Numsa General Secretary Political Lecture In Memory of Comrade Jabulile Ndlovu, a Numsa Shopsteward, ANC member and Committed Revolutionary Leader.
Jabu Ndlovu House,
129 Che Guevara Road,
Durban, KwaZulu-Natal
18th June 2011
KZN
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
(Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848)
Leadership from all the Mass Democratic Movement Present,
Invited guests and friends,
And the media:
It is a good and fitting tribute to the late Comrade Jabulile Ndlovu – a Numsa Shopsteward, ANC cadre, UDF activist and community leader in Midlands (Pietermaritzburg and committed working class revolutionary who was brutally murdered for her beliefs and revolutionary practice that we must gather here and remember her.
We are honouring Comrade Jabulile Ndlovu as we also pay tribute and remember the revolutionary youths of 1976 who on June 16 paid for our freedom with the highest price: their blood. Those youths defied the mighty and brutality of the Apartheid Regime. They decided to peacefully demonstrate against the system’s oppressive education system and were met with brutal and deadly force by the Apartheid Regime.
Comrade Jabulile Ndlovu is best remembered, among many other things, for encouraging women in our communities to take care of young people, especially on weekends when many fathers take time off to have a drink! She knew the importance of nurturing the youth!
But, who exactly was Comrade Jabulile Ndlovu?
She was born Jabulile Florence Ndlovu on the 25 March 1947, at Nhlanbamkhosi, Impendle (Bulwer). She was the 3rd daughter out of 6 children of Ina Zuma and Petrus Mkhize.
Comrade Jabu attended the Roman Catholic Church and was also active in Church and she belonged to the Mothers Union.
She attended her early schooling at the Clairvoux, a Catholic mission-run school and attended her Secondary Schooling at Nxamalala Secondary School up to Standard 8, Impendle
In 1965, Comrade Jabu left Impendle to look for work in Pietermaritzburg. She worked briefly as a private teacher at Gomane Primary School.
Comrade Jabu got married to Jabulani Ndlovu in 1971. Jabu and Jabulani in 1972 settled in Imbali Stage 1.
Comrade Jabu worked for a kitchen factory, Prestige, as a machine operator. During this time, obviously, her trade union working class consciousness grew, and in 1981 she joined the Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU) which is now – NUMSA, and in 1983 she became a Shopsteward, and by 1985 she became a senior Shopsteward.
Comrade Jabu was a shopsteward, wife, mother and committed political revolutionary working in the UDF in a very hostile and quite violent time and area and by 1985 she had death threats sent to her. These threats were made during the Sarmcol strike.
Her home towards the end of 1987 became a target of raids by police and attacks by Inkatha vigilantes. Today, we who are alive, enjoy peace and non violence as we g about our work because of committed, courageous and brave revolutionary female worriers such as Comrade Jabu!
Comrade Jabu was an active member of Imbali Youth Organisation and Imbali Civic Organisation. How many of us today Comrades are active in any community organisation in our communities?
Comrade Jabu went abroad – to Sweden – to mobilise support for then Comrade Moss who was in prison for defying the Apartheid Regime and to speak about the violence in the Natal Midlands.
Sadly, Comrade Jabu was shot and killed after her return from the Numsa National Congress, held in Johannesburg. That Congress was historic as it conferred on Comrade Harry Themba Gwala the distinguished title of “Honorary President of NUMSA”.
What values can we learn from Comrades like Comrade Jabu?
Courage, determination, inspiration, hard work, community service, love for revolutionary trade union work, burning desire to see the country free from Apartheid capitalist oppression and exploitation and the need to end violence in the Natal Midlands ultimately got Comrade Jabu brutally assassinated by her political enemies.
How many of us today are willing to pay the ultimate price, by our blood, to advance the NDR?
How many of us today are willing to work long unpaid hours organising the union in hostile violent environments?
This year as we remember our fallen heroes such as Comrade Chris Hani and Comrade Mbuyiselo Ngwenda, Comrade Harry Gwala among many others; it is important that we ask ourselves tough questions concerning our revolutionary credentials and practices, today, after 1994. Individuals like Comrade Jabu were products of our revolutionary liberation movement. They were fearless revolutionaries who were not afraid to die for their beliefs.
How many of us today, as we rush and scramble for political and trade union leadership offices can measure up to the discipline, courage, dedication to the struggle of Comrade Jabu?
How many of us today can proudly say that they are committed to giving their time and talents to fighting to improve the lives of their communities?
How many of us today, shopstewards, union officials and organisers can proudly say that they do their level best to recruit members into their union, service members twenty four hours and when they go home they join community structures for the improvement of their communities?
