Don Makatile
The first time I took notice of Trevor Manuel was when he addressed a rally in the late 1980s at the Bob van Reenen Stadium in my hometown Krugersdorp, now Mogale City.
The speaker and the venue’s sporting fortunes have since headed in opposite directions. The stadium has gone south and is now an eyesore while Manuel, on a north-bound trajectory, is chairperson of the local organising committee board of the 2027 Cricket World Cup, which will be co-hosted by South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
I digress.
On the day, Manuel was in town at the invitation of the SACP. Up to this day, the ugwijo – the Struggle songs – that filled the stadium to perforate the speeches still ring in my head.
It seemed like such a hip thing to be a communist at the time. They even appealed to one’s cerebral quest to expand one’s political outlook.
That home boy Yusuf Dadoo, whose Azaadville roots are just a sprinting distance away from my own in Kagiso lent some bias to the prism through which one began to view the SACP.
Among the bric-a-brac that has followed this hoarder throughout the string of moving houses is a picture of Dadoo posing with the Johannesburg district committee of the communist party in 1945. This is the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), as it was then known before it was banned in 1950. It was reconstituted as the SACP in 1953.
A head-and-shoulder of Thabo Mofutsanyana, one of the handful of black African members of the CPSA, is superimposed on the main picture.
One is reminded of this impressive gallery of communists by the latest announcement by the current cohort of communists – of the Gucci variety, to break ranks with the ANC and go it alone at the 2026 local government polls.
This is not a new song; if anything, it is a remix.
Many pundits have offered to perform a lot of bizarre tricks in the event of their predictions falling short, like eating their hats. Some have dared to do the macabre, like perform the sacred Japanese rite of seppuku, in case they were proved wrong.
I’m not about to make such promises. I love life.
All I am willing to wager is that this SACP threat should be dismissed outright. In the significance stakes, it will not affect the price of cooking oil.
The only time the modern-day communists should be taken seriously as serving divorce papers on the broad church is when Dr Blade Nzimande decides to lose his blue-lights perks. That day, let me help you, will never dawn!
Do you remember him making any contributions to this subject? Of course not. He’s schtum! He knows which side his bread is buttered. He’s not about to remove the croissant from the mouths of his babies. He knows it is cold outside the ANC.
A very witty friend of ours was asked the question about another childhood friend, who died before he could live – at a very young age. The question was, what would that late friend be doing currently, had he lived?
Without batting an eyelid, the wisecrack responded: “He’d have died again.”
One of the laziest hypotheses analysts posit on the anniversary of calendar events, like the death of a political stalwart, is: “What would so-and-so make of this were they alive today?”
What would Chris Hani make of the Solly Mapaila move to contest elections outside the aegis of the ANC?
He’d chuckle, laugh so hard that he eventually would break down in tears. That’s what. What would Hani make of the quality of the contemporary cadre of the SACP? To quote the wisecrack in my social circle, he’d die again.
Remember, it was the self-same Hani who wailed: “What I fear is that the liberators emerge as elitists … who drive around in Mercedes-Benzes and use the resources of this country … to live in palaces and to gather riches.”
With his mind’s eye, he foresaw the blue-light convoys ferrying sunshine communists to lavish capitalist shindigs.
The only time I remember that Blade is a communist is on April 10, when the country looks back at the cold-blooded assassination of Hani. On any other day, he’s a government minister, the type Thomas Sankara viewed dimly as champions of, to paraphrase him, champagne for a few, not water for all.
The SACP contesting elections? Please! Change the topic. Try rousing Joe Slovo, John Nkadimeng, Ray Simons, Josiah Jele, Dan Tloome and January Masilela from their eternal sleep and see what happens.
They will all rush back beyond the Pearly Gates!
iSACP ayisafani!
• Makatile is Sunday World weekend editor
