TREVOR MANUEL: Eulogy to Sidima Terrence Kabanyane

“A people without a vision will perish”, so the word says in the Book of Proverbs (29:18)

I am with you here today to bid farewell to, and celebrate the life of, one of our nation’s finest sons — Sidima Terrence Kabanyane. a husband, a father, a friend and a comrade. His was a life of impeccable honour and commitment. The story of Sidima’s life is the story of struggle to overcome, a story of great strides made, a story of a razor-sharp intellect and then some setbacks.

He was born in Paarl and moved to Mbekweni early in life. Mbekweni was designed and built for the offspring of the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, but Sidima would not merely follow the path of a life set out for him. He would rise up against it.

As history would have it, shortly before his birth Hendrik Verwoerd made that speech introducing Bantu education and said: “What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?” Well, Sidima not only learnt mathematics at Themba Labantu High School in Zwelitsha, King Williams Town, from where he was detained in 1976. He went to study it at the University of Fort Hare, whence he was expelled.

His life’s journey took him to Roma in Maseru, where he continued his study in maths and science. He considered Paarl home and returned to the place where he loved to teach mathematics here in Mbekweni. All of it in defiance of the architects of apartheid. Moreover, he went to Canada to hone his skills in science and earned a PhD in organic chemistry.

There are not many South Africans who attained such heights, and in a branch of science so complex. And from the dusty streets of a township designed to retain its inhabitants as poor, uneducated farm and factory workers, this is a feat that defies both imagination and limits.

But he was far more than a student and a teacher. Sidima was one of the finest activists, who developed the skills to operate as an underground activist — something he disguised so well that he could still operate above ground as a community activist. This blend of skills was sharpened during his studies in Maseru. The apartheid regime thought if they suppressed and repressed young people in our townships we would grow tired and give up the struggle.

What they failed to understand was that the more they suppressed us the more determined we were to build new and stronger networks, especially in neighbouring states. The apartheid regime did not understand that they could not shake the dedication of a comrade like Sidima. They had no vision, and that’s why they perished.

Not many achieved what Sidima did as an activist. It was in his capacity as a teacher by day, community activist until dusk and underground operative after dark, that he was part of a generation of activists here in the 1980s who mobilised every street and every house into a formidable force of resistance. Mbekweni was then as close to a liberated zone as you could imagine. These activists were exemplary in building unity across this valley linking Mbekweni and Paarl East.

We need to understand how nonracialism was an integral part of Sidima’s DNA. This is evident from everything he did, especially at the Drakenstein Municipality. He dedicated his book, Blast from the Past, to the men and women of the Drakenstein Municipality because, as he said, they “instilled in me the true meaning of caring for others”. Pause for a moment and consider the tribute he paid to his personal assistant, Elna Smit, and then appreciate nonracialism in practice.

It was in Victor Verster prison that we all met and bonded, and have remained comrades ever since. The apartheid regime thought if they locked us up we would grow tired. They did not realise that bringing us together would make us more focused on the future. We knew where we were going. They had no vision and that’s why they perished.

In their prisons we banded together, we learnt, we grew, we galvanised, and yes, we plotted to overthrow them. Today, apartheid is no more, and we still have our friendship, our comradeship and our history. We still have each other’s backs. 

The vision of all of us has been a belief that we will be of service to the people and that we will use political office to improve the living standards of all our people, and especially the poor. If the vision outlined in the Freedom Charter and entrenched in the constitution is our strategy to deliver through political office, then we must assign positions in the public service to the most capable and most dedicated.

By any measure, Sidima met all of the criteria as a public servant focused on transforming lives. By any measure. As we know, Sidima was able to earn an MSc and a PhD from the University of New Brunswick, the oldest English-language university in Canada. While in Canada he met and married a PhD student from the University of Toronto, the selfsame Princess Gcwalisile, the love of his life to the very end. After Canada they returned to SA and lived for a short period in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal. But the magnet of this Drakenstein Valley that drew him back, and so he returned home.

He did so with his then-makoti and love of his life, our sister Princess Gcwalisile. What a find for Drakenstein to have one of its own, then part of an inseparable and highly educated couple, to return to the service of the people of this valley. Sidima considered the position as municipal manager of Drakenstein, in the service of the people he loved and respected, his dream job. He attended to it with an unbelievable passion, a commitment to transformation, an enthusiasm for the task of management and a clear vision about his role in the upliftment of people.

