Joe Slovo

JOHANNESBURG – THE SOUTH African Communist Party (SACP) and its alliance partners will on Wednesday commemorate the death of liberation hero Joe Slovo.

SACP, together with partners- African National Congress (ANC) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) – will hold the event as Avalon Cemetery in Soweto, west of Johannesburg.

SACP General Secretary, Blade Nzimande, will be the key speaker while marches to mark the anniversary will be staged at Regina Mundi Roman Catholic Church in Rockville, Soweto.

SACP’s Linda Jabane District Secretary, Afrika Masoa, said the commemoration would bring together all ANC alliance partners as well as members of the public in the local communities of Soweto.

At the time of his death from cancer (aged 68) on January 6, 1995 Slovo was the National Chairperson, Politburo and Central Committee member of the SACP and first Minister of Housing in the country’s first democratically elected government.

He was a member of the ANC National Executive Committee.

Together with South Africa’s first democratically elected President Nelson Mandela, Slovo was involved in the founding of the joint ANC-SACP liberation army, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).

Slovo held various positions of responsibility, among others comprising the MK Chief of Staff.

“Slovo’s intellectual work, strategic and tactical thinking, working in the context of collective leadership, spans ‎almost all key documents of our liberation struggle, including, our very Constitution as a country,” said Masoa.

The SACP will use the commemoration to highlight key tenets of its programme of action for 2016-2017 as well as its posture on important issues, Masoa said.

– CAJ News