RIGHTS-SOUTH AFRICA: Anti-Apartheid Hero Govan Mbeki Dies

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Farah Khan

DURBAN, Aug 31 2001 (IPS) - It is not often that revolutionaries get to see the completion of their life’s work.

Govan Mbeki, intellectual, writer and activist, lived to see the end of apartheid and the election of the African National Congress (ANC) – the organisation from whose history his life is inseparable – to power in South Africa.

A veteran of South Africa’s liberation struggle, Mbeki is regarded in the country in the same light as former President Nelson Mandela and former ANC Secretary-General Walter Sisulu.

Govan, who also was the father of South African President Thabo Mbeki, died during the early hours of Thursday morning at his home in Port Elizabeth. He was 91 years old.

In recent months, he had been in and out of hospital. In tribute, Mandela said of the man with whom he had spent 24 years in prison: “Throughout the years he continued to inspire all of us inside and outside prison with the certainty that we would triumph in the end.

“South Africa today mourns the passing of one of Africa’s great sons. In the history of our own struggle and of our country his name takes pride. We salute a comrade and friend, a leader in the struggle, one of the intellectuals of our movement and a fellow member of a generation that has given so much to the shaping of our country,” Mandela added.

Angered by the poverty and suffering of Black people in South Africa, even before apartheid officially descended on the country, Govan Mbeki first joined the South African Communist Party and the ANC in 1935. After university, he started teaching in the Eastern Cape, his home region, but was dismissed from his school because of his political activities. To this day, he is credited with turning the region into the ANC stronghold it continues to be.

His commitment to the freedom struggle in South Africa saw him become the editor of New Age – a mouthpiece of the liberation movement – and his eventual election as national chairman of the ANC in 1956.

Frustrated with the failure of peaceful protest to force the then South African government to grant political rights to the majority of the country’s people, Mbeki — along with Mandela, Sisulu and others – persuaded the ANC to launch an armed struggle.

He served as the secretary of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s military wing, but was captured in 1963 and sentenced to life in prison. While in jail, he completed an honours degree in economics and a book on resistance to white rule in rural South Africa. More importantly, he taught the hundreds of activists that passed through Robben Island – apartheid’s most infamous prison – the history and traditions of the ANC. These activists went on to lead the revival of the anti-apartheid struggle – and the ANC – during the 1980s.

Mbeki was released in 1987, as cracks began to appear in the apartheid state. He was almost immediately banned, but anti- apartheid activists nevertheless made pilgrimages to his home in the Eastern Cape to discuss politics with Oom (Uncle) Gov, as he was fondly known.

He was elected deputy president of the Senate after the democratic elections in 1994 that saw the ANC sweep to power, and formally retired from politics in March 1999.

Mandela, in one of his last acts before the 1999 general elections that saw him step down as president, awarded Mbeki the Order for Meritorious Service.

Flags at the venue of the World Conference Against Racism here were lowered to half-staff Thursday.

Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and conference secretary general, conveyed her condolences to President Thabo Mbeki, saying: “Govan Mbeki’s death on the eve of the world conference reminds us of his enormous contribution to the struggle against racism and oppression in South Africa. His memory should make us redouble our efforts to achieve, in Durban, a breakthrough that will ensure a life of dignity, free of bigotry and intolerance, for people around the world.”

Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had learned with sadness of Mbeki’s death.

Presidential spokesman, Khumalo, said that Thabo Mbeki would open the conference as scheduled Friday, despite his father’s death.

Asked about his son’s ascension to the presidency, Govan Mbeki said: “I feel fine – not because he is my son, but because we have a man in that position to carry on with the work of the ANC and the people of South Africa.”