A Bolshevik Tribute to a fallen Bolshevik Comrade Nkosiphendule Kolisile (taking stock of a Communist Nkosiphendule) – By Sithembewena Tsembeyi

[Sithembewena Tsembeyi]

A Bolshevik Tribute to a fallen Bolshevik Comrade Nkosiphendule Kolisile (taking stock of a Communist Nkosiphendule) – By Sithembewena Tsembeyi

 

One find it hard to accept that you have parted and laid your spear, it is difficult not only because you have been a formidably revolutionary who in all stood firm in the cause of fighting against oppression of the working class and the poor, it is a difficult that the true revolutionary practice that you have always advocated for remain threatened not only by a class organisation and its detractors.

“Departing from us, comrade Lenin enjoined us to hold high and guard the purity of the great title of member of the party, we vow to you, comrade Lenin, and we shall fulfill your behest with honor” wrote Stalin, one is wandering if this would be the case in the Communist Party of South Africa, a party that you have greatly represented regardless of its continued purging attempts against you.

You have continuously ‘enjoined’ us to hold high and guard the purity of the great title of membership whilst never in compromise of the true principles of being a good communist, Almost like Lenin you have for over twenty one years ‘tended our Party and made it into the strongest and most highly steeled worker’ party in the world. The blows of tsarism and its henchmen, the fury of the bourgeoisie and the landlords…the lies and slanders of the hundred-mouthed bourgeois press — all these scorpions constantly chastised our Party for a quarter or more of a century. But our Party stood firm as a rock, repelling the countless blows of its enemies and leading the working class forward, to victory.” You continued in fierce battles to advocate for our Party to forge the unity and solidarity of its ranks, and by unity and solidarity it can achieve victory over the enemies of the working class.

Burdensome and intolerable has been the lot of the working class. Painful and grievous have been the sufferings of the labouring people. Slaves and slaveholders, serfs and serf-owners, peasants and landlords, workers and capitalists, oppressed and oppressors — so the world has been built from time immemorial, and so it remains to this day in the vast majority of countries.

Departing from us, comrade Kolisile enjoined us to strengthen with all our might the alliance of the workers and peasants.

Departing from us, comrade Kolisile enjoined us to guard and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Departing from us, comrade Kolisile enjoined us to guard the unity of our party as the apple of our eye.

Departing from us, comrade Kolisile enjoined us to strengthen and extend the union of republics.

Departing from us, comrade Kolisile enjoined us to remain faithful to the principles of the communist international.

In order to live, you have waged a struggle against nature and made use of nature to produce material values. At all materiel times and under all conditions, your production of material things was social in character. It followed that as a men engaged in production at any stage of social development, you had entered into certain relations of production with another’s. In your ceaseless struggle against nature, you ceaselessly changed nature and simultaneously changed yourself and your mutual relations to others. You have yourself, on your social relations, your form of social organization and consciousness were all different from what they were, and in the future they would have again been different.

As mankind and human society you were in process of historical development. When human society reached a certain historical stage, classes and class struggle emerged. Every member of a class society exists as a member of a given class and lives in given conditions of class struggle. Your social being determined your consciousness. In class society the ideology of the members of each class reflects a different position and different class interests. The class struggle constantly goes on among these classes with their different positions, interests and ideologies. Thus it is not only in the struggle against nature but in the struggle of social classes that men changes nature, changes society and at the same time changes themselves, you have as a good communist achieved this.

Regardless of when did you join the revolution, be it long ago or just recently, as a Communist who wanted to become a good politically mature revolutionary you underwent a long period of tempering in revolutionary struggle, steeled yourself in mass revolutionary struggles and all kinds of difficulties and hardships, summed up the experience gained through practice, made great efforts in self-cultivation, raised your ideological level, heighten your ability and never loose sense of what is new. For only this you turned yourself into a politically staunch revolutionary of high quality.

You did not consider yourself as to have been born a “sage” thus as Confucius said at fifteen, your mind was bent on learning. At thirty, you could think for yourself. At forty, you were no longer perplexed, it will never be experienced when at fifty, you would have known the decree of Heaven. That at sixty, your ear would have attuned to the truth.  And at seventy, you would have followed your heart’s desire without transgressing what is right.”

You have lived as according to Comrade Mao Zedong thus you have discovered the truth through practice, and again through practice verified and developed the truth. Starting from perceptual knowledge and actively developing it into rational knowledge; then starting from rational knowledge and actively guiding revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.

Bolshevik as you were, you continued to temper yourself and intensify your self-cultivation not only in the hardships, difficulties and reverses of revolutionary practice, but also in the course of smooth, successful and victorious revolutionary practice. Some members of our Party cannot stand the plaudits of success and victory; they let victories turn their heads, become brazen, arrogant, and bureaucratic and may even vacillate, degenerate and become corrupted, completely losing their original revolutionary quality. Individual instances of this kind are not uncommon among our Party members and they are known. The existence of such a phenomenon in the Party calls for our comrades’ sharp attention as that you have done.

To you the proletarian revolution is a revolution to abolish all exploitation, oppression and classes, it was your believe that the Communist Party should represents the proletariat which is itself is exploited but does not exploit others and which can therefore carry the revolution through to the end finally abolish all exploitation and sweep away all the corruption and rottenness in human society.

