Funeral Of General Cyril Bafana Dlamini (A.K.A. Comrade Edwin Ndlovu)

Mr Master of Ceremonies;
The Dlamini and the Mafuma families;
The Premier of the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, Comrade Zweli Mkhize;
Members of the Provincial Executive Council;
Members of the South African National Defence Force;
Veterans of our Glorious Peoples Army, Umkhonto Wesizwe;
Members of the defence forces of other liberation movements
Comrades and Friends.

To be laid to rest just a day after the Commemoration of our Heritage Day, where our heroes and our heroines are recognized for their contribution to the liberation of our people, is a fitting tribute to Comrade Edwin Ndlovu, to use his MK name and also to Brigadier- General Cyril Bafana Dlamini to use his military name. I have been requested to speak on behalf of both our Government, which he served with distinction, as well as  on behalf of the movement he selflessly gave his service for all his life. I will therefore vacillate between referring to this gallant fighter by his MK name and nom de guere, his family-given name as well as his official military rank. Neither of these shall detract from the importance of all of them and will be displaying the true nature of our movement in its totality.

If the adage that the apple does not fall far from the tree holds true for all times, then they are specifically referring to the relationship and the example which Comrade Edwin Ndlovu picked from his late father, Comrade Steven Dlamini in whose honour the former Essenwood Road is fittingly renamed. Like on that sad occasion in Chesterville years ago, we had to reluctantly intern the body of our father and Comrade Steve Dlamini’s in the bowels of the cold earth. Yet we are honoured, that with Chesterville, amongst many theatres of our struggles, having provided a fertile ground for recruitment of our some of our gallant comrades and defended successfully against orchestrated attacks, Comrade Steve Dlamini’s body lies in familiar territory. Even as we bury his son today, we pay homage to this gallant hero of our movement, of our unions and of the party.

I had the honour to know Comrade Steven Dlamini through my elder brother, Caleb Shange who worked with Comrade Edwin Dlamini from the 1960s when my brother worked as a seaman for the shipping companies Kinnard Castle and Clan Ross. Our families’ paths interacted in more than one capacity. Both their souls shall now be joined together by the common friendship that exists between ourselves as friends and comrades in a common struggle all over the world.

In between here and the places which were graced by these heroes’ presence, there exists a lot of rough territory and space, where the lives of both men, father and son, interacted and affected, through their warmth and humility and their dedication to the struggle of Southern Africa, all those who had the honour to meet them in the myriad of their capacities and responsibilities.

Comrade Steven Dlamini was an embodiment of what our tried and tested alliance of our movement was based on – the liberation of all our people. An outstanding member of the African National Congress of good standing in his own right, who went on to become a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress, the highest body of the ANC in between Conferences, Comrade Edwin’s late father, Steven, went on to become a leader and President of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) (the precursor of the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) and also a leading member of the Communist Party of South Africa. Comrade Steven Dlamini, participated in the 1952 Defiance Campaign; was one of the 1956 Treason trialists, was one of the organizers of the All-Africa Conference in Pietermaritzburg in 1961 and served as a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the ANC in exile between 1980 and 1983.   For all these contributions, the liberated South Africa honoured him with the Order of Luthuli in Gold, a rare achievement for our struggle heroes and heroines.

In all these years that Comrade Steven Dlamini dedicated himself to all these positions of responsibility, his demeanour and dedication was being emulated by his son, to whom we, with heavy hearts, have to bid farewell today.

It is to the spirit of both the late Comrade Steven Dlamini and his son, whose mortal remains we are committing to earth today, that we continue to consider this tripartite political force as enduring. It is our conviction that if there are areas of divergence of opinions amongst the three alliance partners, the history and achievements of this tripartite alliance shall be a sufficient rallying point for all of the partners to state their positions unequivocally while, agreeing to disagree and continuing with our historic mission to achieve total liberation for all our people.

Little known about Comrade Edwin is that he was a member of a machinery known as the Ordinance. Those who were in this structure would attest to the manner in which they distributed, stored and hid our materiel not only away from those who wanted to disarm us, but also away from those who wanted to lay their hands on them in order to bring a sudden end to an obnoxious political system of apartheid.

This required that the Ordinance would, while understanding the impatience of our people, also ensure that emotions and vengeance would not be allowed to prevail over the orderly deployment and timely release and distribution of our armoury.

It is precisely for this reason that while there were indeed cases of unavoidable collateral damage, by and large our struggle was waged within the limitations imposed on us by the Geneva Convention and we, as Umkhonto Wesizwe, became among the few liberation movements in the world who subscribed to all the requirements of this Convention even when our adversaries refused to do so.

