I am 86 years old. It is possible that I am the only person surviving who addressed the Congress of the People on 26 June 1955. In fact, I was speaking when the gathering was interrupted by the police.
As the years passed I realised the honour bestowed on me, and I now see this matter as also imposing a grave duty. I have to speak out, even if my voice is but a whisper in the thunder of the history of the African National Congress (ANC).
I will not renew my membership of the ANC. The ANC is no longer fit to govern or worthy of my support, exiguous as it has been. I no longer wish to be a member.
My contribution to the struggle has been small, compared to those whom I respect beyond words. There are many men and women who recognised me and who honoured me by calling me “comrade”.
But however trivial my role was, it was consistent and of long standing.
The African National Congress appears to regard its glorious and triumphant history as a reason for it to continue to govern. In its current state and conduct, it is dishonouring and defiling this history.
My late father, known as “Tolly” Bennun, drew me into the struggle and you will find his name in the ANC’s submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a comrade who died in exile. He designed the first detonators used by uMkhonto weSizwe. He was posthumously honoured in the Eastern Cape.
I was born in 1936, and as a schoolboy in 1951 I joined Joe Slovo, Ruth First and others in Sophiatown selling the Guardian and the titles that followed its banning. As a university student from 1953 I was an activist. I was a member of the Modern Youth Society in Cape Town and of the Congress of Democrats from its start. These formations must not be forgotten.
When I went into exile in 1965 my father and I joined the ANC the moment its ranks were opened to all South Africans and I was an activist in the African National Congress and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United Kingdom. When I returned to South Africa in 2000 I ensured that my membership of the African National Congress continued.
Whether or not I discharged myself satisfactorily as an ANC member is for others to say. Now, I join those whose dismay and disappointment at the present state of the movement causes them to step aside from the ANC.
I learned that an honest political activist can and must look critics straight in the eye and meet their comments and criticisms truthfully, proudly and confidently. I loved doing that, whether at dinner tables or when deployed to address meetings or in what I wrote and published. I felt honest and worthwhile, I believed passionately in what I was trying to convey, and I felt that I was trusted.
But I cannot meet this standard when I face current developments. I have no answer to the chilling findings of the Zondo Commission’s indictment of the political morality of the ANC. Daily Maverick summarises my view:
“So many members of the ANC’s NEC are implicated in so much wrongdoing (whether in the Zondo report or elsewhere) that it seems impossible to imagine the body developing a comprehensive response and essentially voting for its own jail term.”
My membership of the ANC gave me strength and dignity. For example, I shall never forget my experience, shortly after Nelson Mandela was released, at the Annual General Meeting of my trade union, the Association of University Teachers. I was deployed by the London office to represent President Mandela when he was awarded Honorary Membership of the AUT. The standing ovation was for all that the ANC and Mandela stood for, not for me, but imagine how I felt when I made my proud report to the London office. Imagine how I felt when I was deployed to address a meeting of Welsh miners, or of a local branch of the Trades Union Congress, or of some other formation which had pledged itself to support our struggle.
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