As we exit the winter of having lost several Comrades to the pernicious hand of the COVID19 pandemic, it is difficult to accept the reality of death as just but normality in humanity without blame. Despite our knowledge that at birth, we began the race to our mortal demise, we have still not learned to accept that as poor in taste death is, it is still the heir of our human beings' wealth.
With its ugliest and hated musk, the best of death's worst is that it will indeed have its day on all of us, including those we least expect it would. Our characterization of each other as friends, comrades, brothers, mothers, uncles and loved ones is so valuable that our attachment to the other tends to make us believe in our non-existent immortality. The only aspect of ourselves that has a chance of being immortalized, our legacy, which nature has bequeathed to society, creates a sense of eternity that we have removed the possibility of dying. To this end, learning of each other's death is so painful as though we did not know it is inevitable. Such is the pain I am feeling about Mpendulo Jele that I ask myself why him, and then answer myself, who then.
As we reminisce about 'le grootman ya se Mamelodi, ko flaka, A3 ko skwaereng, nie ver van Makeulneck, and shot left van Attalia se Tavern, let me share my piece on Mpendulo, the other Squire van Mams I know. Die was ones grootman ko motseng. The title of comrade, with its prowess to allow equality in contexts ideas are more important, should not make us forget that some we called comrades and interrupted in meetings when they were still talking were, in actual fact, our fathers, brothers, sisters, and indeed with Mpendulo, 'Grootman.'
I met Mpendulo, over and above, knowing him as magrootman amaANC in Mamelodi, as a young man in 1984 in Soshanguve at one of the 'meetings' at Father Smangaliso's Roman Catholic Church. I later met him in 1985 at a SOREA meeting when I was attending as part of a delegation from Transvaal College of Education (TCE). It was interesting that we both came from Mamelodi, him being there as part of the roaming 'underground' Gauteng Urban Machinery strengthening the Civic Movement, and I was then a transitioning Soshanguve Resident and founder President of the Student Representative Council.
Being an aspirant teacher at College and belonging to a generation with a mission to transform or destroy TUATA. I knew in that SOREA meeting that Mpendulo was also part of the Mamelodi Teachers Union, MATU, and National Education Union of South Africa, NEUSA. We already knew where our home would be through our interaction with NEUSA at the Education Charter Campaign meetings we held in Medunsa with leaders such as Confidence Moloko, Moeti Mpuru, Gwen Ramokgopa, Curtis Nkondo, Mme Angie Motshekga, Elmon Mathonsi, Eron van Rensburg, and many others.
Our involvement as TCE in the National Education Crisis Committee, education structures of Soshanguve with Benji Ntuli and many other comrades in Soshanguve and Ga-Rankuwa would develop into strategic nodal points with which comrades from TCE would utilize towards the formation of a colossus of a trade union that SADTU has grown to be in South Africa.
I qualified as a teacher, got a post in Mamelodi, and immediately sought membership in MATU. I was accepted and invited to serve as a co-opted member of its leadership structure. This is where I had first-hand mentoring by Mpendulo, Nomalizo, and Bomba. In my 'nkululeko ngoku' attitude, the patience of Mpendulo and others taught me how to simmer in the structures of the Mass Democratic Movement.
As Secretary of the Mamelodi Teachers Union, and one of the first teacher's unions to be established, he enlisted me to become a publicity secretary of the Union. This would have meant I do stakeholder engagement for the Union and thus represented MATU in most community structures, including COSATU local, UDF local, and other forums. Mpendulo would, from time to time, deploy me to attend these meetings when other exigencies of the underground called him to duty. The most crucial deployment Mpendulo took me along to was the National Teacher Unity Talks, where I became a recorded representative and member of the National Feasibility Committee that ultimately crafted a path towards the formation of today's South African Democratic Teachers Union.
The teacher unity talks were funded and facilitated by COSATU, and Comrade Jay Naidoo was the chairperson. In the threading of this journey of SADTU, Mpendulo Jele, and many might find him recoded as Khumalo, is a compulsory footnote and by-word. In threading the garment that SADTU is, Mpendulo went to international engagements with the exiled ANC leadership in Harare and, at some point, represented teacher unions in the CEC of the then fierce and ideologically congruent COSATU as we kept the home fires burning. It should be noted that the ANC networks of the 1950s, which included professional teacher associations leadership such as Ntate Leepile Taunyane were still enjoying collegial endearment of the ANC leadership in exile the then indifference of the ANC to the unionization of teachers and public servants. This threat, as we saw it then, to the unionization of teachers was neutralized by the likes of Mpendulo, Thulas, Eron van Rensburg, and the late Elmon Mathonsi.
As the possibility of democracy dawned, we started to be more bullish on organizing teachers and, together with Mpendulo, organized and attended the launch of the many teacher unions that were mushrooming in the country, one of which was the Kwa Ndebele Teachers Union, at which we met Comrades Siphosezwe and David Mabuza who both were in the initial leadership of KWANTU. The TCE nodal infrastructure, which Mpendulo, Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, and the Medunsa AZASO machinery had nurtured, became handy to the growth of teacher unionization. The late Willie Kutumela and David Mogoane took on the task beyond KwaNdebele into Moutse and other areas in today's Mpumalanga. As I pondered on the given trust by Mpendulo, I realized that he was a brother of Sello 'Two Two' Mpya, who served as a publicity secretary of the inaugural TCE SRC. They were both sons of a leading NEC Member of the ANC, Comrade Joe Jele. That did not bother me but just confirmed how nurturing Mpendulo could be. If you presented yourself as a learner, he became the teacher. Where he saw a lack of content, he would volunteer material, and as you read and displayed understanding and mastery, you were then appropriately deployed.
If you ask me who he was as a person, I would say he was a Grootman who dressed very well, he loved his whiskey, brave to be on Bomba Ndimande's bike, friendly enough to be a brother to Nomalizo, smart enough not to argue in meetings and yet adequate, mentoring sufficient to use his positioning on matters interior to the NEC to position many comrades into spaces he knew they would do well. Unassuming, a proper underground operative, a disorganized by choice comrade with impeccable attention to detail. A socialite of note and a teacher from Umthombo Primary School who died as an Ambassador.
Lala NGO XOLO, Squire, till we meet again. Yours was a life given to many.
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