Tribute by Eastern Cape ANC Chairperson Comrade Oscar Lubabalo Mabuyane at the Memorial Service of the late Comrade Mxolisi Faku held in Mdantsane January 09, 2024.
Programme Director:
The Clergy:
The Faku Family and Relatives
ANC PEC members present,
ANC Regional Executive Committee members,
Leadership of our Leagues
Leadership of the revolutionary alliance in the region
Members and supporters of the ANC
On behalf of the African National Congress in the Province, I bring you revolutionary greetings at this sombre occasion where we have gathered to remember and honour the memory of our commissar and revolutionary, Cde Mxolisi Faku. Indeed, the African National Congress, the government it leads, and the people of the Eastern Cape are poorer without this astute cadre of our movement.
Kodwa xa sidibene ngoluhlobo into ephambili esizoyenza kukukhusa ikhaya lakwa Faku umhlana, kuba liphulukene nonyana walo ebelisiboleke yena kwi ANC. Sithi tutwini ke sapho lwakwa Faku, inxeba lona linzulu, kodwa onke amanxeba ayaphola. I, therefore, and again on behalf of the ANC, the entire movement and the people of our beautiful Province express our heartfelt condolences to the family. I also want to take this opportunity in this memorial service ka cde Faku to convey our deepest word of condolences the families yakwa Mnguni on their loss of their son , a revolutionary and activist, u cde Xolani Mnguni, ne family yakwa Sicatsha on the loss of their mother , grand mother , our veteran u cde u mama u Nolusapho Sicatsha, sithi ngxe kwezi families akuhlanga lungehliyo, we are also with them during this difficult time in their respective families.
Comrades and friends just as we were celebrating the last hours of the year 2023, readying ourselves to enter 2024, the year that our country will be celebrating 30 years of freedom and democracy, we received the dreaded news that Comrade Mxolisi Faku had tragically lost his life. That was the most painful news we could receive on New Year’s Eve, and it dampened the spirits of many of us who were the first receivers of that news.
Part of the reason we are hurt is the tragic manner in which we lost Comrade Xhwangusha through an accident. Accidents are sudden, when we lose someone through accidents it shocks us to the core, unlike when we lose someone who was sick for some time. We are also hurt because the timing of Comrade Xhwangusha’s passing is just off the mark for the movement, but we accept that it is God’s will.
Comrade Xhwangusha departs at a very difficult time for our movement and our shared national democratic revolution. He was one of the cadres that we had relied on and were going to rely on in the battles ahead, especially the upcoming national and provincial general elections. We say this because he was reliable and dependable. When given a task, he would carry it out despite whatever situation he was in. He was at a ripe age where his wisdom, and experience were most needed in the movement. At a time when our organization requires the sharpest minds to confront the internal and external challenges facing our movement, Cde Faku, unfortunately, has laid down his spear.
The breed of Cde Mxo comes few and far in between and as we pay our last respect to Cde Mxolisi Faku we stand tall as the ANC and point to him as an embodiment and reference to the cadre who must constitute the renewed ANC. The renewal of the ANC has its epochs which requires its giant like Cde Faku to step up and drive the discourse the ANC has taken. However, each epoch of renewal has its heroes and traitors. Cde Faku traversed about three of these phases with excellence. Not once was his commitment to the revolution ever doubted.
Comrade Mbeki alludes that ‘’the period after the banning of the ANC demanded, again, new cadres: The type of cadres who would not be afraid of death, of torture, of prison or exile’’, Cde Faku and his generation of the ’80s belonged and excelled in this type of cadre … the cadres who will say “to achieve the liberation of our people we must all of us ready to make the necessary sacrifices”. In a sense, therefore, these were different cadres.
The year 1994 presented us with new challenges – such as the challenge to develop another new cadre to respond to the challenges of the movement as a consequence of the victory of the national democratic revolution. Central to the tasks of the national democratic revolution at this stage was the task of social and economic transformation. And yet again Cde Mxo excelled in this generation and was part of this new cadres to reconstruct and define new South Africa.
When sins of incumbency deepened and since the 2009 General Elections, our electoral performance has been on a decline. In our diagnostic report among the multi-faceted challenges that were identified, we also noted the fundamental decline of the revolutionary morality as our leaders were no longer adhering to higher standards of behavior. We noted that when our people protest against the unethical behavior of our leadership, they do so not out of hatred but from feeling betrayed as they expect better and higher standards from revolutionaries. So again, this period demanded another new cadre and again Cde excelled in this journey. All these epochs, it often happens that the hardest working and most devoted will not be the most celebrated and rewarded as was the case with this finest revolutionary.
