Eve Hall London 1969

Well done, South Africa! - SACP Politburo

SACP Political Bureau Statement, 29 June 2010

WELL DONE SOUTH AFRICA!

The Political Bureau of the SACP held its scheduled monthly meeting in Johannesburg yesterday, June 28th.

The meeting of the PB afforded the leadership of the SACP with an opportunity to evaluate the ongoing organisational and campaigning work of the SACP since our special national congress in December last year, and to discuss progress within our ANC-led alliance following a series of Alliance Political Council meetings as well as bilaterals. Also on the agenda of the PB was a “half-time” evaluation of SA’s hosting of the soccer World Cup.

At a time when many other political formations are in decline and are showing serious signs of factional degeneration, the SACP’s unity and membership continues to grow significantly. Current membership stands at over 105,000, making us by far the second-largest political party in SA, after our ally the ANC. Our membership growth is directly linked to our community-based activism and a range of campaigns spearheaded by the Party. Our current campaign against corruption has clearly struck a powerful chord amongst a wide range of South Africans. Together with a wide range of forces we will be intensifying this campaign in the coming months by focusing on the blockages to service delivery to poor communities – many of these blockages are directly related to “tenderpreneurship” and other corrupting practices.

Contrary to an impression sometimes created in the media, Alliance unity, particularly at the national level, has generally been considerably consolidated over the past two and a half years. Alliance unity is not about a shallow feel-good sentimentality, but about principled activism around a shared strategic programme. Over the past year the SACP has consistently distinguished between the great majority of ANC leaders, members and supporters, on the one hand, and a small group of wreckers who do not want to see ANC, still less Alliance-wide unity consolidated. The SACP believes that the narrow sectarian agenda of this small group has increasingly been exposed, as they have become more desperate and brazen. Their exposure and marginalisation bodes well for consolidating unity across our movement, and, indeed, for building the widest, patriotic, nation-building effort within our country.

In this latter regard, the PB noted with great approval the many positive achievements in evidence on the ground within our country over the past two weeks of the soccer World Cup. The South African government and the people of SA have united together, like never before, to host hundreds of thousands of international guests from other parts of Africa, and from third and first world countries alike. Our international guests in their majority have also played their part, mingling with township communities and staying often in relatively modest accommodation. They are helping to remind us that they want to celebrate SA for what we are – a developing country with many challenges – and not for some illusory second-hand copy of the developed north.

The organisation of this World Cup has been different from most others in that government in all spheres has played a much more central role than, for instance, in Germany in 2006. This was necessitated by the scale of infrastructural development – notably with new stadiums and a wide range of new transport-related infrastructure. The SA Police have also had to step in on an even larger scale than originally planned as a result of private security failures (linked, of course, to labour brokering and casualisation). What we have seen has been a developmental state in action, rallying the widest range of South Africans around a common vision and a common task. Of course, beyond mid-July the key challenge will be how to build on the momentum and experience gained. This, in any case, is not an issue that has been deferred to mid-July, from the start we have sought to ensure that we use the World Cup to lay down a transformational legacy in our towns and cities. This will particularly be the case with public transport.

But if government along with the Local Organising Committee need to be congratulated, it is, above all, ordinary South Africans from across the spectrum who we need to be saluted. What the last few weeks have once more demonstrated is that millions of South Africans, black and white, desperately want to feel part of a unifying programme of action. Let us build on this momentum by focusing our collective energies on the challenges we all face as a nation – jobs, transforming health-care and education, rural development, and fighting the scourge of crime and corruption.

We need the same focus in tackling the above priorities as we did with the FIFA World Cup – a state-led action buttressed by mass activism.

Well done, South Africa! The SACP is proud to be a communist party, an internationalist party, AND, not least, South African!

Issued by the SACP

Malesela Maleka, SACP Spokesperson, 082 226 1802

Housing, Democracy, Communism

State and Revolution, Part 4

                                                                                                                           

Housing, Democracy, Communism

This fourth chapter of Lenin’s “The State and Revolution” (linked below) presents a study circle with a problem. As short as it is, yet there is too much in this chapter to discuss in a 1½ hour session. 


So, one must remember that the Freirean requirement from any text is only that it provides a good occasion for dialogue. The dialogue is where the value lies, because it generates socialised learning. We are not trying to learn the text in its entirety, as individuals.

