To mark the centenary birthday of Harry Gwala, DrPanyaza Lesufi pays tribute to one of the most prominent stalwarts of the ANC and the SACP.
If Harry Gwala was still alive today, he would have turned 100 years on July 30. In a sense, this year represents a centennial birthday of Harry Gwala.
Commemorations of leaders are not just about memories of lives well lived and the packaging of cosmetic events designed as symbolic remembrances, albeit those initiatives are not insignificant. But more importantly, the life and times of leaders such as Gwala should impose upon us, the living, a great sense of soul searching on whether we are still discharging similar commitments to the cause of our people as they did.
Great leaders and icons, like all human beings, live and die but what distinguishes them from the rest of us is the immortality of their ideas; their teachings and the imprints of their footsteps. Those imprints that they leave behind continue to breathe life into successive generations.
These immortal legacies of great leaders become a standard, setting a high bar for generations of future leaders. This becomes the case because these leaders and their revolutionary trudges, whilst they live, become a transcendent fountain of inspiration.
It is gratifying that the ANC declared that this year would be the year of celebrating the life and times of Harry Gwala as part of 25 years since his passing and his centennial birthday.
The story of Gwala is often less told in South Africa. And where it is told, more often and subjectively, it is always told from a position of dishonesty and a portrayal in bad taste. There are a lot of untruths and distortions deliberately made around Gwala’s name, including projecting him as a warlord of Natal after the unbanning in 1990.
If anyone were to interact with those that were living in the East Rand, now Ekurhuleni, KZN Midlands (Pietermaritzburg, Howick, Mooi River, Escourt, Ladysmith, Newcastle) and larger parts of KZN, they will tell you that they survived political violence because of assistance from Harry Gwala.
He stood with the people who were under attack during the internecine violence fomented by the IFP with the assistance of Bantustan Zulu Government and the De Klerk’s government through the SA Police. Gwala ensured that people under siege were defended through self-defence units. Scores of displaced people with their homes burnt down during this time would camp in Gwala’s for help and protection as a leader.
Amongst other interventions, he allocated land to the displaced people without seeking permission from the apartheid Pietermaritzburg municipality authorities. He was not going to recognise that enemy municipal government.
In doing this, he confronted and directed the authorities to rather charge him than the people he had directed to build houses to settle on municipal land. Those large human settlements, which are now well developed, are today a legacy of the man that he was.
Gwala joined the SACP in 1942 and the ANCYL in 1944. He worked with the leaders such as Anton Lembede. It is during this time that he began his trade union activism, organizing workers in the chemical and building industries. He established the Rubber and Cable Workers union in Howick. He was instrumental in the organising of the 1950 national stay away to the extent that he was listed under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1952, and banned for two years.
These were tough times after the National Party had assumed power in 1948 and with great speed entrenched racialized laws, fighting any resistance.
Comrade Mdala (as he was affectionately known) was not just as school teacher. Many senior comrades who were on Robben Island always spoke on how Harry Gwala was a good political teacher, from Marxism to various theories of development.
Upon his release from Robben Island, in 1988, Mdala helped with the recruitment of health professionals for a newly formed union, NEHAWU, in particular at Edendale Hospital, where he was once expelled. That explains why Edendale Hospital, as a biggest in the region became a focal point of struggle through worker strikes with the Special Branch raiding it more often to seize shop stewards.
The Lion of Midlands was generally understood to many to be a militant, firebrand leader particularly in the early 90s. In a sense, this portrayal of a firebrand was overemphasized in ways that eclipsed his deep intellectual universe.
Like all the revolutionaries, he might have erred here and there but his dedication and contribution to the freedom of this country far surpass any deviations.
Gwala was suspicious of the CODESA negotiation process in terms of winning our demands over the table with white apartheid oppressors. And so, he did not trust what the outcomes of this process could be.
According to him, the movement committed serious mistakes in agreeing to suspend MK as this elevated the National Party to occupy some high moral ground on the table, whilst funding low-intensity warfare in Natal and the then PWV. He was also critical about the concessions in CODESA canvassed through a document “Strategic Perspective” with comrade Joe Slovo leading on this front.
This popularly became known as the sunset clauses (negotiations, with a room for compromise). He differed with Slovo in terms of the sunset clauses as encapsulated in Slovo document. His intervention was published in the SACP African Communist journal.
What can we learn from Harry Gwala’s leadership?
Today we have strange cadres, who before taking a political stand on any issue, they first make assessments on the views of powers-that-be so that they align their posture for purposes of relevance. Many comrades also do this checking of blind-spots before making their views known because they fear committing career suicide and being overlooked during deployment seasons.
This new fear and culture of pleasing leaders rather than respecting them, has given birth to institutionalized tabular rasa tradition from the foremost leading cadres in our movement and alliance.
Today, wrong things are not challenged with the strength of vigour that they should be, because comrades are fearful of being rounded off, isolated if not cornered and lose their deployments.
By so doing, we are in the service of those who are in the mission to destroy these organizations to which we belong.
This is part 2 of a sponsored series on Harry Gwala. Read part 1 here.