1963
and her prison documentary, 117 Days,
explains her certainty that she would be charged with Madiba and other
comrades. That did not occur, and Ruth
went into exile early in 1964. Both Joe
Slovo and Ruth First longed to be back in South Africa and they both also felt
that somehow they had failed their comrades who remained in the country. Ruth spoke with a British reporter about both
being in the United Kingdom and the apartheid reality in South Africa.
When
I first came over to London and traveled on the tube I’d panic because I kept
thinking black people would get into trouble for travelling with white. It was
an automatic reaction. In South Africa you can’t even talk openly to an African
without creating a scene—you’re supposed to walk past people you
know
and like because they’re black. I remember once talking to Nelson Mandela
outside the post office in Johannesburg—I’ve known him since I was a
student—and as we talked everyone began to stare. Well, the more fuss there
was, the more that proud handsome man kept on talking. But the fact, just the fact,
that we were talking as equals was creating a sensation.
Shortly
after arriving in London, Ruth completed Govan Mbeki’s book, The Peasants’ Revolt , as well as a collection
of Nelson Mandela’s writings and speeches, No
Easy Walk to Freedom. The latter,
similar to 117 Days, was released in
1965. At the time of printing, Mandela was beginning decades of imprisonment on
Robben Island. The preface to No Easy
Walk to Freedom was brief. Ruth explained the book’s process and as noted
reminded the reader that some of Mandela’s speeches were unavailable because
their only home at the time was in the South African police archives. The book
includes Mandela’s voice between 1953 and 1963.
Ruth
First would never see Nelson Mandela again.
After agents of the South African government assassinated her in 1982,
and various times thereafter, Madiba honored Ruth First’s inestimable
contributions to the war against apartheid.
One example is his address to the Ruth First Tenth Anniversary
Commemoration Trust in Cape Town. Many
comrades attended as did Joe, Shawn, Gillian, and Robyn Slovo.
Ruth
spent her life in the service of the people of Southern Africa. She went to
prison for her beliefs. She was murdered because of her acute political acumen
combined with her resolute refusal to abandon her principles. Her life, and her
death, remains a beacon to all who love liberty. Many of you here today also
knew Ruth personally, and will pay fitting tribute to her. But for us the
assassination of Ruth First was not only a personal tragedy of immense
proportions. It was part of a pattern of the systematic elimination of leading
opponents of apartheid. Ten years later this commemoration is most appropriate,
because it is only now that information is beginning to come out about the
death squads and the crimes committed in defense of apartheid.
Two years before Mandela’s
speech, after he had been released from almost 28 years of incarceration, and after
Joe Slovo returned from 27 years in exile, the two men were reunited in person
for the first time. Although there is
not clear documentation, it appears that in the late-1980s Nelson Mandela,
Oliver Tambo, and Joe Slovo did speak by phone while Madiba was still in jail
and Tambo and Slovo were exiled in Zambia.
The subject was negotiations about negotiations or more succinctly,
Mandela’s talks with representatives of the apartheid regime. Between 1990 and 1994, however, Nelson
Mandela came to rely on Joe Slovo in various ways. From the time Madiba gave his first speech in
Cape Town after being released from Victor Verster prison February 11, 1990, it
was clear to almost everyone in the world that he was the leader of the South
African people. But negotiations were
imminent with the apartheid government, and it is here where Mandela and
Slovo’s lives intersected. Thus, on July
19, Joe Slovo made the announcement ending the armed struggle. Just ten days later, Nelson Mandela was
addressing the re-launch of the South African Communist Party (SACP).
The termination
of the armed struggle was clearly a necessity for formal negotiations to
commence. And Joe Slovo was the perfect
messenger. The ANC’s National Executive
Committee met on July 19. Joe proposed the unilateral cessation of the armed
struggle. Mandela supported the proposal and the NEC approved Joe’s
proposition. The plan would be presented
at the next meeting with the government, scheduled for early August. Joe Slovo
presenting the idea was a powerful tactic because as a leader of both the
Communist Party and the MK underground army, he more than anyone else had the credentials
to negotiate the plan.
Concurrent
to Slovo’s proposal and its acceptance, using false evidence, President de Klerk
announced that Joe Slovo was still in fact involved in armed struggle. Besides threatening arrest, he wanted Mandela
to remove Slovo as a negotiator. Headlines
in South African newspapers were ablaze. The
Natal Witness led with “Red Plot Allegations Denied by SACP’s Slovo” and The Sunday
Times read “ANC Secret Cell Shock.” De Klerk demanded the removal of Joe
Slovo from the planned August negotiations. De Klerk’s evidence was a
handwritten document written at the secret SACP Tongaat meeting championing the
continuance of armed struggle. The paper was signed “Joe.” However, Joe Slovo
was out of the country at the time of the SACP assembly and the writing was actually
that of Gebuza, whose alias was Joe. On the day of the SACP launch, the
headline of The Sunday Times read,
“ANC Stands by Red Joe.” Mandela had announced to de Klerk that Joe Slovo would
be an integral part of the negotiation team. The president did not dispute the
president-to-be.