Let’s call a spade a spade — he was removed from office when the DA won the election and embarked on cadre deployment. They also trampled on his vision and reduced his achievements and commitment for the sake of political expediency. For the past decade — a period of his life when he had matured into one of the finest municipal managers in the country — he had written joyfully about managing local government for success. He declared his willingness to be sent anywhere to help stabilise and recover local government. Sadly, his efforts were spurned. Only this time, more hurtfully, because whereas the DA unceremoniously dumped him from office, his talents and skills were simply overlooked by people in the ANC. I am deliberately not calling them comrades, those who ignored his talents, skill and expertise.

If they were his comrades they would have known about his passion and commitment to local upliftment. This emanated from within a movement Sidima had joined in his early youth as an illegal act, whose torch he carried with pride and a movement for which he was prepared to lay down his life. The consequence of this has been that for the past decade one of the most talented and experienced municipal managers sat at home, unemployed, when across this country municipalities are failing dismally. The results were expressed on November 1, the day of Sidima’s passing.

A people without a vision will perish. And I say this not as a threat but as fact, that a movement without a vision will also perish. I hope the lesson of November 1 will be internalised and used as a rallying point to get us back to that vision to build an SA for all who live in it, an SA we can hold our head high and be proud of. I hope, for all of our sakes but especially to honour the memory of Comrade Sidima, that corrections are made.

I remember an exchange we had in 2015, when he described how he felt that he was slowly being killed off. Yet he never winced about his responsibility — in the Frank Marquard Branch or in the Boland region of the ANC. In 2018 he wrote: “The ANC has lived 100 years and went through turbulent times in that period, but came out stronger and wiser than when it was formed. There is no reason that it cannot live another 100 years and carry with it stories of courage, bravery and solid leadership to those who will be driving the movement in the second century of its life. All I need is to be part of those who will ensure the ANC stays on its correct trajectory.”

A people without a vision will perish. And a nation that does not apply the skills and acumen of its most talented will also perish. There is still time to rescue the situation and, in the interests of the lifelong mission of Sidima and so many others, we have to work to keep the vision alive. The vision will not self-materialise, nor will it see the light of day without a rigorous honesty of how we lost our way. Those in power need not open the textbooks again, they merely have to look at the life’s work and contribution of our dear comrade Sidima Kabanyane, and how he was let down, especially in the past decade of his life.

The author Ben Okri said: “But it is not often that a people reach a mountaintop and descend with a rich vision of a transformed life for all of its people and then set about realising it. Too often the euphoria gets swept away into an ideology of state. Too often it is squandered. Too often that great moment is lost and never to be experienced again and eventually forgotten in the mountainous piling up day after day after day of ordinary reality, the mire of history, till disillusion and despair and boredom set in.

“And a people who could have given mankind a new reality of how a society can be in a world where many dreams are failing, becomes a society that scrabbles in the sand, its eyes weep in poverty with division and tribal conflict at its heart and emptiness in its days, its resources and hopes eaten away by corruption — a society that faces the darkness and the dullness with that glimpse of the mountaintop faded into ordinary sunlight.”

Let us all be clear, the biggest threat to our future, and the theft of our vision as a people, is those who are corrupt. They do not steal from the rich, they steal from the poor. They destroy the future of all, but especially of the black child. When they are assigned to positions of power, somehow they think they have the power to pillage. And with no consequences. We must call it out for what it is. And we must say loudly to those in power that the Freedom Charter and our constitution commit to “equality before the law”. 

We said it, we sang it and we believe it. Our constitution commits to building a “democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law”. Nobody is therefore entitled to special protections from the law for crimes such as corruption, just because they were once brave in struggle. It is because some get special treatment that there is no room for competent, dedicated, honest people of integrity, such as those of value and vision like Dr Sidima Terrence Kabanyane. There is no bravery in corruption.

I am speaking out today out of loyalty and honesty. The Kabanyane household in Gledholdt Street has always been a place of humility, loyalty and honesty. I do want to sincerely thank Gcwalisile for the love and devotion she gave our brother. I want to thank the children and ask that they look out for each other and continue to focus on how they can live in the memory of their father. And I want to plead with everybody that, rather than name streets and places after Sidima, we should vigorously campaign to root out every last vestige of corruption. Let us do that in his name and by so doing recover the vision. Without a vision, and a strategy to realise it, we will perish.

Qawe la ma Qawe! Hamba Kahle! Mkhonto we Sizwe!

• Manuel, a former anti-apartheid activist and finance minister, chairs the board of Old Mutual.