In comrade Mxolisi’s we have a reference to the meaning of the life of struggle – he had a deeper understanding of the South African Democratic Revolution and understood that for it to succeed it must simplify and taught to the masses, he understood that only politicised and concise masses can defend and deepen the NDR and that is why he devoted his entire life to political education. He also understood that for anyone to be a greater teacher, it requires a deeper understanding of the revolution itself, one of the things that Comrade Mxolisi did in his early life and involvement in the struggle for liberation was his dedication to learning the South African revolution. As a young activist and a revolutionary, Cde Mxolisi always sought to understand the struggle and the masses. His character and actions were always guided by the values and principles of the movement. He did not just assimilate the knowledge that is contained in the revolutionary literature of the movement but tried his level best to put theory into practice. This is shown by his activities and activism in the different facets of the struggle. In remembering Comrade Mxolisi, we shall do so by reflecting on his activism in the broad struggle for liberation.
We are deeply saddened by his loss. Amongst us today are many of the Comrades, (Abakhuluwa) who were activists with Comrade Xhwangusha. They have a responsibility to pick up his spear and continue to serve our revolution, particularly at this challenging time when our movement is tested from all angles. This is a challenge I know that Comrade Xhwangusha’s generation will take up without hesitation because they are a special generation of courageous, dedicated, and disciplined cadres of our movement who were on the frontlines during the most heightened phase of our liberation struggle. That generation is rich in both theory and practice. It outwitted the well-resourced apartheid regime; hence we must utilize it more in this period of rebuilding the trust deficit between our movement and the masses of our people.
Many comrades have spoken about the life Cde Faku lived, and it is quite enlightening. There is a unanimous view that in Comrade Mxolisi Faku we have lost one of the finest cadres of our movement, an astute student of the revolution.
I can summarise his life as a life of selflessness, sacrifice, and humility. One comrade even wrote that he appeared as a shy personality until he spoke. Ebe taka intlantsi xa ethe wavula umlomo wakhe uComrade Faku. Intonga zakhe zomlomo bezinezithonga ezivakalayo.
Being born in a working-class family in the rural outskirts of East London, never held Cde Faku back from achieving what he had set out for himself. Instead, this inspired him to be amongst those who sought to transform the conditions of the working class in the township and rural parts of our country and province.
Some gathered here will remember Cde Faku in his days as a youth and student activist during a very difficult time in our country. That is the generation that changed the course of our struggle, that added urgency and irritated the hell out of the apartheid regime and its homeland proxies. That is the generation that pushed hard for the release of Nelson Mandela which paved the way for the first democratic elections held in 1994.
When the illegitimate apartheid regime declared a state of emergency, Mass Democratic Movement organizations, including COSAS, had to find alternative methods of organizing in response to the prevailing conditions at the time. In this period, Cde Faku emerged as the first Chairperson of the Mdantsane Student Council as a result of his ability to mobilize students across Mdantsane high schools behind the boycott campaign. It is said that the boycott campaigns of Mdantsane under his leadership were one of the most powerful and impactful in the province. This demonstrates the type of cde we have gathered here to remember.
Comrade Faku played a crucial role in the establishment of residence-based units of SANSCO as part of the strategies for mass mobilization and political discourse. It was also in response to the reactionary motives of making institutions of higher learning ivory towers that were removed from the societies in which they are found.
He was amongst the cadres who worked tirelessly to re-establish ANC structures in the province, especially in Alice, post the unbanning of political parties. We all know his contribution in shaping the policy direction of the province and nationally. He was amongst those who would always be available, with the use of his resources, to go train structures, members and volunteers of the ANC. As we approach the National and Provincial Government elections, our Political Education and Training Unit (PETU) and the Elections Training Task Team are indeed poorer without this gem of the movement.
The Public Service has lost one of its most dedicated and selfless civil servants, who was also part of the Senior Management Service at the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Cde Faku had the art of carrying out the work of the organisation and its mandate in government whilst keeping in line with all the relevant prescripts. He was a cadre in the true sense.
