Today, January 25 2021, marks 104 years since the departure from the land of the living of Ms Nokutelela Dube (neé Mdima).
She lies buried and forgotten at Brixton Cemetry, her adopted sprawling and Africa’s home of migrants – City of Johannesburg – built on the carcass of black African cheap labour. Her resting place, an unmarked grave for decades, had no headstone – just a reference number, CK9753 – the CK standing for "Christian K****r" (a racist term for a black person, widely used at the time).
Some of the prominent figures who attended her funeral service over a century ago were the ANC’s founding secretary-general, Pixley ka-Isaka Seme, a leading public figure and revered intellectual. Her story, just like many other prominent women who played a role in the attainment of our negotiated settlement and ‘94 democratic breakthrough, is a painful one. She never receives national recognition nor public sites named in her honour.
Dube was a face and symbol of our Struggle for national liberation and people’s power during her days. And she played an immeasurable role in the formation and building of the SA Native National Congress (SANNC), today’s African National Congress (ANC).
She is the rightful bearer to the respectful title of “Mother of the Nation”. In 2017, SA’s then president Jacob Zuma, posthumously awarded her the Order of Baobab – to mark the centenary of her death.
Dube is credited for founding uHlange Institute in Inanda, outside Durban. For over a century now, uHlange has produced a number of luminaries, now playing key roles in various spheres of our society and country at large, notable figures such as Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Baleka Mbete and countless others. Those who are ardent readers of history will recall that uHlange is where our first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela cast his vote in 1994.
Mandela's voting at this memorable place invoked some forgotten faces and voices in our protracted journey to our new order, such as Dube. Even Mandela only used the occasion to recognise ANC founding president John Langalibalele Dube, since it was also a golden opportunity to pay homage to this colossus and heroine of our Struggle. This would have gone down in history as a befitting tribute to SA’s entire women, both departed and living, who played a role as architects of our nascent democracy. As we remember our “Mother of the Nation”, Dube, it’s important to reflect on the deep-seated and persisting challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment facing the majority of our people, especially women and the youth.
This is evidenced by a growing decline of the ANC’s electoral support in major urban areas, and with former bantustan or homelands being areas that record the biggest chunk of voter turnout for the governing party. Some of the leading analysts or public intellectuals correctly attribute ANC’s electoral fortunes in rural areas, especially in provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal; the Eastern Cape; Limpopo and Mpumalanga, to social grants, which have become a source of survival given the startling reality of these areas being non-economic drivers and distressed, thus making the ANC a rural party, far detached from its historical character as a multi-class formation.
As a country we are ranked among the most unequal societies in the world, alongside Brazil. Undeniably, we are the most advanced and industrialised economy on our continent but we have extremely high levels of unemployment, trapping millions in poverty and contributing to stark inequalities that persist more than two decades after the end of apartheid in 1994. Since our ascendency to power in 1994, and successive electoral mandates from the overwhelming majority of South Africans, it is becoming apparent that our people, especially working-class women and youth, have lost patience. These two social groupings are the most affected by poverty and unemployment. The unemployment figures and poverty statistics paint a scary picture. And as such, it requires the ANC to look deeper at its policies and the political programme it has championed over the years.
The face of poverty in SA largely remains black, while on the other hand economic power remains white. This is in tandem with former president Thabo Mbeki’s "two-nation" thesis he spoke about in 2003. The opulent Sandton’s wretched backyard, Alexandra Township, is a classic point of reference. The growing voices from below for the radical and full implementation of the Freedom Charter are daily gaining credence among ordinary South Africans. It is precisely the conditions that our people find themselves in 26 years into our democracy which require not only a change of heart among our elected leaders, but a decisive policy shift, as a way of addressing the persisting challenges of underdevelopment; racialised poverty; inequality and an escalating high unemployment rate. If one looks carefully, the economic demands of the Freedom Charter have not been implemented to restore dignity of the previously oppressed and excluded black majority.
In honour of Dube's memory, it is key for the ANC to embrace these growing voices and act in their interest to fully realise the aspirations of our people, consistent with our overall strategic goals of building a “Better Life for All”.
• Magwaza-Mtembu is Harry Gwala Foundation Board member and social activist
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