6 January

Slovo, one of the drivers behind South Africa’s national reconciliation, was a leading member and later chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was the first white member of the ANC National Executive Committee and in 1991 the general secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP).

Accused of being ‘the KGB general’ and an ‘arch-Stalinist’ by the South African apartheid government of the time, Slovo retaliated, publishing his ’Has Socialism Failed?’ discussion pamphlet in 1989, which acknowledged the weaknesses of socialism.

‘The opponents of socialism are very vocal about what they call the failure of socialism in Africa. But they say little, if anything, about Africa’s real failure; the failures of capitalism. Over 90 per cent of our continent’s people live out their wretched and repressed lives in stagnating and declining capitalist-oriented economies. International capital, to whom most of these countries are mortgaged, virtually regards cheap bread, free education and full employment as economic crimes. Western outcries against violations of human rights are muted when they occur in countries with a capitalist orientation.’ (Has Socialism Failed? Joe Slovo 1989)