For this particular reason, United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon was so moved that in his recent pronouncement during the President’s visit to the United Nations, he had to state without fear that the African National Congress is more than a political party.   It is credit to Comrades like Comrade Edwin Ndlovu that in spite of their best efforts, forces of repression were not able to identify our Dead Letter Boxes (DLBs).  It was therefore no wonder that the SANDF decided to use his immense knowledge and experience within its logistics division.

We were under no illusion that the Apartheid State would give up power easily. It is now history that the Apartheid State, or some of the powerful within that state, wanted to wage war against our people by using proxy armies, recruited, armed, paid, resourced and transported by those with whom we were engaged in negotiations.  To perpetuate the proxy nature of this new war, new definitions of wars as “Black-on-Black-violence” were invented. To those Comrades like Comrade Edwin Ndlovu, with their immense knowledge of war and warfare, the military strategy of proxies was clearly obvious.

Once more, he and his Comrades responded to the call to arms to defend their people against the faceless forces of darkness who prowled into the night, attacked unarmed Black citizens in trains and in taxi ranks, burnt their houses and inflicted drive-by shootings against innocent people to foment a civil war. Under their leadership, they surrounded comrades and communities who had not been trained in military warfare and trained them as members of the Self-Defence Units (SDUs). Today as we lay him to his eternal rest, we thank him for having saved our people from possible State-orchestrated harm. Two things did not happen as envisaged by the forces of darkness: the civil war was not precipitated and our people were gallantly defended.

True soldiers are a special breed of people who live by a code of mutual respect and honour towards and amongst each other. In their long relationship and comradely respect with each other, Comrade Edwin Ndlovu and the late Comrade Chris Hani made a pact that if any one of them were to pass on first, then one will look after the family of the other. It is common cause that as comrades, to the extent that it was possible, Comrade Edwin Ndlovu did fulfill his part of the deal. To Comrades Hani, to President Tambo, to Mama Bertha Gxowa, to Baba Sisulu and his wife, Mama Albertina, and to many others of our fallen heroes and heroines, we commit a new comrade to their illustrious company.

When liberation beckoned in 1994, Brigadier-General Dlamini was amongst the first to be integrated into the new South African National Defence Force, thereby completing a cycle which had seen him as one of the first who went to join the Umkhonto Wesizwe as  an advance team in the early 1960s. 

Quite clearly, Comrade Edwin Ndlovu was not interested in the war and warfare for the simple reason of its adventure and  as a bloodthirsty zealot as our adversaries castigated us, but as the only avenue that was then opened to engage the enemy that had refused over decades to accept the simple conditions of our people since 1912. The simple demand had always been that, we as African people, wanted to be equal partners in the governing of our country.

As soon as the opportunity for the fulfillment of this major demand became available in 1994, Comrade Edwin Ndlovu, and many of his Comrades, was ready to be the first to be counted as members of the advance team to normalize both our divided defence forces as well as well as our divided country. The stability of our country at this crucial period rested on the goodwill of our people rather than on the Apartheid State which did everything to wreck the peace process and undermine the credibility of our movement’s leadership.

The stability of our country, even during periods of extreme and blatant provocation, rested on those who had the means and wherewithal to retaliate, but knowing very well that our struggle was under a stable political leadership, those who could have wrecked the delicate balance of negotiations, followed the direction of our political leaders and gave negotiations a chance. At the forefront of these Comrades were dedicated Comrades like Comrade Edwin Ndlovu.

There are few examples of internationalism that define our movement as the life of dedication led by Brigadier-General Dlamini. Leaving his beloved country at the tender of 25 in 1961 in the company of other stalwarts such as Louis Problem Mkhize, Winston Sindane, Samson Mbatha and others, Comrade Cyril saw military training in Cairo where he spent his six month’s military course and a commander’s course after that;  had further training in Cyrpus and Odessa in the Soviet Union; faced combat in Wankie and Sipholilo as a  revered member of the Luthuli Detachment, and served in Mozambique in the various activities of the African National Congress. 

To fight alongside ZIPRA forces to destroy White rule in Southern Africa is a honour rarely achieved. Only the best, the brave and the dedicated deserved this honour. Comrade Edwin Ndlovu was not only a soldier, but also a soldiers’ soldier. Soldiers’ soldiers never pass on: they are temporarily relieved of their command, and in the interim those who follow them take over. 

