There were many facets to the life of Govan Mbeki. He was an intellectual who wrote about South African economics and politics for sixty years; a dedicated teacher, who cheerfully acknowledged his school-masterly ways; and a journalist, researcher, and analyst.
Most prominently, he was a political activist, a member of the African National Congress (ANC) from the 1930s and subsequently of the South African Communist Party (SACP), and he emerged as a leader in both organizations by the late 1950s. When the ANC decided to take up arms against the apartheid regime, he became part of its armed wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), overseeing a program of underground mobilization in Port Elizabeth before heading a sabotage unit in the same city.
In July 1963, Mbeki was captured along with fellow activists such as Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada at a farm in Rivonia. He was one of those prosecuted at the famous Rivonia trial the following year and served twenty-four years as a political prisoner before his release in 1987.
It was the combination of these two identities that best captures Mbeki’s distinctive contribution to the national liberation struggle. He was an activist and an intellectual, a figure for whom the roles of practitioner and theoretician were not opposed but complementary.
Key aspects of Mbeki’s political career include a sense of tenacity and consistency. From the mid-1930s onward, he regarded himself as an African nationalist and as a Marxist. These twin strands remained constant, even if the balance between them shifted over time.
Historically, the most distinctive aspect of Mbeki’s politics was his insistence over the course of decades that both African nationalism and the Communist movement in South Africa should take the country’s peasants and migrant workers seriously. This standpoint meant that he swam against the tide in both political currents. South African communists were orthodox in their emphasis on the urban proletariat, while the ANC…
Auteur: Colin Bundy
