31 October 2012
An incredible son of the working class is no more, his heart ceased to beat after being involved in a fatal and tragic car accident before the sun could set in the earlier hours of this morning Wednesday 31 October 2012.
Comrade Danny Oliphant, a great and powerful thinker of the working class has ceased to think. An eloquent orator of working class ideas and an ideologue schooled in working class theory of Marxism-Leninism speaks no more!
The horrific tragedy and loss of this valuable cadre and finest revolutionary ever to be produced by this red and class orientated Metalworkers Union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), reminds us of the mammoth challenges we face in reversing the apartheid, unequal infrastructure development and poor public roads.
In Comrade Oliphant, NUMSA has been robbed of one of its intellectual reservoir’s and a living archive of organisational memory and political wisdom.
Comrade Oliphant served in various structures of the union, first as Local Chairperson in Atlantis and thereafter as NUMSA Western Cape Regional Secretary.
He also served as COSATU Chairperson. When the Liberation Movement was unbanned in 1990, he was elected as NUMSA’s 1st Deputy President.
He was elected to this position when other trade unionists were positioning themselves to serve in Cabinet, whilst he chose to serve the workers unconditionally.
Comrade Oliphant was part of a generation of working class leaders deployed by COSATU to serve our democratic government in 1994 until 2005 whereafter he served the democratic government as a civil servant in the Department of Public Works.
His served the movement with great distinction and forever remained true to his working class consciousness and beliefs. He had a deeper understanding of the revolutionary tasks and clearly understood the mandate of the people’s government as defined in the Freedom Charter.
His election to the first democratically elected parliament did not come without a price. On 30 November 1993 an arsonist set fire to the Oliphant family home.
The following day a letter arrived threatening further violence unless Oliphant who was a charismatic and popular trade unionist and community leader withdrew as a candidate for the ANC in the 1994 democratic elections.
A second letter arrived on 9 December 1993 threatening violence against the family Comrade Danny Oliphant withdrew his candidacy. On 16th December 1993 two men wearing ski masks brutally assaulted Cde Danny’s wife, ransacking the house, spraying threats on the house walls and fled with the family’s hard earned cash.
The best honour the ANC-led Alliance can give to comrade Oliphant is to heed the resolve and the mandate derived from the historic ANC Conference held in Morogoro, Tanzania in 1969, which unambiguously resolved, “in country – more than in any other part of the oppressed world – it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole.
It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy.
To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation….”
We find solace in that Comrade Oliphant will be in the capable hands of President Mtutuzeli Tom, Deputy President Vincent Mabuyakhulu, General Secretary Mbuyiselo Ngwenda and other great metalworker leader’s in the land of the departed.
We send our heartfelt condolences to his family, relatives, and friends, the ANC, COSATU and the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) as a whole.
Hamba Kahle Qabane Danny Oliphant!!!!
Issued by NUMSA National Office Bearers
Contact:
Castro Ngobese, National Spokesperson – 083 627 5197