There are many of our Comrades in our army, now fully-fledged members of our national defence force who are ready to pick up the gauntlet. Comrade Edwin Ndlovu perfectly understood that in spite of his military achievements, military expertise was to be deployed to achieve clear political objectives.  Always obedient and focused, there is no single shred of evidence that Comrade Edwin had occasion to appear before any corrective measures and structures of the African National Congress.

Brigadier-General Dlamini joined the African National Congress when the sole reason was the liberation of our people and not self-enrichment.  He and the other Comrades of his calibre joined when the credo was not so much what the African National Congress could do for you, but what you could do for the African National Congress.

With military honours and accolades the size of which would fill any soldier’s tunic with pride, Brigadier General Dlamini remained firmly rooted to the ground as a man of the people, equal to them in status, respectful of their trials and tribulations and aspirations and ready to defend them at all costs. 

When he joined the new defence force, the South African National Defence Force, he did so with a clear understanding that he was taking an oath of the defence of all our people, Black and White.  He took an oath of defending the Constitition of our country. In this he did not waver up to his untimely passing away on Saturday last week.

As the African National Congress, we are on course to attract a million members by our centenary celebrations next year.  Complacent somewhere, are millions of our people who continue to vote for us in subsequent elections even if they are not full members. It is only the mirror image of Comrade Edwin Ndlovu that we should show to these potential members that can immediately turn them from being ordinary supporters to be fully-fledged members of good standing, contributing to the daily work of our glorious movement.

It is in this vein that we should affirm our desire to have these 1- million members and more, but also to indicate that as they join us in droves, it is incumbent upon them to continue the tradition of the African National Congress and not to join simple for the reason that it is now fashionable not do so.  We do indeed aspire to these million members, but the rider is that it should  be a qualitative one million members, ready to defend the integrity and the traditions of our movement at all times, like the example which has been set by Comrade Edwin Ndlovu.

Allow me to humbly close the life chapter of this gallant hero by redirecting the African National Congress to our historic mission of the full liberation of our people. We have not veered from that which we have always wanted to achieve.  We are aware that in the interests of the stability of our nation, we might not have achieved all we wanted during the negotiations phase.

Views about how to deal with these outstanding issues and how to arrive at this destination may vary. In our tried and tested contestation of ideas, we do allow for the contestation of these ideas in an orderly manner that shows respect for leadership, the symbols, artifacts, traditions, history as well as for the processes of our movement.  For over 99 years, these processes and procedures have served us well, and where they have been found to be in need of change, we have changed them to suit the dynamics of our times.

We have changed them in appropriate forums, at pre-determined times as these appear in our Constitution. On each occasion that there has been reason to alter our course, we have been found to have acted within the accepted norms and values of being loyal and dedicated members of the African National Congress, its alliance partners and to our communities. This has always set our movement apart, not only as the oldest but the most cohesive. Not only as the one with so much as the propensity to disentangle, but the one that finds survival necessary and possible during those periods when our detractors want to write us off.

When a soldier and a comrade has fallen, we console ourselves and the family of the departed ones with comradely valedictions.   We use their exemplary lives and dedication to the cause of our people as a rallying call for the rejuvenation of our movement. We promise to pick up their spear and continue the good fight. Yet even in our wildest dreams do we underestimate the pain that is visited on the immediate family and friends. 

We are not getting delusional as to the trying times that lie ahead even as the immediate family members grasp with this unfortunate but inevitable tragedy. As all of us have gone through the pain of such a loss in our private capacities, we cannot provide enough tear- reversing words to console the family.  It is in this vein that I request MaMafuma and their beloved children, namely Mangisi, Busi, Cebisile, Nokuthula and the relatives to accept their loss as our loss.

As I conclude, I sympathize with the new uncertainty that arises out of recent views by certain members of influential people in our nation and state as to how we should behave under such circumstances of loss. The loss of a soldier and veteran of Mkhonto Wesizwe elicits certain responses, some of them unsolicited and natural. Far from calling for due respect for this gallant fighter of our struggle to be appropriately accorded, I am not unaware of the pronouncements that have been made to decide how we bid farewell to a dedicated comrade. This may not have been a direct call, but we have all been put into such a position that to sing or not to sing appropriate valedictory songs for our comrades is a subject of legal interpretation.

Sithi Lala Khale Dlamini!
Uyihlakulile eyakho insimu!
Igama lakho liyohlala likhumbuleka.
Kumndeni wakwa Dlamini sithi akwehlanga lungehlanga.
Nazala amaqhawe; izinyembezi zenu ziyohlala ziningi kunabanye.

JEFF RADEBE
25 SEPTEMBER 2011