Obituary: Mam and Comrade Nomvuzo Fransisca Shabalala (Funeral service, Thursday 31 December 2020)

[SACP Media & Communications]

Mam and Comrade Nomvuzo Fransisca Shabalala

Obituary

Funeral service, Thursday 31 December 2020

Nomvuzo Fransisca Shabalala was born on 29 April 1960 in the village of kwa-Mpisi, in Bizana, Eastern Cape. A daughter of the late Nomathamsanqa Victoria Maphasa and Makuliwe William Maphasa, she was the firstborn of eight siblings, four brothers and four sisters.

Education

Nomvuzo Fransisca Shabalala started her primary schooling at eMbhongweni Junior Secondary School in Bizana. She proceeded to Zakhele Higher Primary School and completed her Matric at Ziphathele High School in Clermont, Durban, Moses Mabhida Province (KwaZulu-Natal) (KZN). She did a certificate course in Computer Studies at Mangosuthu Technikon, after which she studied bookkeeping with Damelin and a Certificate in Waste Management with the Natal Technikon. In pursuit of learning and training, she registered with Marit Commercial College where she did a certificate in Financial Accounting, after which she enrolled with the University of Pretoria where she did a Certificate in Leadership Course (IMB) SALGA.

An activist who dedicated her life to the struggle against apartheid, the struggle for workers’ rights, democracy, and the advance of democracy to a higher level, socialism

Comrade Nomvuzo Shabalala started her political activism at a young age in Clermont. She was part of the local youth and women formations in the United Democratic Front (UDF). Launched in 1983 in Mitchells Plain, Western Cape, the UDF brought together many anti-apartheid organisations and was a key organ of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), with the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), then banned and operating underground internally in the country, playing a key role.

Comrade Nomvuzo became a founding member of the Natal Organisation of Women (NOW), an affiliate of the UDF. After the unbanning of the ANC and other political formations, she was amongst the comrades who welcomed political prisoners and those returning from exile. She formed part of the MDM activists who took part in re-establishing the structures of the ANC and SACP in Clermont and Umlazi townships.

As an activist volunteer, Comrade Nomvuzo Shabalala served as a distributor of the Speak magazine. She saw the distribution of the Speak as essential in her political education and gender transformation activism. The Speak was known in different parts of South Africa by different, localised, themes, among others “Engakhali Ifela Embelekweni”; “Ngwana yo a sa llego o Hwela Tharing”; “Breaking the Silence”.

The Speak magazine was established in 1982 to serve as the voice for women, covering their perspectives on gender transformation and the rights of women in a future, democratic South Africa, among others. “Throughout the years of apartheid, SPEAK magazine allowed women all over… South Africa to organise and fight against oppression in personal lives, the workplace, and in politics” (South African History Online).

Comrade Nomvuzo’s early political activism also combined the struggle through trade unionism against exploitation and the struggle against apartheid racial oppression and gender domination. She was an activist of the Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union of South Africa (CCAWUSA). CCAWUSA was renamed the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) following the merger of the Cape Liquor and Catering, Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, and the Retail and Allied Workers Union in 1989. The merger was guided by the need to build trade union unity on an industrial basis. It was occasioned by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) through its resolution to consolidate workers’ power under the organising principle of one union in one industry.

The Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union (CEPPWAWU) which she also served as an activist administrator, also benefited from the COSATU principle on consolidating workers’ power on an industrial basis. CEPPWAWU is a product of a merger between the Chemical Workers’ Industrial Union (CWIU) and the Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers' Union (PPWAWU). Both SACCAWU and CEPPWAWU are COSATU affiliates.

When it was formed, SACCAWU endorsed socialism as one of its founding principles, the way forward to the exploitative system of capitalism. That meant advancing the struggle to improve the employment and working conditions of workers while simultaneously supporting and forming part of the working-class movement to achieve socialism as the sustainable solution to the system of capitalist exploitation and its consequent forms of oppression.