We say this in light of many comrades who get deployed to the government or employed in the public service and are unable to carry out the mandate of the organization and at times misrepresent the ANC and its standing. These are comrades who are the reason for the voices that are casting doubt on the revolutionary practice of cadre deployment. As such, the term cadre deployment gets misconstrued or wrongly associated with corruption, incapacity, and patronage. Such was not the case with Cde Faku. He embodied excellence, and selfless service to the people, and was a textbook definition of the kind of public servant required to advance, deepen, and defend the National Democratic Revolution and lead the process of transformation.
We are saddened that Cde Faku will not be joining us for the 112 ANC celebrations as we prepare to receive the 2024 January 08th Statement from the NEC in Mpumalanga this coming weekend. However, I urge all of us to ensure that we deliver a successful January 08th Anniversary Rally and do so in his honor and memory. The comrades who will be driving to Mpumalanga must be careful on our roads. We do not want to lose any ANC cadres who will be taking the trip to Mpumalanga. Comrades, uXhwangusha was going to contribute towards a decisive ANC victory in the coming election. Let us double our efforts to deliver a resounding and overwhelming victory in the upcoming National and Provincial Government.
Let us unite and defend our movement, particularly against the recently emerging attacks from those who used to be part of our ranks.
It is a worrying trend to see the continued unconstructive criticism being levelled at the ANC by its former leaders. It has been unprecedented during the tenure of President Cyril Ramaphosa. You would swear that before him we had a perfect ANC and country. But if we look closely at what he has done in his first term, he has been cleaning a mess that was there before him. Think of state capture, and destruction of state institutions such as Transnet, Eskom, SAA, Prasa, NPA, SARS, and Hawks among others. He has been rebuilding these critical institutions of our democracy because they were deliberately destroyed for personal gain to the detriment of the entire country. That is why as the Eastern Cape we proudly went to Nasrec to re-elect Comrade Matamele as President for the second term so that he can use this term to accelerate socio-economic development, so that our economy can grow, so that our people can have jobs, so that our people can feel safe, and so that our people can access better services.
We know of a time when leaders like President OR Tambo, President Mandela, and so on, would ensure a smooth transition post their leadership tenure in the organization. Lo uqulukubhode wenzakayo of people wanting to lead when they are led must stop. Asixakwanga ke kuyinqanda, sizifundise ukuzeka kade imisindo, sithobekile. When we say we must maintain discipline we say that even to us as leaders, otherwise, we would not have an organization if we were to jump up and down every time comrades say something about the organization they joined voluntarily. Kodwa kunjalo masingaqhunyiselwa asizonyosi. We are going to lose patience very soon.
The continued raptures after every conference and unwillingness to accept and rally behind the newly elected leadership weakened the organization severely. Former leaders have a special place in the ANC and have a very unique role to play. Hence, all former Presidents are invited to form part of the NEC until they are no more. We urge our leaders to lead and carry themselves by example, and this refers to all and sundry, as this is a growing trend.
We also urge all members and supporters of the ANC to not be defocused and engage in sideshows but to stay on the mark and carry out the tasks that we have agreed on. Besithe renewal is a necessary panacea to ensure that the ANC lives and leads for another century and beyond. We also said renewal is going to be painful because we are fixing our home, the ANC. Let us not be surprised comrades when we see people, we used to call comrades leaving and mobilizing to mobilize support through backward means. A revolutionary of yesterday can be a traitor to the very same revolution, it happens everywhere and that is the nature of what we see today. But like disciplined soldiers in a war, let us remain focused our collective reward will be the victory in the upcoming elections. And with that electoral power, we will work like never before to accelerate socio-economic development in our communities.
Saturday, 13 January 2024, all members and structures of the ANC will receive marching orders. The President, on behalf of the NEC, will outline the priorities of this year as we celebrate 30 years of democracy. These priorities and tasks must be what preoccupies us even in the social media discourse. Any other side shows and developments that have nothing to do with the plight of the people or the struggle for transformation must be placed aside so that we use all our energies and resources to deliver an overwhelming victory in the battle ahead.
Let us honor the memory and contribution of Cde Faku not just by words but also by our actions. Let us emulate the life he lived, a life of humility, honesty, love and care, selflessness and sacrifice. The challenges confronting our province require more cadres of the caliber of Cde Faku.
Once again, as the ANC we express our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones, friends, the mass democratic movement, and the people of the province for the fall of Comrade Faku.
Hamba Kahle Mkhonto!!! Lala kakuhle Tshawe , Xhwangusha , Phumla cde Faku