Therefore, since this chapter is a rehearsal, almost a catalogue, of critical contributions made by Frederick Engels, plus remarks of Lenin’s own, here are some of the many topics that could be taken in a dialogue, from it:

Housing Question

"How is the housing question to be settled then? In present-day society, it is settled just as any other social question: by the gradual economic levelling of demand and supply, a settlement which reproduces the question itself again and again and therefore is no settlement.” [Engels]

Authority

"Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.” [Engels]

Monopoly capitalism (remarks on the Erfurt Programme)

The "proximity" of such capitalism to socialism should serve genuine representatives of the proletariat as an argument proving the proximity, facility, feasibility, and urgency of the socialist revolution, and not at all as an argument for tolerating the repudiation of such a revolution and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, something which all reformists are trying to do.

…the democratic republic is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat. [Lenin]

National Question

Engels, like Marx, never betrayed the slightest desire to brush aside the national question. [Lenin]

Religion

…the party struggle against the opium of religion which stupifies the people. [Lenin]

The State (in the Paris Commune)

"... in order not to lose again its only just-gained supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old machinery of oppression previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any time...."

“…in Germany particularly the superstitious belief in the state has passed from philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers.” [Engels]

Communist and Social-Democrat

Engels wrote that in all his articles he used the word "Communist", and not "Social-Democrat". [Lenin]

Overcoming of democracy

…it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy.

At first sight this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even suspect us of expecting the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed - for democracy means the recognition of this very principle.

No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against another, by one section of the population against another.

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed.

In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination. [Lenin]

This is a very full concretisation of the question of democracy and communism.

Image: Lenin in late 1917, probably only a few weeks after writing “The State and Revolution”. And yes, we do know that Trotsky can be seen lounging against the woodwork in the uncropped version of this photo; but this post is not about Trotsky.

Click here to download the text of State & Revolution, Chapter 4, Engels’ Supplementary Explanations, Lenin (9007 words, 12 pages)

  

Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]	Course Archive	Weeks	Posted
SADTU Pol Ed [435]	Lenin’s The State & Revolution	3/6	18 June 2010
CU Africa [229]	Marx’s Capital, Volumes 1, 2 & 3	3/33	22 June 2010
CU [3146]	Philosophy and Religion	2/10	26 June 2010
Courses completed in 2010 to date:
SADTU Pol Ed	National Democratic Revolution	12	March - June
	Basics	10	January - March
SADTU Pol Schools	3-Day School	3 days	2-4 June
CU	No Woman, No Revolution	10	March - June
	Basics	10	January – March
Click here to visit Marxists Internet Archive

  

It doesn't matter that SA didn't qualify!

John Hall in Natal sends this link to cheer up all South African supporters

SA - It doesn't matter!

Dan Pearce and Paul Bassett Davies Chilling series ends

Thanks to Dan Pearce and Paul Bassett Davies


My thanks to Dan Pearce and Paul Basset Davies on behalf of the ARS NOTORIA blog. The 'Champagne - Cava' episode was the last episode of Chilling.

I am really going to miss that deep down chuckle Chilling gave me when Dan published it. I'm sure we all will.

I got hooked on Dan's comics, like others, when reading his strip Depression. It speaks to the raddled old git in all of us. When you read that strip there is an immediate recognition of the circumstances and the roll of events as they play out from one panel into another, from one strip to another. The familiar made fresh.

I can't understand why Dan and Paul aren't on the back of a daily paper. It shocks me to the core that they are not.

Once again, thank you for letting us chill with you both, Dan and paul.

By the way, the pizza episode was my favourite.

Tributes paid to Jose Saramago, dead at 87

The body of Jose Saramago, Nobel prize-winning Portuguese novelist, arrived back in his homeland on Saturday from the Spanish island of Lanzarote for his funeral in Lisbon.

by Bill Benfield, Morning Star, Monday June 21

Mr Saramago won the 1998 Nobel literature prize. His work was internationally admired for its clarity of its ideas despite a complex prose style.

He died aged 87 on Friday after a long illness, an outspoken man who moved to the Canary Islands after a public spat in 1992 with the Portuguese government, which he accused of censorship.

