Freedom in Our Lifetime - Anton Lembede

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wanted to gain some clearer understanding of the subject matter he was studying. He used me as a tool to achieve that goal. And, in this way, he also improved my knowledge. I was argumentative, too. I was a debater. I liked conflict, and he knew I was very stubborn. He was like that, too. He often challenged me. And after explaining to me so and so stood for this and that, he would make a reference to some book. He read to me, and I would read myself. Then we would discuss issues that he wanted to go deeper into. He invited me to take a certain line, an opposite line, so he could give me a chance to go deeper. He learned a lot from controversies because sometimes I attacked his positions just to give him an exercise in refuting my arguments.

      When Lembede arrived in Johannesburg in 1943 to practice law, I was already there. In Orlando, I was chairman of the local branch of the ANC. There were people like myself and Walter Sisulu who had already been baptised into the ANC politics, so we introduced him to the politics of Johannesburg and the ANC. But we soon learned that he was an independent and creative thinker; and he fast rose in the ranks of the young people who made up the Youth League.

      Lembede was already politically conscious when he came to Johannesburg. He was critical of the set-up in South Africa – very critical. He could not understand why organisations like the ANC were weak. As time went on, it had become weaker and weaker. I likened the situation to a horse that was ridden by a small boy. The horse was not aware that it had greater powers than the boy. If it became aware, then it would not tolerate him for long. It would come to a point where the horse would say, “Get off. Get down quickly.”

      Now our power was potential. We weren’t aware of it. Our power lay in the fact that we carried South African society on our shoulders, literally in so far as our labour power was concerned. In the kitchens, in the gardens, in industry, on the roads and on the farms, we more or less carried South Africa. However, our power was only imaginary. But if we could unite around some issue, we could go very far. Once we achieved unity, we would give our rulers an opportunity to change their line. Once we decided on positive action and we were united, we would truly shock the whole country. We did not want to destroy South Africa. We wanted people to change their views and decide to meet and compromise in discussion as human beings.

      We were weak not only organisationally; we were weak in theory. We had not yet been able to study the situation in South Africa and the role we would play in bringing about a new South Africa. When Lembede and others joined the Youth League, we were quite clear on the general issues that faced us. But he was prophetic in his outlook; and this enriched his experience. He learned to come down to the people and to have the common touch and to address himself to the issues of common, ordinary poor people, workers and others. It was a great thing that he came amongst us. We really felt that he was a gifted man. He was learned. He had covered a lot of fields. He was a very clear thinker, a very good speaker. He came at a time when we needed a man of this type and background that enabled him to learn more and more and quickly.

      He already had some clear-cut ideas on Africans. He was very critical of the African people. He said they were not conscious of who they were, where they came from, why they were here and where they were going from here. Those were his complaints. It was our duty to devote ourselves to the great tasks of nation building along which we could lead the people and organise them. Very soon Lembede became accepted in the community and was acknowledged as a person who had a future in the country and would be useful to the people as a leader.

      To those of us who personally knew Lembede he was an inspirational leader who left us as he was entering his most productive years. To present-day South Africans he is little more than a name from the past. I commend the editors for the patient detective work they have put into tracking down information on Lembede’s life and collecting his writings. This volume will go far in educating people about Lembede, his ideas and politics. And I hope others will be challenged to follow its example and publish the writings of other stalwarts in our struggle. We need many more volumes like this so that present and future generations of South Africans can learn about their past and make their own critical judgements about what was said and done.

      Foreword

      WALTER SISULU

      I knew Anton Muziwakhe Lembede for only four years before his tragic and untimely death. But those four years were his most productive and significant – they were the years for which he is chiefly remembered.

      From the first time when he came into my offices in Diagonal Street in 1943, Lembede struck me not only as a keen intellectual, but a philosopher and theoretician. He had an ability to examine ideas from any quarter, no matter how much he might disagree with those who initiated them. He examined with rational interest, for example, the strategies used by Afrikaner nationalists to mobilise and uplift their poor – in those days there were many thousands of unskilled, jobless newcomers from the platteland. Lembede felt that Africans could learn from their successes. And from the communists, who he firmly rejected both as a Catholic and an Africanist, he learnt to respect a militancy based on political theory (as opposed to the hamba kahle [go well] approach of the older ANC leaders). Lembede also reaffirmed the value of socialism as expressed in the precolonial African communal tradition.

      It was Lembede, together with A P Mda and Nelson Mandela who sat up late at night drafting the political philosophy for an as-yet-unborn Youth League, before presenting the document to colleagues such as Willie Nkomo, Lionel Majombozi, Oliver Tambo and myself, to consider and to critique. But of course Lembede, as a typical leader of the Youth League, fought the struggle not only politically, but with all the impressive skills at his disposal.

      I remember clearly his practical support, as an articled clerk, together with Nelson Mandela, then a law student, in advising James Mpanza, head of the Sofasonke squatter movement, on how to challenge the Johannesburg Municipality on legal grounds to provide housing for the workers in the city. When the government wanted to deport Mpanza, Lembede together with Mandela, went to Pretoria to meet the Secretary of Native Affairs to argue the case against Mpanza’s deportation.

      It is not necessary to detail any further Lembede’s passionate nationalism, his deeply spiritual nature and his earnest commitment to enhancing and promoting a mass-based African National Congress – these are well captured by Lembede’s own words in this book.

      Fifty years after the founding of the Youth League, the message of Lembede, its first elected president, remains clear: that it is the youth who have the capacity to renew the struggle, which today continues in a new form. It is the critical gaze of the youth who play the time-honoured role of re-examining the status quo, sometimes to the discomfort of the “old guard”. It is they who have always had the capacity and the energy to renew and reinvigorate the ANC so that its grassroots members could continue to play their rightful part in democratising our society. And, just as in Lembede’s generation, the youth also have the flexibility to scrutinise their own positions, and have the courage to adapt them to changing conditions if need be. These are important lessons to examine in the context of Lembede’s time, and to reconsider in the light of today’s historic moment.

      The editors of this book are to be congratulated for a timely and thoughtful tribute to an exceptional young man, for he played a key role in a turning point in the history of the ANC. This volume should be seen as a challenge to readers to collect the memories of others who participated in the struggle, who fought to take control of their lives and to mobilise others to do the same. The record of our political struggle still has a long way to go before present and future generations can fully appreciate and understand our past. Lembede’s life is but one example of the remarkable courage and dedication that the forces of oppression and exploitation evoked in our people – old and young, men and women, black and white – to deepen and enhance the quality of the lives of all South Africans, in the time-honoured tradition of the ANC.

EARLY WRITINGS

      The importance of agriculture

      (A M Lembede, “The Importance of Agriculture”, Iso Lomuzi, Vol. IV, no. 1 [October 1934], 16–17)

      An incentive which has urged me to write this article is the tendency which is prevalent among my fellow-students and other people of underestimating the value of agriculture.

      Agriculture

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