50,000
people packed the stadium for the SACP launch. People from all four of the apartheid-era
ethnic designated groups were present, but the huge majority were black
workers. Joe was on the stage with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu while other
Party leaders sat in the front rows. There
were recognitions of fallen freedom fighters, speeches addressing the past,
present, and future. Nelson Mandela spoke on the ANC-SACP alliance, and he warned
the government about their attempts to sabotage the coming negotiations
process—a clear reference to both the “Red Plot” and security forces’
incitement of violence.
The general
secretary of the Communist Party, comrade Joe Slovo, is an old friend. There is
an old established friendship between his family and mine. We went to
university together. We were co-accused in the Treason Trial of 1956 to 1961.
Over the years, we have shared the same views on fundamental issues to do with
ending the criminal system of apartheid and the democratic transformation of
our country. Today we share the same views about the vital importance and
urgency of arriving at a political settlement through negotiations, in
conditions of peace for all our people. This personal and political
relationship has been able to endure over the decades precisely because Joe
Slovo and his colleagues in the Communist Party have understood and respected
the fact that the ANC is an independent body. They have never sought to
transform the ANC into a tool and a puppet of the Communist Party. They have
fought to uphold the character of the ANC as the Parliament of the oppressed,
containing within it people with different ideological views, who are united by
the common perspective of national emancipation represented by the Freedom
Charter. Even when we got together with comrade Joe Slovo and others in 1961 to
form the People's army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, we understood the specific role that
Umkhonto had to play. We understood that despite the fact that state repression
had compelled us to take up arms, this did not make the ANC a slave to
violence.
When
Joe neared the dais, dressed in a gray suit and wearing his already famous red
socks, he was met with cheers and chants—Viva! to the SACP, Viva! to socialism,
and Viva! to Joe Slovo. After presenting a short history of the SACP, he
referenced de Klerk’s charges of an SACP plot, outlining three lies as he waved
his passport showing that he was in Zambia during the time of his supposed
writing of the insurgent document. He concluded saying, “Government allegations
of a Communist conspiracy are attempts to rubbish the Party. It is they who
forced us to work in the cellars and shadows. Even now they are trying to force
us back into the underground cellars.”
At the conclusion of Joe’s speech, the last of the day, amid the cheers
and vivas, the dark clouds burst and rain fell on Jabulani Stadium.
Nelson
Mandela was both a complex revolutionary and politician. Besides sanctioning Joe Slovo to publicly
announce the end of the armed struggle, he appointed Joe, Mac Maharaj, and
Cyril Ramaphosa as the primary negotiators with the apartheid regime. A cursory analysis would be somewhat
confusing because of
the apartheid government’s conservatism, the progressivism of the people
elected was
seemingly incongruous in the context of imminent negotiations. And though it would be incorrect to deny the
tensions between the African National Congress and the Nationalist Party during
negotiations, might it be that Madiba actually knew that it was more important
that ANC negotiators sell the struggle to their most radical struggle comrades.
In an
article titled, “Negotiations: What Room for Compromise?” Joe Slovo proposed a
“sunset clause” that called for compulsory power sharing in government and job
security for agency bureaucrats for five years. Although the idea of a sunset
clause within the context of the negotiations was first voiced publicly in
Joe’s article, there is some disagreement about who initiated it. Kader Asmal
gave credit to Thabo Mbeki, while George Bizos claimed that it was Mandela’s
idea. Most believed, however, that it was the brainchild of Joe Slovo, the man
Allister Sparks once referred to as “a sheep in wolf ’s clothing.” Whether originator or not, Joe was the
perfect person to promote the idea, and there was great irony in the fact that
the head of the South African Communist Party, the KGB agent, the “Red Devil,” was
the person proposing the compromise. It
must be noted, however, that it was imperative that Nelson Mandela give his
consent.
In
Danny Schechter’s new book, Madiba A to Z,
he recalls Joe Slovo speaking with him in 1992 about Mandela and
compromise. Joe talked about
counter-revolutionaries and the bloodbath in Chile and then said, “They have
all the arms, the police, and military structures in place; the ANC does not.”
Negotiations
ebbed and flowed but eventually the efforts led to South Africa’s first
democratic election on April 27, 1994.