Read the rest of this story at: 
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/91777

Chilling 14

The Paris Commune, 1871

The Paris Commune, 1871

This is the third part of Lenin’s “Generic Course” on The State and Revolution. It is devoted to the Paris Commune [pictured in the photograph, above, and memorialised in Soviet artwork, below] and to the lessons that Karl Marx in particular drew from that experience.

Marx’s work “The Civil War in France” was written during, and immediately after, the events of early 1871 in Paris. Lenin’s summary of Marx, as usual, is brief. It misses very little and cannot easily be beaten, but Lenin’s summary itself has its highlights and these are what we will note here.

The first is where Lenin notes that Marx would have made a correction to the Communist Manifesto of 1848 on the basis of the experience of the Paris Commune. In 1871 Marx wrote: “…the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes” - by which he meant that proletariat had to "to smash the bureaucratic-military machine" and to replace it with a state that is "the proletariat organized as the ruling class" and as an "armed people" that had disbanded the bourgeoisie's "special bodies of armed men".

Lenin wrote: “Marx did not indulge in utopias; he expected the experience of the mass movement to provide the reply to the question as to the specific forms this organisation of the proletariat as the ruling class would assume and as to the exact manner in which this organisation would be combined with the most complete, most consistent ‘winning of the battle of democracy.’"

The Commune was “a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments.”

Lenin proceeds in the second and third sections of this chapter to relate how the practical steps were executed.

In the fourth part, Lenin addresses the question of centralism and clearly shows that centralism is not imposed but must be won politically, as a matter of free-willing action. All the time, Lenin is carrying on a secondary argument against the “opportunists” and the “anarchists, whom he says are “twin brothers.” Lenin writes:

“The anarchists dismissed the question of political forms altogether. The opportunists of present-day Social-Democracy accepted the bourgeois political forms of the parliamentary democratic state as the limit which should not be overstepped; they battered their foreheads praying before this 'model', and denounced as anarchism every desire to break these forms.”

“…now one has to engage in excavations, as it were, in order to bring undistorted Marxism to the knowledge of the mass of the people,” says Lenin.

As it was in 1917, so it remains in 2010. One has to engage in excavations.

Download:

Click here to download the text of State and Revolution, Chapter 3, The Paris Commune, Lenin (6609 words)

Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]	Course Archive	Weeks	Posted
SADTU Pol Ed [430]	Lenin’s The State & Revolution	1/6	14 June 2010
CU Africa [227]	Marx’s Capital, Volumes 1, 2 & 3	1/33	15 June 2010
CU [3140]	Philosophy and Religion	0/10	18 June 2010
Courses completed in 2010 to date:
SADTU Pol Ed	National Democratic Revolution	12	March - June
	Basics	10	January - March
SADTU Pol Schools	3-Day School	3 days	2-4 June
CU	No Woman, No Revolution	10	March - June
	Basics	10	January – March
Click here to visit Marxists Internet Archive

Russell Howard insults Desmond Tutu

Russel Howard insulted Bishop Tutu calling him: "as mad as a rat's arse"

Bishop Desmond Tutu is a South African hero and an internationally respected figure. If he was being joyful and exuberant at the opening ceremony, who is Russel Howard to insult Tutu and call him "as mad as a rat's arse"

Furthermore, his caricature of  Obama as a 'jive' African American answering Cameron on the phone was clearly racist stereotyping and not funny in the least.

Howard looked wired and out of touch. Does he think that coming out with stereotypes about African Americans and calling a hero like Tutu 'as mad as a rat's...' funny?

If you at the BBC are chuckling then I am not chuckling with you. I think you should be ashamed of yourselves for broadcasting such utter shite and expecting us to laugh at it. Moreover, it was an editing decision to leave the insult to Bishop Tutu in, so programme editors share the blame with Howard.

If you think mocking a joyful Bishop Tutu during the South African world cup is funny then that reveals something about you. You lack all perspective and you deserve all the opprobrium coming your way Howard.

Stand aside Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross, we have a new foot-in-mouth champion. In future I will avoid watching Mock the Week and the reason is I think Russell Howard might be a closet racist. Certainly his comments prove he is an incompetent ignoramus lacking basic political, cultural or historical reference points.

 
22:00–22:30

Mock the Week  18th June 2010

1. 
   
