Programme Director,
DSG of the ANC Comrade Jessie Duarte,
President of the ANC Veterans’ League Comrade Snuki Zikalala,
First Deputy General Secretary of the SACP
Members of the National Executive Committee
Secretary of the Gauteng Provincial Executive Committee, Comrade, Jacob Khawe
Leaders of the Alliance,
Veterans of our Movement,
Leaders of Civil Society Formations,
Comrades and Friends.

It is my singular honour and privilege to add my voice to the outpouring of love, respect and eulogy for our leader and icon, Professor Ben Turok. We condole with Aunt Mary and the Turok family. Equally our condolences also go to comrade Ben’s extended family in the movement which served as his political home, to South Africans as well as to his friends, brothers and colleagues in our continent Africa.

How does one even begin to commemorate the towering memory of the life and times of such a remarkable leader, teacher and mentor to countless freedom fighters, professionals, public representatives and student activists?

On this occasion one is constrained by the sense of ambivalence born of solemnness and celebration all at once. We celebrate comrade Ben’s illustrious life and the 30th anniversary of the unbanning of our organizations.

Allow me to use Professor Ben Turok’s life history as a scaffold to hang lessons he bequeathed to us and to posterity.

Comrade Ben was born in Latvia where his family experienced pogroms and related intolerances until they migrated to our shores in 1934. He graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1950 and worked as a surveyor. It is this family background that taught him to oppose and fight against any injustice, discrimination, oppression and exploitation exercised against any fellow human being anywhere in the world.

His involvement in the struggles of the downtrodden and the exploited gave him political and trade union consciousness.

As a leader of the Congress of Democrats, he was involved in the preparations and mobilization for the Congress the People where he and Billy Nair had to present and motivate for the adoption of the economic clause of the Freedom Charter in 1955. By December 1956, comrade Ben was one of the 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance arrested and charged for high treason.
The State spectacularly failed to prove its case, resulting in the acquittal of all the accused over a period of four and a half years with the last group freed in 1961.

Professor Ben Turok was also an active member and leader of the underground South African Communist Party. The South African Communist Party was the reincarnation of the Communist Party of South Africa which had operated as a legal party from 1921 to 1950. Both the CPSA and its successor the SACP had established an impressive record of recruiting and training the most disciplined and hard-working members from inside and outside of the Congress Alliance.

I remember comrade Ben explaining how, together with comrades Thomas Nkobi and John Nkadimeng, they studied and debated the following three volumes of Marxist philosophy written by Maurice Cornforth:
Vol. 1. Materialism and the Dialectical Method
Vol. 2. Historical Materialism
and
Vol. 3. Theory of Knowledge

He said: “I would pick up my two comrades, drive around in my small car whilst one of them reads a few paragraphs aloud and we would then debate and discuss the text for an hour and thereafter disperse until the following week.”

The lesson for us is that political education need not cost too much money, all it takes is dedication and discipline. The feat of going through three volumes of philosophy in a small car is both inspiring and admirable.
It proves that to develop class consciousness one must attend classes and that the venue and size of attendees matters less. The “study circle method” works optimally anywhere, all the time.

Professor Ben Turok was among the first leaders to discuss the need to consider alternative ways of waging the struggle against apartheid once the ANC and the PAC were banned in the wake of the Sharpville Massacre. The apartheid government declared a state of emergency and introduced the 90 Days Detention Law in order to allow for detainees to be held incommunicado and left at the mercy of the Special Branch of the Security Police. Brutal torture, with no accountability by the police, was thus legalised and many detainees were murdered with the ensuing inquests, finding no one to blame.

Today we know that all the claims of detainees ‘slipping on soap in the shower’ and ‘committing suicide’, were all lies. Evidence adduced in the re-opened inquest of Mr Ahmed Timol, proves that Mr Timol was murdered. Dr Neil Aggett’s re-opened inquest is in progress with horrifying testimonies of torture and abuse rising to the surface – the court is considering evidence in this inquest.

It was during the state of emergency and the resultant mass arrests that comrade Ben found himself sharing a room in a safe house with Wolfie Kodesh, Michael Harmel and Moses Kotane.

Comrade Michael Harmel shared his draft paper entitled: “In South Africa What’s Next?” The three comrades discussed and agreed to circulate it more widely within the movement. The paper raised issue with and questioned the rationale of peaceful resistance against an increasingly savage and brutal regime.

Subsequently the SACP decided to establish combat units. Needless to say, that comrade Ben was among those who enlisted.

Later comrade Mandela caused the leadership of the ANC to hold similar discussions which led to the birth of uMkhonto We Sizwe (MK) as an independent joint project of the SACP and the ANC. A spate of sabotage acts occurred as MK announced its existence.

Professor Ben Turok was later arrested and sentenced to a term of imprisonment in 1962. He served three years – one of the first political prisoners at that time.

The lesson for us is that our leaders never asked of others what they were themselves not prepared to do. They led from the front.

Even in the years of exile, in Tanzania, comrade Ben put his skills as a qualified land surveyor at the service of the government of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Throughout the years that followed, comrade Ben served the movement in various ways: he edited Sechaba in London; wrote and published several papers; and edited the book entitled “Revolutionary Thought in the 20th Century”.
By the way, this book is a must read for any member of our movement.

When the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and IMF were wreaking havoc in the emerging economies of African countries, comrade Ben was one of the fiercest critics of those toxic prescripts.

Never one to shy away from challenges, never an arm-chair critic and never a doctrinaire, comrade Ben buckled down to the task of testing his thoughts and theories in practice when he, together with fellow radical political economists Professor Bade Onimode (Nigeria), Professor Abdoulaye Bathily (Senegal), Shepard Nzombe (Zimbabwe), Professor Kwame Ninsin (Ghana), Professor Mahomed Suleiman (Sudan), and Professor Haroub Othman (Tanzania) founded the Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA) in 1986 in London.

The IFAA opened to discuss the decline of African economies caused by both harsh restructuring policies imposed by the Bretton Woods organisations as well as poor governance in many countries.

As an independent Pan-African institute, the IFAA is committed to promoting sustainable development and economic social justice in South Africa and the rest of Africa. The IFAA engages in broad policy research and advocacy, with a current focus on industrial policy, and raises critical issues for debate through their publications and public forums. The IFAA aims to produce and promote constructive analysis of South African and African socioeconomic and political issues and provide a platform for the dissemination of progressive views.

At its height, the IFAA had centres in six African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Senegal and Tanzania; as well as in London. Unfortunately, due to funding concerns, the IFAA centres closed in the early 1990’s.

Professor Ben Turok re-established the IFAA in South Africa on his return from exile in 1991. This was followed by the launch of “New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy” in the early 2000’s. The IFAA offices moved to Cape Town in 2014 once Professor Ben Turok retired from parliament that year and is now based at Community House in Salt River.

In conclusion, comrade Ben remained in harness to the struggle for a humane and better managed South Africa and the world for all his adult life. He was an exemplar of what Nikolai Ostrovsky meant when he wrote, and I quote:

“Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world – the fight for the Liberation of Mankind.”

Comrades, as long as you are living, never say never, because never comes before the day is out.

And remember that individuals write their own history through their conscious actions and the choices they make in their daily existence.
As Madiba said: “It is in your hands”.

Long live the spirit of comrade Ben. Long live his energy, initiative and industry!

I thank you.