ARCHIE
GUMEDE
Intro:
On June 21 (2024) it was the 26th anniversary of the death of one of
the gentle giants of the freedom struggles, Mr Archie Gumede, who was living
and working in the town of Pinetown, west of Durban, at that time. Veteran
journalist, Subry Govender, who interacted with Gumede since the 1970s to the
time of his passing, recalls that Gumede was one of the scores of freedom
fighters who put the cause of freedom first before their own personal
situations.
(Archie Gumede leading the celebration of the release of Billy Nair from Robben Island Prison.)
By
Subry Govender
Sometime
early in 1995, I had made arrangements to interview one of the doyens of the
struggle, Archie Gumede, at his law offices in Pinetown, west of Durban, about
his life and the road ahead.
“Hi
Subry don’t worry about me,” he said in his usual polite and gentle tone.
“I
am just a small cog in the free South Africa now. We have a lot of work to do
now to improve the lot of the masses.”
But
despite his reservations, I convinced him that I want to record his
contributions in the struggles to the overthrow of the former white minority
government and the move towards the creation of a non-racial and democratic new
South Africa.
At
this time, I had just joined the SABC as a senior political journalist and I
had decided, in addition to the everyday work of a senior political journalist,
to record the lives of many of the activists and leaders I had interacted with
during the heightened days of the struggles in the late 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and
early 1990s.
Mr
Gumede had been appointed an ANC member of the new democratic Parliament after
the first democratic elections on April 27 1994. His involvement in the
struggles, especially in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, had attracted
harassment, intimidation, detentions, bannings and treason trial charges from
the side of the former dreaded security police.
I
already had a great deal of information on Mr Gumede as I had known him at
close hand when he was involved with the leaders of the Natal Indian Congress,
Release Mandela Committee, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the
alternative Ukusa newspaper.
(Archie Gumede attending the launch of the UDF in Cape Town in the 1980s.)
“Subry,
it’s great to see you again. All our work has borne fruit and now the ANC has a
major task ahead to bring about social and economic changes for those who had
been discriminated and disadvantaged,” he said.
Born
as Mtuzela Archibald Jacob Gumede in the district of Pietermaritzburg on March
1 1914, Archie Gumede or “Archie” had been immersed in the political struggles
from an early age.
His
father, Josiah Gumede, was a founding member of the ANC and was also elected as
the fourth president of the organisation.
Archie
Gumede became an activist while completing his matriculation in
Pietermaritzburg and his law degree at the University of Fort Hare in the
Eastern Cape.
He
joined the ANC in 1942 but because of his involvement he constantly suffered
harassment, bannings, detentions and political trials at the hands of the
dreaded security police at that time from the 1950s to the mid-1980s.
While he was being
detained under the 90-day detention law in 1963 in the Natal provincial capital
of Pietermaritzburg, a senior security policeman approached him in his cell and
made the following offer:
"Now Mr Gumede why don' t you behave
yourself and be a good chap like Matanzima in the Transkei and we will make you
a big shot in the KwaZulu homeland.”
But
the genial Mr Gumede politely turned down the offer and told the security
policeman that bantustan freedom did not appeal to him and that he was fighting
for the liberation of the whole of South Africa.
Immediately
after he was released from the 90-day detention, he was served with a five-year
banning order and restricted to the district of Pietermaritzburg. He was also
house arrested, prevented from attending all political meetings and social
gatherings, and had to report to the local police station once a week. 
(Archie Gumede leading a UDF Press Conference in Durban in the 1980s.)
The
restrictions placed on his political activities was a severe blow because he
had been closely associated with the ANC before it was banned in 1960.
Mr
Gumede began his political career in 1943 when he became assistant branch
secretary of the ANC in Pietermaritzburg. He later became branch secretary and
then assistant secretary for the Natal region.
But
because the secretary, Mr M. B. Yengwa, and the president, Chief Albert
Luthuli, were continually in and out of jail, Mr Gumede used to carry most of
the workload in the Natal region.
With a number of comrades, he launched the Defiance Campaign in Pietermaritzburg
and other parts of Natal on behalf of the ANC in 1953. And in 1956 he was one
of the delegates to the "People’s Conference" in Kliptown in
Johannesburg, where the historic "Freedom Charter", a document of social justice , was formulated.
His
problems with the white minority authorities began immediately after the
successful conclusion of the Kliptown conference. In the same year, he was
arrested along with 154 other political leaders, including ANC president, Mr
Nelson Mandela, Mr Walter Sisulu, Mr Govan Mbeki , Mr Ahmed Kathrada and Mr
Raymond Mahlaba, who were all imprisoned for life on Robben Island near Cape Town.
Although Mr Gumede was
acquitted mid-way through the five-year trial, he was kept under constant
surveillance. And when the South African Government declared a state of
emergency after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, he was detained from March to
August at the Pietermaritzburg jail.
In
1963 he was detained again under the 90-day detention law. It was during this
period that he was made the "Matanzima offer”. 
After
his first banning order expired in 1958, he was re-banned for a further two
years and restricted to Pietermaritzburg.
During
this period, he worked as a clerk in an attorney's office and later qualified
as a lawyer. When his second banning order expired, he moved to Pinetown near
Durban where he opened up a law practice and set up house in the township of
Clermont.
During
the late 1960s and early 197Os, police harassment and intimidation was
particularly rife and harsh. He kept a low profile and concentrated on building
his law practice. But this was not to last too long.
