OPINION | 18 years after his death, SACP's Smiso Nkwanyana's legacy remains unsurpassed
On August 12 of every year, we deeply mourn the tragic death of our comrade and personal friend, Smiso Nkwanyana, who passed on in 2003 after a car accident.
The pain we feel of losing him remains unparalleled and cannot be overstated.
Every year when this date of his passing comes, we are reminded of how we remain unrecovered from it, almost two decades down the line. This is because Smiso was no ordinary political leader but a mentor, a support system to many, and a people’s person.
Nkwanyana was the provincial secretary of the South African Communist Party in KwaZulu-Natal which was chaired, during his tenure, by Willies Mchunu. Comrade Smiso is credited for the hard work and passion with which he built the SACP in KwaZulu-Natal to become the biggest province in the country, not just in numbers but also in terms of national political influence and policy direction.
The SACP’s Red October campaign focused on financial sector transformation, directed to the banks that had what was called “redlining policy” on investing in townships including advancing bonds to prospective homeowners, as they regarded these areas as investment risks. Within that struggle was a demand for banks to allow unemployed people and students to open accounts.
While these actions were nationally spread, KwaZulu-Natal had one of the biggest marches in the history of the party, attended by more than 100,000 ordinary people to submit the memorandum to the Banking Council of SA. These actions saw banks conceding to the review of these anti-poor policies.
All this led to a formation of what was called the Financial Sector Coalition Council (FSCC), which was a multi-stakeholder council including CEOs of banks poised to deal with financial sector issues.
The issue of the formation of the Young Communist League was close to his heart.
When this proposition was defeated in the 10th Congress of the SACP, in 1998, a fallback position was adopted to form what was called youth desks of the SACP. KwaZulu-Natal was the first to assembly such a structure and he appointed the then deputy chairperson, Sizwe Shezi to lead it, including its affiliation to the SA Youth Council.
He was one of the lobbyist to the Central Committee members towards the 11th Congress in 2002 for the YCL to be relaunched, after which he set up a strong provincial task team of young communists to start building structures. He passed away at a point where this work of rebuilding was in earnest.
Today the SACP periodically debates its path to power whether through direct elections or a pact with the ANC, if not through a reconfigured alliance. This discussion originates from what Smiso began to pose as a debate in early 2000s in the central committee and the framework he put in place, with regards to where the party sees itself in the next 10 years from 2001.
This strategic question that this framework posed was essentially about the attitude of the SACP towards power and socialism in the terrain of the national democratic revolution. The outcome of that engagement was what the 11th Congress termed the medium term vision (MTV), the consequences of which has been what the SACP today calls the SA Road to Socialism (Sars) which zooms into various sectoral sites of power that the party must assert its influence.
It remains to be seen whether the waning cumulative strength of the party in the current conjuncture can really set it forth in achieving hegemony in these nodal areas of strategic power.
Comrade Smiso had an admirable work ethic that attracted all alliance partners in critical moments. At times he was brought into situations to defuse tensions and infighting within alliance components, especially Cosatu-affiliated unions. This may explain his popularity among organised workers across Cosatu unions.
He was also a trusted cadre of the ANC, who would sometimes be deployed to work on complicated and critical assignments during the chairmanship of Sibusiso Ndebele.
During election year, he was always appointed as deputy head of the ANC elections committee in KwaZulu-Natal with Senzo Mchunu, where their working chemistry and professional relationship was legendary.
He took lessons from the ANC loss against the IFP during the 1999 elections — a result which went against the popular sentiment that the ANC was going to win. As a deputy elections committee head, he admitted that the IFP had a good rural community strategy, while the ANC had an urban appeal and strategy that didn’t resonate with rural people. He vowed that this was not going to happen in the next elections.
It is a matter of history that though he passed on just when the ANC had reappointed them with Mchunu in 2003 for 2004 elections, his strategy document towards rural campaigning in IFP strongholds which the ANC followed like a script, delivered ANC victory for the first time in KwaZulu-Natal, defeating the IFP.
As a former leader of students at Unisa during difficult times in the early 90s, fighting for its transformation which resulted in his many arrests, we are glad that the university has honoured his legacy by renaming the Durban Campus after him: Smiso Nkwanyana Regional Office.
As a student and/or youth leader, he would have been excited to see university branches renaming themselves after him. He was a self-effacing leader who deceived the enemy through his unique loud laughter, beneath which lay intellectual astuteness and untrammelled diligence, while simultaneously paving ways for others in the organisation. For his age then, all of his accomplishments remain a testimony that he was not going to stay with us for that long, and therefore punched above his weight and achieved what others would take a lifetime to accomplish.
Today marks 18 years since his passing. We still hope that there will be another Smiso to carry the baton forward and follow in his footsteps. We are working on establishing the Smiso Nkwanyana Institute for Alternative Ideas under his name in furtherance of his cause and passion for uplifting the poor in society.
Zet Luzipo is a former deputy secretary of the SACP, former Cosatu KZN secretary and is the current chair of the minerals and energy portfolio committee in parliament. Mfanafuthi Sithebe is a director in the higher education and training department, who also served on a Unisa SRC with Smiso Nkwanyana and was later spokesperson of the Communication Workers’ Union.
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