   
   
   Series 9, Episode 1

   The topical comedy show returns with guests Diane Morgan, Milton Jones and Chris Addison.
   
   
   Phil Hall

Was the Saudi referee knobbled in the France Mexico game?

The Saudi referee is giving free kick after free kick to France against Mexico. It looks as if he's been knobbled. If I was the Mexican coach I would definitely put in a complaint to FIFA. It's scandalous!!!!

On the other hand he's just given a penalty to Mexico. Maybe not. I take it back. Actually, one of my former students was the Saudi FIFA represenative.

I wonder what he has to say about this referee. The referee was given a push by FIFA to officiate.

If you read this, let us  know Mohammed.

Vuvuzela Blows a Storm Through World Cup

Commentary on the football in this month's South African world cup has been drowned out by an ominous sound – the droning roar of the dreaded Vuvuzela!

by JAMES TWEEDIE

The media opinion columns and comment boards have been buzzing with debate about the “attack of the killer bees” sound of the mass-produced metre-long plastic horns with which every football fan in South Africa is now armed.

There is nothing at all new about fans making noise at football matches. Wooden rattles have been replaced by compressed air horns. Entire brass bands with drums and cymbals are commonly seen at international fixtures.

The origin of the Vuvuzela is uncertain. A similar instrument called a corneta has been commonplace at football grounds across South America since the 1970s. The vuvuzela appeared in South Africa in the 1990s, originally made from tin or aluminium.

But, according to Wikipedia, veteran Kaizer Chiefs F.C. fan Freddie "Saddam" Maake claims to have invented the vuvuzela as early as 1965 by taking a bicycle horn, removing the rubber bulb and blowing it with his mouth. He decided it was too short to produce the desired noise and added a pipe to make it longer.

Maake has photos of himself holding the prototype vuvuzela at South African league games in the 1970s and 1980s and international matches in 1992 and 1996 and at the 1998 World Cup in France.

He says that the instrument was banned by authorities who claimed it was a dangerous weapon, which prompted him to find a plastic company that could manufacture it. 
South African firm Masincedane Sport began mass-producing plastic vuvuzelas in 2001. Now two German entrepreneurs have bought the rights to make and sell them in Europe.

If you think all that is far fetched then try these snippets of trivia:

The name vuvuzela is possibly derived from a Zulu word meaning “making a vuvu noise,” or from a township slang term for a shower attachment.

Plastic vuvuzelas can allegedly sound the note b-flat at 127 decibels – somewhere between the volume of a pneumatic riveter and a gunshot. Some carry a graphic symbol warning the user not to blow it in someone else's ear.

Masincedane Sport co-owner Neil van Schalkwyk is reportedly doing a roaring trade selling plastic earplugs to football fans who don't like his vuvuzelas.

Critics have variously described the vuvuzela as annoying, like a stampede of elephants, a swarm of locusts, a goat on the way to slaughter, “a giant hive full of very angry bees” and even “satanic.”

Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk and Spanish midfielder Xabi Alonso have called for a ban on the vuvuzela. Argentina and Barcelona star Lionel Messi complained that the sound of the vuvuzelas hampered communication among players on the pitch.

Thankfully FIFA president Fifa president Sepp Blatter is far more relaxed about the issue. In response to questions he posted on social time-wasting website Twitter: "I have always said that Africa has a different rhythm, a different sound.

"I don't see banning the music traditions of fans in their own country. Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?"

Legendary South African jazz flugelhorn player Hugh Masekela, who performed at the world cup kick-off concert in Soweto on June 10, has remained strangely silent about the instrument which rhymes with his surname.

The Morning Star of London (http://tiny.cc/lhqk8) reported that even before Portugal's dismal 0-0 draw against Ivory Coast on Tuesday, conceited and petulant captain Cristiano Ronaldo – who has not scored a goal for the national side in 16 months – was claiming that the Vuvuzela distracted players (i.e. his) concentration.

This brings us to the second point of this article. The big teams in this world cup do not seem to be taking it very seriously, do they? Or perhaps they are just not up to the reputation which precedes them.

South Africa scoring the first goal of the tournament against Mexico was a shock. France's 0-0 draw with Uruguay was also a surprise. England should have done to the USA what Germany did to Australia. Portugal deserved to be beaten by Ivory Coast, as did Italy by Paraguay. Hard-working and spirited outsiders DPRK deserved to share the points with an arrogant and lazy Brazil.

