YACOOB ABBA OMAR: Lessons I learnt from Pravin Gordhan

Pravin Gordhan had an indelible effect on just about anyone he met. I was fortunate to have worked closely with him and other comrades in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

I have carried through the rest of my life many of the lessons we learnt working in several campaigns. A classic example is when activists in KwaZulu-Natal ran successful house visits and pamphleteering campaigns under the noses of the security police. 

We would plan such campaigns in minutest detail — press-ganging printing presses, mobilising cars and volunteers and securing refreshments. The night before our forays into an area we pored over maps obtained through the Durban municipality and set out the precise routes a carload of activists would follow, jump out and drop leaflets at each home and then retreat for a debriefing before the police had got wind of what we were up to. 

Years later in exile, when I was being trained in the art of insurrection by the ANC’s Soviet allies in Moscow, this experience helped me plot and plan the execution of insurrections, a simulation exercise where we applied all the lessons we had learnt. I was able to use maps to work out which units of the enemy’s armed forces needed to be infiltrated, and how and where these units were to be deployed in the name of the revolution. 

So impressed were my Soviet instructors that on more than one occasion they asked whether I had been through the course before! I pointed out I was merely applying the lessons learnt in Durban townships. 

Given the work he has done in the underground structures of the ANC, Gordhan (or PG) was undoubtedly a master at subterfuge, which he brought to bear in what we refer to as the above-ground activities. In 1984 I joined a few leaders such as Billy Nair in the campaign to discredit the latest attempt by the apartheid system to court the Indian and coloured communities, this time through the tricameral parliament.

Indian and coloured representatives would be junior partners in an elaborate scheme to split them from the solidarity being shown with the African majority and to dilute anti-apartheid activities. 

For months the campaign was run from the Grey Street (now appropriately called Yusuf Dadoo Street, after the former SACP and SA Indian Congress leader) law offices of a senior leader of the Natal Indian Congress. We spent much energy working with journalists to ensure we got the appropriate coverage for our campaign. One of my favourite activities was drafting letters to the editor, which we would then pass on to other activists to send in their own name. That was long before social media became a thing. 

However, the day before the elections on August 28 1984 some of us were instructed to report for duty at a different set of offices — those of advocate Zak Yacoob — while the rest were deployed as part of the ground troops. From there we were able to receive reports from activists in the various parts of the province.

By midmorning we knew the campaign to boycott the elections had been so successful we could issue leaflets proclaiming “0% turnout” at the various bus ranks taking workers home that afternoon. I did spare a thought for the poor security police sods sitting outside the Grey Street offices for hours before they realised they were in the wrong place.

Action and communication 

By then I had come to appreciate the emphasis PG placed on the relationship between concrete action and communications. One of the earliest tracts he shared with me was a copy of an article by Lê Duẩn (April 7 1907-July 10 1986) a Vietnamese communist politician. One of his memorable lines was “the revolutionary method is to apply an offensive strategy and know how to win step by step”. Lê Duẩ distinguished between the “political slogan”, which was more strategic, and “action slogans”, which would be used to mobilise communities on immediate issues. 

In our context the taking of issues such as housing or fighting against rental increases in council homes were linked with the broader struggle captured in the United Democratic Front slogan “UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides”, which stood the test of time. 

As a member of the national executive of the Azanian Student Organisation from 1981 to 1983 under the leadership of Joe Phaahla and Tiego Moseneke, we were able to apply this approach to the tertiary education sector, pushing student leaders on the various campuses to take up the issues faced. 

Some from the left of the political spectrum felt this approach was too modest, and did not aim to shake up the apartheid system at its foundations. History has proven us right because these campaigns and the organisational structures they engendered laid the basis for the more political campaigns under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front, the Release Mandela Campaign and increasingly militant action.

This cross-sector, cross-generation, cross-class mobilisation celebrated its pinnacle when the process towards a democratic SA was firmly laid with the unbanning of various organisations, the release of leaders and the return of the exiled, the holding of the 1994 elections and 1996 adoption of the democratic constitution.

Since PG’s passing many have commented on him as a strategist, and understanding the balance of forces was a favourite opening of brainstorming sessions when we were strategising. This required appreciating what was called the dialectical relations between the different forces impacting on a situation.

Inspired by the Marxian approach to locate strategic questions in their reality — and not just some ideological or intellectual wish — such in-depth analysis inevitably led to a clear line of march, including the tactics to be used, which PG was unsparing in implementing. 

He would be the first to admit the vital role played by many other comrades he worked with closely, some deceased, some who maintained close relations, others a healthy distance and some who downright differed with him. That plethora of reactions is to be expected from a person who was so multi-dimensional and multi-layered, so focused and committed.

• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.