Comrade Thabo Masebe, this week as we pay our last respects and bid you farewell to your final resting place, four events of major historic significance are stacked in my mind as if they only happened yesterday.
The first memory is when we met for the very first time on the 27th of October 1990 at Orlando Stadium during the heroic relaunch rally of the ANC Youth League. The rally also celebrated the 73rd birthday anniversary of President OR Tambo and conferred to him the status of honorary life presidency of the youth league as an eloquent expression of the high regard and adoration the militant youth of our country had for him.
As President Tambo had not yet returned back from exile to receive the honorary award and celebrate his birthday with us, Tata Walter Sisulu was present to deliver a memorable keynote speech.
The second is when we met around February 1991 in Garankuwa, north-west of Pretoria, during the funeral of comrade Bachana Mokoena. On that solemn occasion, thousands of young people and students across the length and breadth of our country had come to bury one of the doyens of struggle who was mysteriously killed in a car accident.
At the time, comrade Bachana Mokoena was the treasurer-general of the ANC Youth League as it was preparing for its relaunch after 30 years in exile. I vividly remember the event because it is where I saw and shook the hands of my heroes, Chris Hani and Winnie Mandela. I will never forget the majesty of that moment. To this day, I have kept their pictures as memories I shall treasure for the rest of my life.
The third memory is in 1991 in Kwa-Ndebele during the 17th National Congress of the ANC Youth League (the first after the unbanning of political organisations).
On that occasion, I sat, watched and marvelled at how you, as the first Chairperson of the ANC Youth League in the Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo province), opened and welcomed all the delegates to the conference. That happened in the presence of a galaxy of senior ANC personalities who had graced the occasion. They included President O.R Tambo, Thomas Nkobi, Joe Modise, Joe Nhlanhla, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni.
The fourth memory that remains fresh in my mind is what happened during the 19th National Congress of the ANC Youth League, which was held at the Durban Exhibition Centre in 1996.
After you presented the financial report as Treasurer General and the results of the Top 5 announced, together with Bheki Nkosi, Nono Maloyi, Saliva Molapisi, Tshepo Belebese and Khotso Khumalo, among others, we gathered under the tree to assess what could have gone wrong.
Comrade Thabo, as a result of these memories and many others, it becomes understandable that the news of your departure this week has sparked a wave of grief in the movement as a whole, especially to all who were with you in the trenches.
Your departure leaves our hearts in heavy mourning, bows us with sorrow and draws our faces in disbelief. It touches us so deeply that it makes it hard to put one's feelings into words because we know that our movement and our country has lost one of its dependable cadres.
Throughout your struggle as a youth activist, you never doubted the victory of the sacred cause to which you had dedicated all your life. In your province, Northern Transvaal, under the tutelage of Peter Nchabeleng (the lion of the North), Ntate Pharephare Mothupi, Thabo Makunyane and Samson Ndou, together with the likes of Peter Mokaba, Ephraim Mogale, Jerry Ndou, Frans Mohlala, Cassel Mathale, Joe Mathebula and Castro Pilusa, you drank from the fountains of wisdom to deepen and sharpen your political acumen.
When the trumpet summoned the young lions in the 1980s to come forward to intensify the struggle for freedom, you were top among the first who positively responded to President Tambo's call to render apartheid unworkable and the country ungovernable.
You executed this mission with utmost precision and became part of a dynamo of militancy and activism which galvanised and rejuvenated the youth of our land until freedom was won in 1994.
Steeped in the discipline and value system of the ANC, you were a very humble cadre who never shirked from duty, and the tasks which were set before you were not above your strengths and their pangs and toils were not beyond your endurance. Unlike most of us, you leave with your name and integrity intact.
I list you among the top departed communication and media gurus in the ANC, like Tom Sebina, Ronnie Mamoepa, Dumisani Makhaye, Jackson Mthembu and Parks Mankahlana. You were an immensely gifted cadre with a rare sense of fairness and unfailing courtesy to others, attributes which undoubtedly earned you immense respect not only among your comrades but also among other people with whom you interacted.
