Moses Kotane

Moses Mauane Kotane ( born August 9, 1905 in Tamposstad, Transvaal, † May 19, 1978 in Moscow) was a South African politician. He belonged to the South African Communist Party ( SACP ) and the African National Congress ( ANC).

Life

Kotane was born as a child of Batswana in the area of ​​today's North West Province. He attended only a few years a school, but acquired a lot of knowledge self-taught. Reading and writing he learned from Ray Ginsberg, mother of Albie Sachs Later she became his secretary. After several years as a union member, he joined the ANC in 1928 and 1929 in the then Communist Party of South Africa ( CPSA later SACP ) a. He quickly rose in the Politburo of the CPSA and in 1931 full-time official. He was translator of the party newspaper Umsebenzi ( " The Worker "). He studied for a year Marxism at the Moscow International Lenin School in 1933 and returned to South Africa. He argued for the Africanization of the party and was removed in 1935 from the Politburo. From 1939 until his death he was general secretary of the CPSA, which was banned in 1950 and then in the underground existed as South African Communist Party. In 1946 he was elected to the board ( National Executive Committee, NEC ) of the ANC. In 1952 he took part in the Defiance Campaign and was arrested. In December of the same year he was convicted along with Nelson Mandela and others to a nine-month suspended sentence. In 1955 he took part in the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung Indonesian as Representatives of the SACP. 1956 to December 1958, he was among the 156 accused in the Treason Trial, which ended with the acquittal of all defendants.

1963 Kotane went into exile in Tanzania, where he continued to work as Secretary-General. At the same time he was treasurer from 1963 to 1973 for the ANC until he was replaced by Thomas Nkobi.

In 1968 he suffered a stroke and was taken to Moscow, where he died in 1978. He was buried in Moscow. His successor as SACP general secretary was Moses Mabhida.

Honors

• Kotane 1975 was awarded the Isitwalandwe, the highest award presented by the ANC.
• A municipality in the district Bojanala Platinum called Moses Kotane.
• The Moses Kotane Institute in Durban is subject to the KwaZulu -Natal Department of Economic Development and Tourism and to promote the STEM subjects.