Category Archives: Chris Hani
Raymond Suttner audio interview with Gareth Cliff 12 March 2015
Raymond Suttner: Chris Hani and the leadership we have lost
Chris Hani and the leadership we have lost
In the 1991 SACP Congress when Chris Hani was elected General Secretary he took a decision that was meant to indicate that his future lay with building the Communist Party Continue reading
Raymond Suttner: Nelson Mandela’s masculinities
[This is an extract from the book Recovering democracy in South Africa that appeared in the Sunday Times under a different title yesterday] Continue reading
Raymond Suttner: ANC doesn’t only signify corruption, there were real heroes (Polity video)
Raymond Suttner: ANC in decline as it celebrates its 103rd year of existence
Raymond Suttner: Yes there were real martyrs. Remembering Anton Fransch
Yes, there were real martyrs. It is not simply a grand narrative where heroic mythologies have been invented!
Reading the report that I posted on the death of 20 year old Anton Fransch,which I post again at the end of this, three things stuck in my mind:
1. Before Fransch faced battle with the apartheid forces, according to Mohamed ‘Gori’ November, his MK comrade, he ‘allowed the police to first take the family to safety, who lived in the house where he rented.’
In other words, for Anton Fransch all lives were precious and there was no such thing as people to be ‘caught in the crossfire’. Everyone mattered. Even though he must have known he would die, he ensured that there would be no unnecessary additional sacrifices.
2. Then it is said ‘He was 20 years old but he had to take on the responsibility of a man at a very young age. He became a man long before he completed being a boy.’
Chris Hani also used to say: ‘I never had a youth’.
3. In these shameful and shameless times we need to remember that people did sacrifice. In these times when many scholars write cynically of the struggle, we need to remind them that there were those who paid with their lives to ensure that there would be the possibility of democracy.
Some of those who were involved in significant ways are amongst the ANC and allied leadership and hold office but they too did brave things at various times. How they link what they are doing now and what they did then is of course puzzling.
Some who are in leadership now, in fact some with the loudest voices and constantly talking of counter-revolution, were not around or avoided being around when the time was hard and they could have been part of that struggle.
The police were clear what would happen, saying: Kom uit jou vark, vandag gaan jy vrek. Come out you pig today you will die. And Basil Snayer reports how he died through a hand grenade:
“It was a most heroic and brave fight. From quarter to one to quarter to eight… In the end his flesh was stuck to the walls.”
Raymond Suttner, The Economic Freedom Fighters politics of dress (Polity)
Sisonke Msimang, Limpho Hani, Clive Derby-Lewis and the power of refusing to forgive
Douglas Ntozakhe Mthukwane Remembers Chris Hani and his death
Note: I have published this article at the request of the author, who is a freelance writer. There are one or two aspects with which I do not agree, but I believe it is right to provide an outlet for his writing insofar as I am able .
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If I were to recount the moments in my life that left me with an incessant lump in my throat, 19 April 1993, will take the prize Continue reading
Raymond Suttner, video interview on lessons from Chris Hani’s life (Polity)
Chris Hani (Afravision film)
Pallo Jordan, The day Mandela saved SA from veering off course
Raymond Suttner, On Mandela’s models of masculinity
Pallo Jordan pays tribute to Nelson Mandela
Raymond Suttner: Decisions/concessions made by the Mandela-led ANC during the transition towards post-apartheid South Africa
The transcript and interview with Professor Sampie Terreblanche (link at the end of this article) provides insights Continue reading
Raymond Suttner 