Death of a Comrade: A tribute to Mike Stofile by University of Fort Hare SASCO convocants

The passing of one of our own, comrade Mike Stofile, is a very difficult moment for many of us who worked with him in various capacities in the congress movement. It is so difficult because we mourn the lifeless mortal remains of a Comrade that we looked up too as an epitome of what is good and humane about the ANC. This moment is also a painful moment because we have to bury a comrade whom we have all valued, respected and loved as a brother, a loved one, a friend and definitely a Cadre of the ANC!

Our own Comrade Mike Stofile! A political giant in his own right and to whom many of us here owe a high sense of gratitude. Not because he was a saint. But because his life, whilst it still had value, contributed quite immensely to many of us and in various positive ways. A very stubborn yet gentle and caring soul, Bro Mike (as we affectionately called him) was a cadre always readily available to help those in need.

Indeed, all of us have our own personal and special memories of the indelible mark he left in our hearts and in our lives. But for us and many of those in our generation in student movement under the studious leadership of SASCO, Bro Mike’s principled solidarity with us in difficult moments during the University of Fort Hare’s tough transformation years; and his profound contribution in the establishment of cooperatives for retrenched workers at Fort Hare during this period of transformation, stand out tall.

 When many of our friends kept silent as we faced persecution at the hands of the University of Fort Hare’s intransigent management that thought transformation meant a mean-lean university that must exclude those who could not afford to pay fees, Bro Mike went out of his way to ensure that we did not fall through the social cracks after some of us were expelled by the university.

When we were subjected to the worst torments for refusing to have students discarded after being used as cannon fodder by the University of Fort Hare to save itself from Professor Kadar Asmal’s erratic mergers, Bro Mike was there for us both in word and deed.

When many workers faced the most painful years of retrenchment in an effort to ‘save’ the university from closure or merger, Bro Mike stood with these workers in efforts to establish cooperatives that would sustain their livelihoods.

Who can forget that painful, harrowing moment when one young, gallant and visionary revolutionary of our times, comrade Xola Nene, was gunned down under mysterious circumstances by the PASMA thugs in the then Eastern Cape Technikon? Bro Mike, together with comrade Mongezi Sihlahla, was the first adult to be there for us, to help us deal with such a monumental loss. When students were viciously ejected from Fort Hare during students’ mass actions through the use of heavy handed police who used guns and stun grenades and dogs against students, it was Bro Mike who was SASCO’s first point of call to help students with food, accommodation and transport money.

He never disappointed us! Even when we celebrated SASCO victories in SRC elections, Bro Mike was there to celebrate with us providing the necessary material support. It is with such memories that one feels this moment of his passing as somewhat surreal.

However, we are certain of two things though. That in paying our sombre tributes to him, he would have wanted us all to do so with our happiest thoughts of our times spent together. Secondly, he would have wanted us to continue the honest struggle for the just course of our people.

Bro Mike was such a strong person through and through, from character, personality and presence. We are all sad today because somewhere somehow, we have all been touched by his generosity, caring nature, revolutionary love and wittiness.

As ANC comrades who shared many trials and tribulations with him, we are the first ones to declare and attest that he never left any of us in the battle. Whilst he lived, he would be the last one to exit battle, having seen it through to the end. 

Today, all of us are ready to pronounce the truism that Bro Mike’s sacrifices in the struggle as led by the ANC were not in vain. We say so because together with him in the ANC - his political home until his death - we have achieved countless victories for our people, the downtrodden of the South African poor and the working class. We are confident that as he lay in his final resting place motionless, as his mortal remains may seem lifeless, he is happy of the progress made by the ANC in many fronts.

Equally, we can say it here without any equivocation or contradiction that Bro Mike died very concerned of the current challenges facing our movement in its quest faster to improve the human condition of black people in general, and Africans in particular. As a committed member of the ANC, we know it for sure that the struggle for radical economic struggle was his struggle too.

Bro Mike definitely understood that a divided ANC, especially in the Eastern Cape, will never achieve victory over monopoly capital in order to deliver radical economic transformation. Bro Mike was a staunch opposition of the new tendency that seems to permeate our revolutionary Alliance. A tendency that has as its modus operandi the promotion of the worst and corrupt elements in our movement at the expense of talented, committed and able cadres of the ANC.

We must be steadfast in pointing out that the other element of this tendency is the marrying of political office with serious business interests, where manipulation of tenders and state jobs for cronies is the order of the day. Bro Mike would have wanted us not only to bemoan the existence of this tendency, but for us actively to fight to islolate and destroy it.

In his honour, all of us in the ANC must wake up and come to our senses before it is too late. We need to do this fast and with the understanding that we need each other more than ever before. Otherwise the inroads that are being made by counter revolutionaries even into the ANC’s most precious and historic spaces like Fort Hare, could be the beginning of a political windfall for these neo-liberal forces if we are not careful. We must therefore close ranks in defence of the ANC and the revolution with the understanding that first and foremost as cadres, we should be imbued with great feelings of love and responsibility to our people and our country. Bro Mike would have demanded nothing less of us!

Mzukisi Makatse and Mbasa Metuse were leaders of SASCO and SRC at Fort Hare between the years 1997 and 2003. They were both expelled from the university for their student political activism in SASCO. They are also members of the ANC writing in their personal capacity.