Dedicated to developing itself to serve as the leading force of the South African working-class, the SACP focused on building and still is seeking to continuously earn a vanguard role democratically in the struggle to achieve the immediate interests and aims of labour and take care of the future of the working-class. This the SACP does under the strategic theme “Socialism is the Future—Build it now” and defines what Comrade Nomvuzo Shabalala sought to achieve by dedicating her life to the struggle for scientific socialism as an SACP cadre.  

Comrade Nomvuzo served in the Southern Natal SACP Regional Interim Task Team. She was a Gender Convenor, later elected to serve on the first SACP Southern Natal Regional Executive Committee, in the 1990s, after which she was elected to serve on the SACP KZN Provincial Executive Committee. In the early 2000s, she served as the Deputy Secretary of the ANC Durban South Region.

She continued to serve as a member of the SACP Provincial Executive Committee in KZN Province, re-elected at the end of successive terms of office. She was later elected to serve as the SACP Provincial Treasurer and from 2015 Deputy Provincial Chairperson. In 2017 when she was the SACP Moses Mabhida Deputy Provincial Chairperson, the 14^th National Congress of the SACP elected her to serve on its Central Committee, the highest decision-making body of the Party when its National Congress, which convenes once every five years, is not in session. She completed her term as the Deputy Provincial Chairperson the following year, in line with the SACP Constitution. At the time of her passing, she was a serving member of the SACP Central Committee. 

Working life

Comrade Nomvuzo Shabalala started working as a bookkeeper at the legal firm of George Webster and John Sibiya Attorneys. Thereafter she worked as a Wage Clerk at Albogaly Engineering firm, while continuing her political activism. She was then appointed by the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers Union (CEPPWAWU) as a Wage Clerk and later by SACCAWU as its Regional Administrator.

After the mid-1990s Comrade Nomvuzo served on the Interim Transitional Local Government as an ANC Councillor, where she excelled as the champion in the Masakhane Programme, especially amongst the youth structures. She also served as the Deputy Chairperson in the South-Central Local Council, after which she was assigned to serve in the health committee as well as the demarcation and infrastructure metropolitan committee of the eThekwini Metropolitan Council. She was later elected as a Proportional Representative Councillor for the ANC in Ward 83 while chairing the Health Unit Committee. Thereafter she was elected as the Deputy Mayor of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality and chaired the Economic Development, Planning and Tourism efforts.

The governance of the eThekhwini Metropolitan Municipality was fairly sound under her leadership and that of Cde James Nxumalo as the Mayor, despite the challenging circumstances that they and the entire council and municipality found themselves faced with.

At the time of her passing, Nomvuzo Francisca Shabalala was serving as an Honourable ANC Member of Parliament, having been elected during the May 2019 general election. She served in the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education. She also served on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Ethics and Members Interests. Her Constituency Office was in Empangeni, KZN. Cde Nomvuzo’s parliamentary work started in 2018, where she served on the Home Affairs Portfolio Committee and the Co-Operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Portfolio Committee.

Family life

Nomvuzo Fransisca Shabalala was married to the late Ephraim Fuzeki Shabalala. They were blessed with six children—five sisters and one brother. Unfortunately, she lost one of her twins, Noxolo, and her only son, Siphesihle. She is survived by her four daughters Nokulunga, Ntombezinhle (a twin), Nosipho and Sibusisiwe, and four grandchildren, Pamela, Nolitha, Anesihle and Langalethu. She also leaves behind her father, two sisters, two brothers, relatives, and comrades.

In loving memory of Comrade Nomvuzo Shabalala, we must intensify the struggle to break the silence against and tackle child and women abuse and gender-based violence. We must deepen our efforts to transform South Africa, build a non-sexist and non-racial society, and deepen and expand our democracy towards complete social emancipation, socialism. We must defeat the COVID-19 pandemic and protect the supreme right to life.

Rest in Peace, Ma, Sisi, Gogozi, Somncane, Auntiza.

Hamba Kahle Mkhonto.

Lala Ngoxolo Mshengu, Shabalala, Donga lwaMavuso, sidwaba siluthuli, Mhlangamvula!

Phumula Ngoxolo Ntokazi yako Hlangu oBumbela oBumbantaba oMadunga oMkawu oNgqishela oNozisheshe oMagatyana Aselondobezi.