It was your understanding that the proletariat is able to build a strictly organized and disciplined party and set up a centralized and at the same time democratic state apparatus, and through the Party and this state apparatus, it should able to lead the masses of the people in waging unrelenting struggle against all corruption and rottenness and in ceaselessly weeding out of the Party and the state organs all those elements that have become corrupt and degenerate whatever high office they may hold, thereby preserving the purity of the Party and the state apparatus. This outstanding feature of the proletarian revolution and of the proletarian revolutionary party did not and could not exist in earlier revolutions and revolutionary parties.

You have continued to encourage that members of our Party to be clear on this point, and — particularly when the revolution is successful and victorious and when they themselves enjoy the ever greater confidence and support of the masses — they must sharpen their vigilance, intensify their self-cultivation in proletarian ideology and always preserve their pure proletarian revolutionary character so that they will not fall into the rut of earlier revolutionaries who degenerated in the hour of success.

You were a worthy Marx and Lenin pupil such that you knew that the constitution of the party stipulates that membership is open to any member who accepts the Programme and Constitution of the Party organizations, pays membership dues and works in one of the Party organizations. You also take cognizance that no one can be a Party member unless he fulfills these requirements. But you did not only as a Communist rest content with being a Party member who merely fulfills the minimum requirements; as laid down in the Party Constitution, you strived to make progress ceaselessly raising the level of your political consciousness and diligently study Marxism-Leninism, as manifested throughout your life.

You knew that the electors, the people, must demand that their deputies to remain equal to their tasks, that in their work they should not sink to the level of political philistines, that in their posts definite as Lenin was, that they should be as fearless in battle and as merciless towards the complicated and some danger or other looms on the horizon, that they should be as free from all requiring a comprehensive orientation and a comprehensive weighing of all the pros and cons as Lenin did, these are the concise characterizations of Marxist indeed you are a true reflection of these characteristics.

True enough, the average Party comrade is far from possessing the great gifts and profound scientific knowledge of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, and most of our comrades cannot attain to their deep and broad erudition in the theory of proletarian revolution, if they really have the will and take a really conscious and consistent stand as vanguard fighters of the proletariat, really acquire the communist world outlook, never isolate themselves from the current deep and great revolutionary movement of the proletariat and all the labouring masses, and exert themselves in study, self-tempering and self-cultivation.

You have in you revolutionary life lived to see those that had certain representatives of dogmatism at one time who were even worse. These people knew absolutely nothing about Marxism-Leninism and could only babble Marxist-Leninist phraseology, and yet they regarded themselves as Marxist-Leninist, posed as such in the Party and had the impudence to require that our Party members should revere them as Marxist-Leninists are revered, support them as "the leaders" and accord them loyalty and devotion. They went so far as to appoint themselves "the leaders" without being chosen, climbed into positions of authority, issued orders to the Party like patriarchs, tried to lecture our Party, abused everything in the Party, wilfully attacked and punished our Party members and pushed them around. Those people had no sincere desire to study Marxism-Leninism or fight for the realization of communism - they were just careerists in the Party, termites in the communist movement. Such people were bound to be opposed and eventually unmasked and discarded by the rank and file. And indeed they will be discarded by our Party members.

You have also lived to see people of exactly the opposite kind. Those who see themselves above all as pupils of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, conscientiously study the theory of Marxism-Leninism and strive to grasp its essence and spirit. They looked up to the noble character and proletarian revolutionary qualities of the founders, and in the course of revolutionary struggles they conscientiously carry on self-cultivation and examine themselves to see if their handling of affairs, their dealings with people and their own behaviour conform to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. They are well read in Marxism-Leninism but at the same time they make a special effort to investigate and analyse living reality, to study the characteristics of their own time and all aspects of the situation facing the proletariat of their own country, and to integrate the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the revolution in their own country. They do not content themselves with memorizing Marxist-Leninist principles and conclusions, but take a firm Marxist-Leninist stand learn the Marxist-Leninist method and act accordingly, giving spirited guidance in every revolutionary struggle, and thus they transform reality and at the same time transform themselves. Every one of their actions without exception is guided by the general principals of Marxism-Leninism and is devoted to the victory of the proletarian cause, the liberation of the nation and all mankind, and the triumph of Communism.

The attitude of these people is the only correct one. It is the one attitude towards studying Marxism-Leninism and learning from the qualities of its founders that will enable us to become communist proletarian revolutionaries of the Marx and Lenin type.

We have lived to know you; your personal interests were subordinated to the Party's interests, the interests of the local Party organization to those of the entire Party, the interests of the part to those of the whole, and temporary to long-term interests. This is a Marxist-Leninist principle which must be followed by every Communist.

Lala ngoxolo Bolshevik a true vanguard of the working class.

Sithembewena Tsembeyi is a former Provincial Organizer of the South African Community Party in Gauteng serving under the stewardship of Nkosiphendule Kolisile the then Chairperson of the Party who was rudely purge off by the demagogic Mensheviks existing in the today’s party.

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Hasta siempre la Commandante
SIthembewena Tsembeyi
Socialismo o Muerte