/ 19 November 2002

Comrades row over Zulu manifesto

A Zulu translation of The Communist Manifesto will be released on Tuesday, more than 150 years after the original was published. And it has already set off a bout of broedertwis among the comrades.

Brian Ramadiro, the translator, says his work is the first Zulu translation of the manifesto, but the South African Communist Party says another Zulu version already exists.

“This translation by Brian Ramadiro is not the first translation of The Communist Manifesto into Zulu,” insists SACP spokesperson Mazibuko Jara, who asserted a proprietory claim on the party’s bible.

The SACP says it commissioned the first Zulu translation in 1970. It says the manifesto was translated by Eric Mtshali, now a member of the SACP central committee. But the work was published and distributed underground. The party says it has copies in its archives at the Mayibuye Centre at the University of the Western Cape.

The 1970s version is so far underground that no one has been able to produce a copy.

Ramadiro says he could not find copies at the SACP office, the Mayibuye Centre, at all South African university libraries or from the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Even Mtshali could not produce a copy.

Simphiwe Yako, archivist at the Mayibuye Centre, confirmed that it did not have a copy of Mtshali’s translation. He said Ramadiro had already searched unsuccessfully for the publication.

Despite the squabble, the party is still pleased with the new translation. “The SACP regards Ramadiro’s work as a contribution to an existing body of work in our country. We need more communist documents available in all South African languages,” Jara said.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in February 1848 in London.

Samuel Moore produced the first translation into English in 1888. An Afrikaans translation with a preface by Leon Trotsky appeared in 1935.

The SACP says it does not know about any translations into other African languages.