But as you depart from our midst, your movement, the ANC, is facing serious difficulties. It suffers from existential crisis due to warning signs of “sins of incumbency”, which were identified at the Mafikeng conference in 1997.
As a result, the ANC is running a risk of losing elections in 2024 if it continues with the path of factionalism and disunity.
As we speak today, the ANC is increasingly losing credibility and trust of the people because of poor service delivery record, corruption and state capture, and poor management of public resources.
The ANC seems to have lost touch with key constituencies, and the calibre of many of its leaders is not like you, comrade Thabo. They lack basic leadership, organising and communication skills, and they are unable to mobilise and motivate activists, civil society, supporters and voters.
Lately, as you know, it has become easier to be a leader of the ANC, and there is a lack of revolutionary morality, good ethics, discipline and the understanding of the core values of the ANC.
Comrade Thabo, you were endowed with great wisdom, which impelled you on a direct road that carried you to lofty heights. With your rich articulations, especially as a spokesperson, you depicted an African soul, its strive and yearnings, its sufferings and sorrow, and its majesty.
Your inborn scholarship revealed your creative works, a keenness of intellect, a gift of vivid expression and the arbour of a great African soul, fused with the power of your youth radicalism which freed our country from colonialism and apartheid.
We, your peers and comrades-in-arms, know that the only thing you wanted for your patriots was a right to a worthy life, to dignity without pretence, and to freedom without restrictions.
You felt deep in your heart that one day the enemy would be defeated and that the road to reconstruction and development would be unstoppable. On that score, you were vindicated.
As we bid farewell and pay our last respects to you, we surely know that through your words and actions, you dedicated your entire life exclusively to making public service work better for our people.
Through your principled approach to communication and media liaison, you showed us what it meant to be a public servant who serves with integrity, leads with courage and acts with love in his heart.
As the chairperson of the SACP Yusuf Dadoo said during the funeral of his general secretary, Ntate Moses Kotane in 1978, it is true that in the life of every nation, there arise leaders who leave an eternal stamp on their people: leaders who are both products and makers of history and when they pass, they remind us of our historic past and leave a vision of a great future and the tools with which to build it. Comrade Thabo, you are such a leader.
For our part, we will be forever be inspired by your examples as a revolutionary and a great political figure. As we pay tribute to you, we shall not relent nor waver but work tirelessly to eradicate unemployment, corruption and poverty in our country.
Through the process of organisational renewal, we also commit to extricate the ANC from the quagmire of ignominy and shame it is entrapped in by rebuilding, renewing and uniting our movement.
We are going to remember you: your decency, sincerity, humility and your kind soul will stay with us forever. So, through our tears, we will see the blessings of knowing and working with you – a great and noble man and the best cadre a revolutionary movement could have. And in our grief, we will smile, knowing that the angels are happy to receive you.
In all fairness, I hope a memorial should be speedily erected in your honour so that the father can point to his son, the mother to her daughter and the host to his guest and say with pride: "Herein lies immortal Thabo Masebe, a cadre with great revolutionary humility.”
As Joshua Nkomo, a Zimbabwean freedom fighter, remarked during the funeral of cadre Lookout Masuku: "You cannot take away the status of a hero. You don't give a man a status of a hero. All you can do is recognize it. It is his".
Sooner, when history books are written, they will say that comrade Thabo Masebe was a great communicator - a leader of unmatched skills, a cadre of formidable accomplishments, and a gentleman who executed the duties of his office with dignity and honour.
And when future generation do research, they will one day unveil more of what you have done for your country. At that moment, you will smile in affirmation from your resting place and say: "My footprints are deeply entrenched and are visible.”
At this hour of grief, once more, we pledge our oneness with your family and pledge to carry forward your dream to create a better world and a better Africa for humankind.
Amandla!
* China Dodovu is the former ANC Youth League Provincial Secretary in the North West and ex-officio member of the National Executive Committee. Currently, a Member of Parliament.