By BAKANG MOKOTO
6 November 2024- The African National Congress (ANC) commemorates the release of Isithwalandwe, the late Comrade Govan Mbeki, famously known as Oom Gov, a communist, a stalwart of the South African revolution, Umkhonto we Sizwe High Commander, and a Rivonia Trialist, who spent 24 years on Robben Island for treason and terrorism against the unjust apartheid state before his release on 5 November 1987.
The ANC national spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said yesterday, as they remember Oom Gov, they honour him as a revolutionary intellectual dedicated to the struggle for freedom and liberation for all South Africans. Bhengu-Motsiri said his hatred for poverty and racial oppression is clear in his seminal work, “The Peasants Revolt,” which analysed peasant struggles in the Transkei and exposed apartheid injustices, serving as a guide for freedom fighters.
“Oom Gov consistently placed the people’s needs and security above his own, working fulltime as a political reporter and editor for New Age, exposing colonial-apartheid evils in the movement’s newspaper until its ban in 1962 by John Vorster.
“We reflect on the commitment to education transformation and access to learning today through the historical lens of the Freedom Charter, which Oom Gov believed in and how it symbolises our advance towards a South Africa where “The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened” for all,” she said.
Bhengu-Motsiri further said yet, on this day that must celebrate a giant of the struggle who gave his all for freedom and equality in South Africa, they witness the Democratic Alliance (DA), Freedom Front Plus, and Afri-Forum holding a so-called protest rally at the Voortrekker Monument. She added that this gathering signals their intent to further consolidate and revive the divisive system of our dark past under the pretence of opposing the progressive Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act, which has been signed into law by President Ramaphosa.
“Their protest against the implementation of the BELA Act, which seeks to promote social cohesion and provide dual mediums of instruction, is emblematic of their commitment to preserving apartheid-era policy thinking.
“The Voortrekker Monument was completed in 1949 and inaugurated as apartheid’s symbol of Afrikaner supremacy just after the National Party adopted its system of apartheid, and this protest symbolically represents a painful era of exclusion, dispossession, and oppression,” said Bhengu-Motsiri.
She said their choice to protest there is not coincidental. Bhengu-Motsiri said it is a calculated move that aligns itself with the values of a South Africa they fought against and are consistent in dismantling and burying in their efforts for a true united non-racial South Africa that has no place for discrimination and exclusions of any form.
“As we reflect on this protest, we cannot deliberately ignore or imagine away the historical connection of the evil John Vorster, whose oppressive system of apartheid unjustly threw Oom Gov and other Rivonia Trialists into jail during his tenure as Minister of Justice.
“Vorster’s strong influence and direction in the apartheid regime’s language policies was significant, exemplified by his declaration of 1975 as Language Year when he was President. This immoral and heartless apartheid head diametrically opposed the progress of a black child and his government forcefully imposed Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools, to deeply entrench historic inequality and cultural hegemony,” she said.
The Guardian 