It was in his cabinet appointments, at least in terms of Joe Slovo, that
Nelson Mandela again showed his brilliance as a politician. As the election approached, Joe was again suffering
from his cancer, yet, he expected an appointment in Mandela’s cabinet. Since the first government was one of
national unity, there were to be cabinet ministers representative of the
various political parties—not only those from the struggle. Joe had anticipated
an appointment in the Justice Ministry, and many people were surprised when he
was chosen Minister of Housing. His selection was foreshadowed in one of his
1992 interviews with Padraig O’Malley:
I
don’t think within five years we’ll be able to solve the housing problem of South
Africa, but I think people are very patient and very understanding in general
and this is something I’ve been convinced about since coming back to the
country. I think it’s a question of honesty and honest politics, and really
getting down to trying to do something using the resources that are available
in the best possible way. I think people will understand that, and they will
accept that we’re not going to have a Utopia in 1995.
Although
there has been political analysis of Joe’s appointment by Mandela as Minister
of Housing as a devaluation of the left, what is evident is that Joe, unlike
some of his fellow ministers, immediately engaged in his work. His first act
was hiring a new Director General to be the housing expert in the Ministry. The
man he hired, William Cobbett, had a different perception of the debates
surrounding Joe’s
appointment:
It
was either the smartest thing Mandela ever did or some less than generous thing
of sidelining. The popular read was that it was a stroke of genius to put the
most popular guy after Mandela more-or-less into what was agreed was a difficult
challenge. The message I took was that they were taking housing seriously after
all.
Although
his cancer was progressing at a disturbing pace, Joe Slovo immersed himself into
his work as Mandela’s Minister of Housing.
Relying on the expertise of Cobbett and others at the Ministry, he
worked feverishly to introduce a bill in Parliament. In truth, he understood that his days were
numbered. He was sick and frail when he
attended the December meeting of the African National Congress. By this time everyone, including Nelson
Mandela, realized that Joe Slovo was close to death. The key event at the Congress was the
presentation to Joe of the ANC’s highest honor, the Isithwalandwe-Seaparankoe Award. Acting on the decision of the
National Executive Committee, Nelson Mandela presented the award, enumerating
Joe Slovo’s multiple contributions to the struggle—mediating work in the
ANC-SACP alliance, Umkhonto we Sizwe, strategy and tactics, and his work as
Minister. Madiba also elaborated on Joe
as a model of non-racialism. “I am not sure,
Comrade Joe, if you ever thought of yourself as a white South African. In a
country in which there is a racially oppressed majority, non-racism is not an
outlook that can be simply taken for granted.”
Joe’s
response to the presentation was brief: “As far as I’m concerned, what I did, I
did without any regrets. I decided long ago in my life that there is only one
target, and that target is to remove the racist regime and obtain power for the
people.”
Nelson
Mandela visited Joe just before his comrade died. Two
days later he told
Helena, “When I
visited Joe and he stood and embraced you, I think he was saying good-bye.” Madiba also rushed to the Slovo home in the
early morning hours after he was informed that Joe had died. Schechter relays a story of the bond between
the two men through an interview with Amina Cachalia.
He
liked Joe a great deal. I remember when
Joe died. He told me that morning when
he phoned, saying, “You must go. Joe has
died. Go now. Take Yusuf and go to Joe’s house before the
crowds of people come. Go and spend some
time with the family. Will you go right
now?” I remember saying to Yusuf then, “I don’t think Madiba realizes how much
he is going to miss Joe.”
Of
course, Nelson Mandela spoke at Joe Slovo’s funeral saying:
Comrade Joe Slovo was one of those who
taught us that individuals do not make history. Yet, in each generation there
are a few individuals who are endowed with the acumen and personal bearing,
which enable them to direct the course of events…. JS did not see himself as a
white South African but as a South African. He was a full part of the
democratic majority, acting together with them for a just and democratic order.
Joe Slovo was among the few white workers who understood their class interest
and sought common cause with their class brother and sisters irrespective of
race…. We
shall forever remember Slovo as one of the embodiments of the alliance between
the ANC and the SACP. Joe knew that the interests of the working class in our
country were intimately bound up with those of the rest of the oppressed
majority in pursuit of democracy and a better life. He knew too that, for the
working class to realize these interests, it had to play an active role in the
liberation struggle and the liberation movement.
There
is a photograph of Nelson Mandela speaking at the funeral in front of a larger
than life banner of Joe Slovo. The lives
of Ruth First and Joe Slovo are important for the same reason that the world
celebrates Madiba. All three were
humans, with strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly comrades, who gave
their lives for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and social
justice throughout the world. People do
not fight imperialism alone – they work as cadres. Nelson Mandela, Ruth First and Joe Slovo are
representative of that struggle.