Spain was the first team to get what they deserved in this tournament, against Switzerland this morning. Maybe now the millionaire playboys of the top-ten seeded teams will wake up and start playing football.

Chilling 13

Eulogy for Marius Schoon and a question...

Is it healthy, sometimes, to hate?

I was sitting with Mom in Matumi by the fire and Mike was with us and Mike was telling us how he forgave his stepmother while she was dying and he felt liberated by it. While she died he prayed and in praying and forgiving he was released.

At this point, Mom broke in.

'Do you think I forgive the Nazis for what they did to my grandmother? Do you think I forgive the people who jailed me and who jailed and murdered our friends?'

Very angry now, she said. 'Sometimes it's healthy to hate.' And she turned to me and said. 'What do you think love?' And she waited, a little apprehensively, for my response.

Now Mike and I have a close relationship. He has taught me so much over the course of my life, though our meetings have been few and far between. But I looked at Mom and said:

'Yes, Mom, I agree with you, sometimes it is healthy to hate.

And since then I have been thinking about what she said.

Hugh Masekela interviewed on the TV yesterday said: 'Well yes, we may have forgiven, but we will not forget.'

Primo Levi, the most profound and insightful chronicler of the holocaust did not forgive either. He looked long and hard at the behaviour of the SS and the Germans and Austrians and their collaborators and understood them and judged them. To judge someone and understand their behaviour is not to forgive them.

In the drowned and the saved Primo Levi quotes a letter in which a correspondent recounts the complaints of a German cleaning woman about the treatment of her soldier husband in the context of the Nuremberg trials:


'...the women put down her fork and interrupted aggressively: 'What is the point of all these trials they're having now? What could they do about it, our poor soldiers, if they gave them those orders? When my husband came on furlough from Poland, he told me: "Almost all we did was shoot Jews, shoot Jews all the time. My arm hurt from so much shooting." But what was he supposed to do, if they had given him those orders?'...I discharged her, stifling the temptation to congratulate her on her poor husband fallen in the war...So there, you see, here in Germany even today we live in the midst of such people.'

Do people like this deserve our sympathy and forgiveness? They certainly demand it.

Then think of film after film portraying the US Soldier as the victim in war after imperial war. The poor US soldier suffering in Vietnam. The poor US soldier suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan. Film after film portraying the perpetrator as victim and muddying the waters of history. Film after film showing how sad and pitiable it is to be 'forced' to kill and rape and maim, and decades of 'liberals' from Kubrick to Cloony demanding forgiveness for increasingly well paid and resourced murdering grunts.  

And it was in this context that I read Fiona and Hugh Lewin's eulogy to Marius Schoon. I am looking back into my parents' life and they had many many very close friends, but Marius was a friend that went right back to Witz university. When Dad and Mom were in Cape Town in 1959, because Dad was on a Journalism course, Marius was there too.  They were in their early twenties. And later, on they met up again and in Joburg in the 90's Sherry and Marius and Mom and Dad were close.

This document was sent to my father and I have asked Hugh Lewin for permission to reproduce it to honour a friend of my parents - it's very moving. But also, I want to ask the question.  Is it healthy sometimes to hate?

I also think it is important to ask this question in the light of the results of the Bloody Sunday inquiry, which completely exonerated the victims today. It incensed me to hear the BBC interviewers suggesting to the relatives of the victims of the British state that they should forgive. It is always the perpetrators and their representatives that demand forgiveness when they are finally found out. 

Phil Hall

Marius - 13 February 1999 - Braamfontein Crematorium

  
Fiona Lloyd and Hugh Lewin


Welcome to all - thanks for coming and please be seated - explain procedure:

NB afterwards at the Wilsons.

Strange and wonderful to think: only two weeks ago, I was sitting with Marius and discussing, in true Schoon style, this ceremony. Typical of the up-front, no-nonsense, get-to-the-point Schoon: this is what the funeral's going to be. He wanted the best for his family, his comrades, his friends. So that's what you've got: his service, his farewell - and how rich and suitable. (And thanks immediately to Tim Wilson who has finally found, on Marius' instructions, his true vocation in the struggle: organiser of funerals. Thanks for this one, but long may you, hereafter, remain unemployed.)