Immediately
after the June 1976 uprisings in Soweto and other townships of South Africa, he
was invited to join an Education Committee and soon found himself back in the
mainstream of resistance politics.
Mr
Gumede, despite the many years of detentions, bannings and house arrests,
joined the move to heighten the struggles.
(Archie Gumede chatting to Jay Naidoo at a meeting at the Catholic Cathedral in Durban in the 1980s.)
In
August 1983, he was elected president of the newly-established United
Democratic Front(UDF), which at that time had co-ordinated the struggle against
Pretoria's new tri-ethnic constitution. The new scheme was aimed at co-opting
the Coloured and Indian people into the white "laager", while
excluding the 20-million African majority at that time from all say in the
political decision-making processes.
In
addition to the UDF, Mr Gumede was also the president of the Release Mandela
Committee(RMC) and an official in a host of community organisations and
alternative media groups. He had joined leaders such as Griffith Mxenge, Dr A E
Gangat, Dr Khorshed Ginwala and this correspondent in the establishment of the
Ukusa newspaper. But this newspaper was sabotaged by the security police
through bannings, detentions and harassment of its officials.
Mr
Gumede, who is the father of seven children, had to pay a heavy price for
refusing the "Matanzima" offer by the security policeman.
Although
he was entering nearly 70 years in age when I first conducted an interview with
him in 1983, he was as vibrant as ever and full of confidence for the future.
As
president of the UDF and the RMC, Mr Gumede was on the move all the time and
from meeting to meeting. He was revered by young and old alike and was
affectionately referred to as "Baba Archie". 
But
Mr Gumede took this all in his stride when he told me:
"I
am only filling the vacuum until our real leaders return from prison and from
exile. We can never fill the leadership positions of people of the calibre of
Mandela and Sisulu.
"We in the UDF will
continue the struggle until our leaders are allowed to return to take their
rightful 
positions in our society.
"As far as we are
concerned there will never be peace and harmony in South Africa as long as our
leaders are banned, imprisoned and forced into exile," Mr Gumede had said.
At this time in 1983 he
was particularly critical of the role played by the then President Ronald Regan
of the United States with the so-called "constructive engagement"
policy and the other Western countries.
"Mr
Regan will never be able to win our support as long as he tries to maintain the
status quo and white rule in South Africa.
"What we would like
to know is that why does the United States and the other Western countries
always oppose human rights resolutions against South Africa at the United
Nations. Is it that they are worried about their kith and kin here? How would
they have reacted if the oppressors here in South Africa were black and the
oppressed, white?"
Mr Gumede challenged the
United States to state whether it was interested in the black people’s struggles for justice and liberty.
"We
will continue our struggles against white minority rule no matter what the
Regans or Thatchers of this world
say", he told me.
But
soon after this interview, Mr Gumede was detained once again along with Mewa
Ramgobin, Paul David, George Sewpersadh, M J Naidoo, Billy Nair, and Sam Kikine under the apartheid
regime’s notorious security laws. But they managed to bring an urgent court
action against their detentions and were freed by the Pietermaritzburg Supreme
Court.
Soon after their release, they raised the struggles
to an international level on September 13 1984 by seeking refuge at the British
Consulate which was situated in a building at the corner of the former Smith
and Field streets in Durban at that time.
After Gumede and his colleague left the Consulate
after a month, he was re-arrested on October 6 1984 on charges of High Treason.
He was one of the activists brought to appear in the
High Treason Trial which was held at the Pietermaritzburg High Court. His
fellow accused were Isaac Ngcobo, Mewa Ramgobin, Curtis Nkondo, Sisa Njikelana, Aubrey Mokoena,
Sam Kikine, M J Naidoo, Mrs Albertina Sisulu, Essop Jassat, Cassim Salojee,
George Sewpersadh, Paul David, Frank Chikane and Thozamile Gqweta.
Defended by Ismail Mahomed, who later became the
Chief Justice of South Africa after the dawn of freedom in 1994, Gumede and all
his fellow treason trialists were acquitted on December 15 1985.
Gumede and his fellow struggle stalwarts continued
with their struggles to see a number of Robben Island prisoners such as Ahmed
Kathrada, Walter Sisulu, and Govan Mbeki being released at the end of 1989 and
the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. At the same time the ANC, PAC
and other organisations were unbanned by the then apartheid President, F W De
Klerk.
During the transitional peace talks and the
negotiations process from the early 1990s to 1994, Gumede played a significant
role in building the support base of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.
He was elected as an ANC MP in April 1994 and served
in this position until his passing on June 21 1998.
At his funeral in Pinetown, glowing tributes were
paid about his contributions and sacrifices for the struggles for a “free,
non-racial and democratic South Africa”.
The ANC said in a statement: “The ANC dips its
revolutionary banner to this great patriot, freedom fighter, journalist and
lawyer. Comrade Archie Gumede was a revolutionary for the ideas of a united,
non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa he fought for, for so long
and so hard.”
More than 30 years into our new South Africa, I am
certain that Mr Gumede would appreciate the commitment of many of our leaders,
such as President Cyril Ramaphosa, Mr Tito Mboweni and Dr Zweli Mkhize, in the
attempts to improve the social and economic lives of those citizens living on
the margins of society. But, at the same time, he would be disillusioned and
disheartened with the climate of fraud and corruption that have captured
certain of the so-called politicians, civil servants, officials and private
citizens. This degeneration is one of the main reasons for the deep levels of
poverty, unemployment and inequality that continues to plague the new South
Africa, more than 30 years into freedom. Ends – subrygovender@gmail.com
Oct 3 2024
