New Age2.png
A tribute to J B Marks and Moses Kotane John Lamola, The New Age, Johannesburg, 26 March 2015 John Beaver Marks who died in Moscow in August 1972, holding the positions of chairman of the SACP and national treasurer of the ANC, spent his formative life as an activist against racial domination in the old location of Makweteng, Potchefstroom, where he started his career as a school teacher in 1921. Together with Josie Mpama, the first African woman to hold a significant leadership position in the party, and Thabo Mofutsanyana, the struggle icon after whom Govan Mbeki named his son, the former president Thabo Mbeki, they not only put Makweteng on the historical map of resistance against racial oppression and class exploitation but laid the ground for a political concept of the African communist in the lexicon of South African politics. In recognition of the gallantry display by Marks and his comrades of those early days, Josie Mpama, born in Potchefstroom in 1903 and later married with Mofutsanyana, was posthumously bestowed with the national Order of Luthuli in 2004. From her bold beginnings as the secretary of the Potchesfstroom SACP branch in 1928, she had continued to rise in stature as leader of both the communist party and the Transvaal All-Women Union, despite a 1956 banning order, and detention during the 1960 state of emergency. Through Marks' solitary conscientious faith in Marxist Theory, while a school teacher, he had nurtured the seeds of the Potchefstroom branch of the Communist Party. In South Africa before the Group Areas Act, Makweteng was a bustling multiracial suburb, where Marks' coloured ancestry did not matter. Under Marks and Mpama's leadership, Potchefstroom was to become a place where the mounting entrenchment of apartheid racialism was to meet one of its earliest open challenges. In 1929 the Communist Party and the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU) organised mass demonstrations against the nascent introduction of the Pass Laws for Dingaan's Day, December 16. JB Marks was one of the main speakers and a leader of the Potchefstroom march. As narrated by Jack Simons: "Demonstrations held at other big towns passed off without disturbance except at Potchefstroom, where about 100 whites invaded the township and broke up an orderly gathering at which Marks and Mofutsanyana were the main speakers. 'Africa belongs to us', Marks said. 'You lie', shouted a white bystander, and a revolver was fired at Mofutsanyana. The bullet missed him and hit Hermanus Lethebe, a local party member, who died of his wounds." The most significant impact of the Potchefstroom SACP branch under JB Marks was its attraction of the young politically energetic Moses Kotane into the politics of the SACP. Kotane was then a migrant labourer in Krugersdorp. He was to become the most illustrious of African communist leaders in South African history, serving as the general secretary of the SACP from 1939 until his death in 1978. Mofutsanyana, Marks and Kotane had a rare privilege of travelling to the Lenin International School in Russia in 1930 before the latter two settled in exile. This broadened their outlook on the South African problem and formed them into the core of the African political intelligentsia that shifted the ANC of the 1950s from its singular African nationalist focus to a broader inclusive non-racial platform that is captured in the Congress of the People's Freedom Charter of 1955. Marks recruited Dan Tloome (1919-1992) to the SACP. He was a vibrant symbol that linked the generation of young Mbekis, Sisulus and Zumas under Oliver Tambo to the spirit of JB Marks and Moses Kotane. . Malesela John Lamola of Potchefstroom is a Research Fellow at the University of Fort Hare From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/ -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