[Ask choir to sing first of Marius' requests - Ou Boereplaas]

So, yes, Marius, we salute you. Not so much in a spirit of sadness and loss, but more one of celebration, and re-dedication to your ideals - as you put it, the flag you chose. You're actually a pretty amazing character, aren't you? In life, you gave us so much; in death, you've taught us so much about what it means to be alive.

He asked me to talk about prison. It's at times like this that we're reminded - and need to be reminded - of the peculiar place that prison has played in our history. Where else has PG (prison graduate) been such a mark of distinction, such a badge of honour? And, of course, it's a great honour for me, however sad, to be here today as Marius' praise-singer.

Prison. 

Marius and I were together in the sort of situation which, fortunately, no married couple has ever to go through. We shared cells or lived as neighbours for most of my seven years (he had 12, remember) - so I talk of Marius as my real china, my china-plate/mate, my brother, my very close comrade. Because prison reduces most things to basics: you're stripped, you're deprived of all protection, all comforts, except that of friendship, and so all your frailties, all your shortcomings are exposed, laid bare. Very few escape that harshest of questions: how did you push your time? How did you survive the boop test? Marius was great. The term he often used -and of which he was the greatest exponent: staunch. Was he loyal? Was he unselfish? Was he resolute in the face of adversity and harsh treatment? Yes, staunch. Did he buckle or complain? Did he think about himself before others? No - he was staunch. Marius was a struggler, a real struggler. He was staunch. That, in a word, was Marius. Staunch. Always.

So let me today give you some other voices, of those who were also with him. It's a special band of brothers this - comrades, colleagues, fellow bandiete, who have, this last week, gratefully sent messages from across the waters, or nearer at hand.

John Laredo, 5 years

"I first met Marius when he and his cousin Paul and I were students at Stellenbosch in the early fifties. I remember having political discussions (what else?) with him in what was set aside as the newspaper room where we read the dailies standing at a long lectern.

Our paths didn't cross again until we met in prison. Bram Fischer, Marius and I were  singled out by the vagaries of prison authority as being suitable conduits for prison policy announcements. This was because we were the three persons whose first language was Afrikaans.  It made no difference to our lives because few, if any, of the announced policy changes ever amounted to a hill of beans.

I didn't see Marius again until I paid a visit to Johannesburg in 1996.  I was touched by the warmth with which he greeted me. His death hits me . Neither Marius nor I were believers, so we can say in a humanist way: "Nog 'n siel verlaat gods akker".

Denis Goldberg, 22 years

It is the nature of prison life that you get to know your prison comrades very well indeed. I came to respect Marius for his courage and conviction that what we were doing was right and proper ... I know the emotional conflicts we all shared, especially our deep desire to be with our children, and our wish to make better the lives of all our country's children. I know from my children the conflict they felt between pride in their Dad and upset because Dad wasn't home when they needed him. I can only say that as long as inequality exists, there will be people like Marius who believe that putting that right is the most important thing in anyone's life because it enriches the life of us all. I was enriched by knowing Marius so well. Our country was enriched by his life. Be proud, my friends and comrades.

Dave Evans, 5 years

Marius has a deeply honourable place in the heroic band of Afrikaner radicals who - facing excommunication from their own community - put their lives on the line in the struggle against apartheid. His courage was unflinching, his commitment to non-racialism and socialism unwavering: they saw him through imprisonment, persecution and personal tragedy. A good comrade in prison and out, he was clever and cultivated and his blunt speech and sometimes abrasive wit never quite concealed the innate generosity and loving heart to which Sherry, Fritz and many friends can well testify. His early death was undoubtedly hastened by the strain of the struggle, but his qualities will survive in those who knew him and share his uncompromising vision for now and the future.

Raymond Eisenstein, 7 years

The Marius I remember best is the one I knew before politics and prison. We first met in the summer of '58 or '59.  It was a warm Cape Town evening and he was wearing a pair of white shorts and a T-shirt.  I remember Jan Rabie, the Afrikaans writer, was also there, recently back from Paris. We spent the evening talking about France, writing and the state of Afrikaans.