How many of us actually understand this phase of the revolution, the phase of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR)?
Many of our younger members I am sure take for granted the right to freely belong to a political party and to join a trade union of their choice – we rarely think about and appreciate the blood of Comrades like Comrade Jabu which blood was shed so that we who lived could enjoy the freedom to freely belong to trade unions and political parties of our choice.
Our freedom was bought by the blood of Comrades like Comrade Chris Hani, Comrade Jabulile Ndlovu, MAWU shopsteward Comrade Phenenus Sibiya and four passengers of a car set alight by warlords when on their way to the Cosatu launch from Phophomeni, Comrade Selby Mayise of NUM, Comrade Sam Ntambane killed when he led a march to a police station on the day Chris Hani was assassinated and many others.
These courageous and humble giants of our revolution must always serve as reminder when today we who can live in relative peace become lazy, fear to speak the truth, refuse to carry out revolutionary work, weaken trade unions by constantly gossiping and scandalising our leaders and members.
What is the nature of the struggle we are waging?
Ours, Comrades, is a class struggle – the struggle of the working class against the brutal system of capitalism. In the factories and in our communities, we have the duty to organise, educate and mobilise the working class against first of course the oppression and exploitation in our factories by the bosses.
In our communities, we have to organise, educate and mobilise our communities against inferior and poor education, inferior and inadequate housing, shortages of water and electricity, high food prices, high paraffin and oil prices, horrible public health services, violence in our communities against women and children, HIV/AIDS and drug abuse especially by young people.
But more importantly, we have to organise, educate and mobilise against ignorance of the working class of their power as a class for itself: we have to raise the political conscious of the working class so that they can wage consistently, their struggle against the capitalist class.
Like Comrade Jabu we must organise, educate and mobilise the working class especially as we approach the important year of 2012. In 2012, the ANC will be 100 years. In 2012 the ANC will hold it policy conference and its 53rd National Conference. Cosatu will hold its 11th Congress. The SACP will hold its 14th Congress. Numsa will also hold its 9th Congress.
Already there is global media focus on South Africa. Already in the country we are seeing, hearing, reading and being told by the public media about “leadership fights” in the liberation movement. Already the “faceless and nameless sources” are surfacing fast: who feed the media about lies about leadership fights in the ANC led alliance.
There are those who do not fully understand and know the bonds that bind the ANC led revolutionary alliance but are praying everyday for the alliance to break up in the hope that the working class would then be weakened and they could return to the Apartheid days of supper exploitation of South African Black and African workers.
There are those who do not appreciate nor understand the revolutionary basis of the relationship between Cosatu and the SACP and thus recklessly try to weaken this important revolutionary relationship.
We have seen, as the SACP has correctly observed, the rise of a dangerous white right wing fake constitutionalism which seeks to position itself as the custodian of our constitution when in fact all it is doing is weaken the majoritarian nature of South African post 1994 democratic order.
We saw COPE come and go. We saw in the May 18 election the most massive mobilisation of white voters by the DA, to dilute the power of the liberation movement in government.
All these are signs of the things the revolutionary working class must look out for, as we approach 2012.
What would Comrade Jabu think about us today?
Comrade Jabu would be sad to hear liberation movement formations calling each other names, and substituting each other for “the most dangerous threat to the national democratic revolution” rather than the real danger: white monopoly capital.
Comrade Jabu would be very unhappy to learn that some in the SACP now think that Cosatu and some in the leadership of Numsa and Sadtu are fighting the leadership of the SACP.
Comrade Jabu and all others gone with her would ask these leaders to be brave enough and seat down and talk through their real and perceived differences, rather than use the media to weaken working class formations.
Rather than name calling and using fake names in the bourgeoisie media, Comrade Jabu and the others want us to work to unite the revolutionary working class to confront the challenges of a collapsed global capitalist system and the brutal South African capitalist economy.
Comrade Jabu like all the others would plead with us all to listen carefully to what the ANCYL is saying, rather than to merely dismiss it through all manner of ways: it is after all, African young people and African women who are the worst victims of both the failures of the global capitalist economy and South African capitalism and capitalist society.
We meet here today to honour the memory of Comrade Jabu. It is also our duty to use this occasion to renew our revolutionary identities and to recommit ourselves to the struggle to see to its logical conclusion the National Democratic Revolution.
Comrades, we who have the privilege of enjoying the fruits of peace and democracy which Comrades like Comrade Jabu died for dare not squander their dreams! We must organise, educate and mobilise the working class and rural populations to wage their class struggle against their class enemies successfully. This is our revolutionary duty.
Thank you.
Irvin Jim
Numsa General Secretary
18 June 2012.
Source
Numsa Speeches
