A prophet of true radical economic transformation

The work of intellectual revolutionary Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo has much to teach South Africans today, writes Blade Nzimande

Wednesday marked the 26th anniversary of the death of Jabulani Nobleman "Mzala" Nxumalo.

Mzala was neither a celebrity thinker nor a self-aggrandising personality. He died at the young age of 35, on February 22 1991, just as his intellectual activity was starting to flourish and reach maturity.

He was born in 1955 in the small town of Dundee in what is now KwaZulu-Natal. He attended school at Louwsburg, eNgoje, then Bethal College in Butterworth. He later matriculated at KwaDlangezwa High School. By all accounts, Mzala was a brilliant student whose intellect stood out in all his classes.

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Notwithstanding his outstanding intellect, he remained a self-effacing and unassuming character.

Mzala was an activist, soldier, intellectual and writer.

In 1972, at the age of 15 years, he was detained without trial for his role in a school boycott. The following year he was arrested again and charged with public violence for his part in student and worker strikes.

After completing his matric, he studied law at the University of Zululand (oNgoye), where he became a passionate fighter against injustice and hypocrisy.

He was active in the South African Students' Organisation. His participation in the countrywide upsurge following the Soweto uprisings of June 1976 made him a marked man.

The same year, along with a number of other comrades, Mzala left South Africa to join the ranks of Umkhonto weSizwe. From the time he went into exile, he read voraciously the works of Marx and Lenin, as well as the literature of the ANC, the SACP, and various writings of the movements' leading intellectuals.

In the Soviet Union, Mzala received training in politics and other specialised subjects. As usual, he excelled. He rose to important positions in the ranks of MK, later serving in Swaziland and Angola, and was part of the famous June 16 MK detachment.

While absorbed in the work of the underground, Mzala would make time to read books on a wide variety of topics and engage in heated and controversial debates. In the midst of his training and organisational responsibilities, he was always intellectually active.

In 1979, he was deployed to Lusaka, Zambia, where he acted as co-ordinator of commissariat structures. The following year, he was sent for advanced ideological and political training in the German Democratic Republic.

In 1983, disguised as a reporter and going by the name Jabulani Dlamini, Mzala was deployed to Swaziland where he worked for the Swaziland Observer. He was detained by the Swazi police.

Following his release, he left Swaziland - and returned a few months later with a new identity.

block_quotes_start The correction of centuries-old social injustices will not come from replacing white exploiters with black exploiters, or white monopoly capital with black monopoly capital block_quotes_end

This time, he lived in the Shiselweni district in the south of the country. He served as commissar for the Natal rural machinery, a network that was later to become central in the establishment of Operation Vulindlela.

While in Shiselweni, and on his own initiative, Mzala crossed the border into what is now KwaZulu-Natal to set up an MK unit at Ingwavuma.

In 1984 he was again arrested by the Swazi police and deported to Tanzania, where he worked for Radio Freedom and the Amandla Cultural Group.

Throughout, Mzala had a reputation as an independent thinker, unafraid to differ sharply with leaders or ordinary comrades while always remaining fiercely loyal to the ANC and the SACP.

Mzala was a prolific writer. The African Communist, Sechaba and Dawn all carried articles by him, published under pen names including Khumalo, Sisa Majola, Alex Mashinini and, of course, Mzala.

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Much of his writing focused on the national question and the unfolding revolutionary process in South Africa. He also wrote and lectured extensively on the relationship between the national and class struggle in South Africa. He asserted that the aim of the South African revolution was to end class, racial and gender inequality. He believed this could only be achieved under socialism.

In 1977 Mzala was working on a simplified book on Marxism-Leninism in Zulu. The text seems to have been lost but his interest in making Marxist thought available to ordinary people remained.

I worked extensively and closely with Mzala; in fact, it was he who recruited me to the SACP. One of the first tasks he gave me was to translate the SACP's 1989 programme, The Path to Power, into Zulu.

Mzala's major work was his book Gatsha Buthelezi, Chief with a Double Agenda, published by Zed Books in 1988.

This was a damning critique of the role played by Buthelezi and Inkatha as junior partners and collaborators with the apartheid regime.

In 1987, Mzala was deployed to Prague as the SACP representative on the World Marxist Review, but his health began to falter, and his stay in Prague lasted only two months.

He took ill and left Prague in 1987 for medical treatment in London, where he worked for the SACP's international committee. He set out to further his studies.

He registered for a doctorate at the University of Essex and the Open University, with research interest on the national and class question in the South African revolution.

His premature death came before he completed his thesis.

Mzala was probably the most prolific writer of the "Soweto generation", his writings offering insight into the liberation struggle in South Africa and revolutionary strategies against the apartheid state.

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He combined his writing, which was both theoretical and polemical, with the life of a practical, hard-working revolutionary soldier and political activist.

Unfolding developments over the past few years highlight the need to revisit and engage with Mzala's work, and that of many others , in our endeavour to decipher these developments and provide appropriate revolutionary direction.

The correction of centuries-old social injustices will not come from replacing white exploiters with black exploiters, or white monopoly capital with black monopoly capital, or from a hybrid of the two while the masses of our people, the workers and poor, continue to suffer from economic exploitation, persistent inequality, unemployment and poverty.

The solution will come from a true radical economic transformation. As the ANC's 1969 Strategy and Tactics document states: "In our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals be they White or Black."

We must simultaneously secure our democratic national sovereignty and safeguard it from imperialism. We have domestic tasks on this front as well. These include tackling the problems of corporate capture, the parasitic bourgeoisie and corruption.

• Nzimande is minister of higher education and general secretary of the SACP