After that, I met Marius in Jo'burg at parties, cafes, mainly in Hillbrow, and once or twice on campus.  In those days, Marius was part of a happy, non-racial, bohemian crowd and at one time, he even ran an 'underground' bookshop! The shop, on Bree Street, was frequented by an assortment of characters including intellectual drunks, rising African writers such as Nat Nakasa, and some political activists.  Whenever I visited, Marius and I would share a beer and rebuild the world while others browsed.  I wonder if many books, if any, were ever sold!

These carefree times ended with Sharpeville, the State of Emergency and the Terrorism Act.  Marius went into politics with open eyes and an open heart. He had a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish and was not frightened of the consequences of his beliefs.
 
Jock Strachan, 3 years, then again 18 months

The most important thing I learned about prison life is that the punishment of it all, the hell on earth, comes from a bad attitude towards the shrunken community in which you now live.  All of us there came from the world of intellectuals, where one's persona is the thing to present to the world, to advertise, the substantial thing in one's life and one's success.

But Marius realised early on that in a time of such stress, and danger, personality is not the important thing; character is. Think carefully, decide what duties you have towards the community of very pronounced and difficult personalities, and then fulfil those duties, over the long long years, no matter what discipline this takes.

It is for such strength that I remember Marius.  I never knew him out of prison.  But I remember that inside there was a core of determined men holding the morale of us all together, and Marius was one of them.

Paul Trewhela, 2 years

I wish Marius was around to pick up the recognition he's getting now. I feel anger and immense pity at the terrible episodes in his life. He was so earnest in his commitment. I think in many ways Marius was a pioneer in developing a new relationship between Afrikaners and Africa - and his achievements and his difficulties will be all the more appreciated in the future. May Sherry and Jane and Fritz walk very tall.

Dave Kitson, 20 years  

[whose phone was out, so he's only now sent this message].

When Marius first arrived in prison, I thought he was from the lunatic fringe. But in the course of our life together in prison, he became a man and a stalwart. In fact, he generated enough respect in me for him that, though I'm now almost an octogenarian, I flew down from Harare last night to pay my respects to him.

[And there he was in his dark suit, slightly bent: Joseph himself.]

I would like now to sing a song which I know Marius will remember - and I know he'll forgive me if I screw it up: he always made a point of demonstrating, by participating in singing sessions, that he was magnificently tone deaf. But this was a song, first introduced by Jack Tarshish, which resonated with labour camps and the international struggle, and which the Irish will, no doubt, claim as their own. Whatever its origins, it became firmly ours at Pretoria Local, and expresses much that is Marius.

Peat-bog Soldiers (last verse changed to: FREEDOM, dear, you're mine at
last .)

Thereafter:

Message from ANC, from Mac Maharaj
Patrick Fitzgerald, on Botwana and MEDU
Colin Buckley (long-time English friend) reads Memories of CASA (by LMS)

[Another song from the DBSA Choir]

Pethu Serote talks about Mazimbu Sheena McCambley (friend of Sherry's) reads lovely Seamus Heaney Theuns Potgieter talks (in Afrikaans) about life at the bank Sherry mentions all the family and says Thanks Beyers Naude leads prayers, in Afrikaans and English, and commits the body While choir sings Hamba kahle Umkhonto Jonas Gwangwa on trombone leads singing of National Anthem

- and all gather at Wilsons for lunch and cold Castle.

More than 350 at the ceremony, packed full inside the Braamfontein Crematorium, with lots standing outside. Cabinet represented by Mac and the Asmals; plus Zanele Mbeki; and virtually everybody you'd imagine: all the Naidoos, George Bizos, Nadine Gordimer, Sheila and Mark Weinberg, Rica Hodgson, Amina Cachalia, Esther Barsel, Henry Makgothi, Ruth & Ilse Fischer, Ruth Muller, Hillary Hamburger (ex-Kuny), Colin Smuts, Lipmans, lots from media . and the rest.

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Marius Schoon

The life of Marius Schoon, the anti-apartheid activist who died in Johannesburg last Sunday, was as much a statement of the sacrifices made in the struggle for democracy as an indication of some of the cruel ironies of post-apartheid South Africa.

