They came: Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini, South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande and ANC president Jacob Zuma. Not to praise freedom fighter Billy Nair, but to praise themselves.
They came at a time when custodianship of the traditions and institutional memory of the democratic movement, specifically the ANC, is up for grabs.
They came to cast their version of the ANC in the reflection of Nair’s memory — an activist who, by all accounts, was humble, selfless and steeped in non-racial and worker struggles.
Who, at his state funeral at the Durban Exhibition Centre two weeks ago, President Kgalema Motlanthe said ”belonged to a generation of leaders of our movement who understood that leadership is not always about occupying the position of power”.
Dlamini compared ANC dissidents led by Mosiuoa Lekota with past ANC factions, including those ”utilised” by the apartheid regime.
SACP leader Nzimande, who said it was part of his tradition to speak to the amadlozi (ancestors), addressed the coffin: ”Monna [Sotho for comrade], never in your life did you write an open letter to the president of the ANC. You never manufactured problems within the party to weaken it. You taught us what it is like to be a mature leader.”
Zuma criticised Lekota et al as ”adventurists” and ”faint-hearted”, saying Nair would have had no time for them.
”In memory of this hero of our struggle, we urge all ANC members to remain steadfast in the principles and traditions of the movement” and ”not be swayed into negative action by the anger arising out of the new phenomenon of ANC members who are calling a so-called convention”, he said.
The ANC leadership has cast Shikota as reneging on the party’s traditions, as malcontents disgruntled at losing power and of introducing a totalitarian mindset into the party. Shikota has similarly accused the party’s leadership of being un-ANC and of introducing a totalitarian mindset.
The truth lies in organisational reports by Motlanthe as the ANC’s former secretary general. At Polokwane last year and Stellenbosch in 2002 Motlanthe warned about the ANC’s inability to grapple with the demands of shedding its liberation movement skin and becoming a ruling party. He also raised concerns about the calibre of members the ANC was attracting and developing, while criticising the haphazard nature of the party’s own political schooling.
In 2002 Motlanthe said that ”some within our ranks regard the movement as an instrument to serve narrow self-interest and self-enrichment”.
”The limited political consciousness [of cadres] has impacted negatively on our capacity to root out corrupt and divisive elements within ourselves,” he said. ”More needs to be done to strengthen the social and political consciousness and activism of our members.”
Divisions in ANC provincial structures ”are not of a political nature, but have mainly revolved around access to resources, positioning themselves or others to access resources, dispensing patronage and in the process using organisational structures to further these goals”.
Last year Motlanthe noted the ANC’s paramount challenge was ”the task of improving the quality and political depth of our members”.
Quoting Lenin, he said ”no profound and popular movement in history has taken place without its share of filth, without adventurers and rogues, without boastful and noisy elements — a ruling party inevitably attracts careerists”.
He noted, too, that the party was unable to profile its membership and ”identify social trends within it”.
The loss of political direction is evident from Zuma’s calls at a mass rally in Soweto on Sunday for single mothers to be separated from their children, truant schoolchildren to be ”rounded up and sent to far-away colleges” and police to ”arrest [alleged criminals], ask them questions and they must be forced to answer”.
The ANC has forgotten the traditions and values ingrained in its history. For either faction to claim that legacy now is spurious — each was equally complicit in debauching it.
Activists and unionists at Nair’s funeral spoke to the Mail & Guardian about Nair’s political understanding, allied to a profound empathy for Everyman.
Motlanthe noted that he ”belonged to a generation which had so internalised the theory of the revolution, a generation which so understood the line of march of the struggling people that they could explain the most profoundly complex theories in the language of the people”.
The chasm between Nair’s generation and that of ANC youth leader Julius Malema is the fault of the entire ANC leadership since 1994. And neither faction appears capable of addressing the malaise.
An activist who wanted to change the world
Freedom fighter Billy Nair, like Moses Mabhida, straddled all components of the mass democratic movement in South Africa: he was a member of the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the South African Congress of Trade Unions, Cosatu’s precursor.
Nair was born in Sydenham, Durban, on November 27 1929, one of five children of Pravathy and Kristen Nair, an engineer’s assistant in a sugar cargo ship.
After being fired from a dairy farm as a teenager he worked for the Dairy Worker’s Union as full-time secretary and organiser. At the age of 19, he joined the Natal Indian Congress, becoming its secretary a year later. Friend and comrade Swaminathan Gounden said he ‘contributed a working-class fervour to the NIC.â€
At one stage he was organising secretary for 17 different unions simultaneously.
Nair was involved in the 1952 defiance campaign and spent a month in prison for his activism.
He addressed the 3 000-strong Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955 — where the Freedom Charter was adopted. He was one of the 156 congress activists, including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, charged in the lengthy treason trial between 1956 and 1960.
With the banning of the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress in 1960, Umkhonto weSizwe was formed a year later. Nair was one of the founders and joint commander of MK’s Natal region.
On July 3 1963 Nair was arrested and charged with sabotage following MK’s bombing campaign in the province. He served 20 years on Robben Island.
Released in 1984, he continued his activist work with the United Democratic Front. He participated in Operation Vula, which attempted to infiltrate exiled leaders back into the country.
In 1990 he was arrested and suffered a heart attack in detention. Nair was elected to the country’s first democratic Parliament as a member of Parliament, serving two terms.
Speaking at the funeral, President Kgalema Motlanthe said: ‘Comrade Billy loved life; he danced, he punted, he liked a decent drink. But combined with that was a real sense of urgency to change the world, to make a difference, to love the oppressed and to take life seriously.â€
He died aged 79 after a stroke on October 23. He is survived by his wife, Elsie, daughter Saro and two grandchildren.