Moses Mauane Kotane (1905 - 1978)

Wed Aug 09, 1905

Image

On this day in 1905, communist trade unionist and anti-apartheid activist Moses Mauane Kotane was born, going on to lead the South African Communist Party (SACP) as General Secretary from 1939 until his death in 1978.

Born to a peasant family in Transvaal, Kotane became involved in trade unionism and left-wing activism in his early adolescence. In 1928, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), but soon left, finding it ineffectual.

The following year, he joined the SACP, quickly working his way up the party ladder and becoming a member of its Politburo. In 1939, he was elected General Secretary.

Remaining close to the ANC, he was elected to its National Executive Committee in 1946. Under Kotane’s leadership, the SACP, together with the ANC, organized various anti-apartheid demonstrations and labor strikes, and his high profile in both organizations made him a major target of the South African government’s political repression.

In 1963, he left South Africa to lead the SACP in-exile from Tanzania.

He died in 1978 after suffering a stroke at the age of 72. Moses was survived by his wife Rebecca Kotane, who went on to became the last living elder of the anti-apartheid struggle, as old as the African National Congress (ANC) itself, dying in 2021 at the age of 108.

“My first suggestion is that the party becomes Africanised, that the CPSA must pay special attention to South Africa and study the conditions in this country and concretise the demands of the masses from first-hand information, that we must speak the language of the native masses and must know their demands, that while it must not lose its international allegiance, the Party must be Bolshevised and become South African not only theoretically but in reality.”

- Moses Maunane Kotane, 1934