Schoon, 61, was the essential struggler: Afrikaner dissident, long-term political prisoner, then long-term exile, he survived the parcel-bomb that killed his wife and daughter in Angola, then finally returned home with the exiles, with a new wife and growing son, only to succumb rapidly to lung cancer just two months after testifying against the man who applied to the Truth Commission for amnesty for the parcel-bomb murder. Few people have faced such diversities of fate with such equanimity and unbending strength: Schoon did, right to the end, with a mischievous smile, stern argument and smokey cough.

I met him for the first time in Pretoria Prison in late 1964, where we had begun our sentences for protest sabotage. I had seven years as a political prisoner, Schoon had 12, for an attempted attack on a Johannesburg police station, largely the work of an agent provocateur. His co-conspirator problems continued: his fellow saboteur soon turned state witness in the trumped-up 1965 case against Harold Strachan, whose articles on his time in prison exposed the appalling conditions under which we were being treated. It was not a good time to have unreliable friends, but the incident brought out Schoon's prime quality: an unbending loyalty to "the cause" (that of a socialist future for South Africa) and the continuing struggle, of which prison was certainly a part.

Prison is a stripping-down process, removing any soft exteriors and protection - and it quickly separates the selfish from the unselfish; those who think only of themselves, from those who think first about how to support others, strengthen the group. Schoon was one of three Afrikaners in our group: John Laredo, who had been at Stellenbosch University ahead of him; and the aristocrat of all Afrikaans verraiers (traitors), Advocate Bram Fischer, leader of the defence team that saved Mandela and the Rivonia trialists from the gallows. These three were particularly resented by our warders, yet the nasty pettiness which was angled their way never swayed Schoon from his determination to "push his time" well, never to complain on his own account and - his priority - to support Fischer, who died of cancer while still a prisoner.

Eventually released after 12 years (political prisoners received no remission of sentence), Schoon was banned: made his own jailer, restricted to his home between 6pm and 6am, not allowed to follow his profession as teacher and not permitted to meet other banned persons - which was a problem, as he met and fell in love with Jeannette Curtis, student and trade union activist, also banned. Undeterred by the inherent dangers, they took the apparent path to safety and skipped the border into Botswana, where they settled into a joint job and the frenetic life of just-across-the-border exiles.

But it was the 1980s, when PW Botha's government thought nothing of crossing borders to propagate the "total onslaught" against all enemies of apartheid. The Schoons were warned that they were targets, so, with daughter Katryn and baby Fritz in tow, they reported to the ANC centre in Lusaka and were redeployed to Lubango, Angola.

On 28 June 1984, Marius was out of town when Jeannette collected the post and took it home to open. She was watched by six-year-old Katryn. Marius later described how he had been flown home as quickly as possible, to find his wife and daughter splattered across the walls of the flat. Two-year-old Fritz was found wandering outside the flats, physically unharmed, though he has spent years recovering from epilepsy.

Schoon and son moved to Tanzania, to Zambia and to Ireland, where he married Sherry in 1986. And, finally, to the new South Africa where, in a rather unlikely move, he became development officer with the Development Bank, former pillar of the Bantustans.

Resolutely, persistently, Schoon sought his ex-wife's murderers. His suspicions were confirmed when, as part of the process begun by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, former Security policeman Craig Williamson admitted responsibility for the bombing of the ANC headquarters in London, the death of Ruth Slovo in Maputo - and the killing of Jeannette and Katryn Schoon in Angola.

Schoon instituted a civil action against Williamson, seeking damages, primarily on behalf of his son. The case was postponed, pending the application by Williamson before the Truth Commission for amnesty, on the grounds of his admission of responsibility for the three actions. The hearing began at the end of 1999 in Pretoria. Again, the ironies: sitting alongside Schoon was Eugene de Kok, the convicted political hitman, assisting the opponents of Williamson's application by correcting Williamson's evidence.

Schoon testified at the hearing in November 1998. He looked haggard, haunted and - this will be his abiding image - he resolutely refused to back down, in the reconciliatory context of the Truth Commission, from his demand that justice be done, properly, in the case of the murdering policeman. His final gesture was an angry one, dismissing the "obscene suggestion" from Williamson's lawyer that the two meet during the tea-break "to reconcile".

Shortly after that encounter, Schoon was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He died peacefully, content after a long phone-call from President Mandela, hailing him for his contribution to the struggle.