Enver Motala joins SACHED and augments Lacom. Interview December 2023 

Our job was to make them think about it and just argue amongst themselves. And so when Alec, for instance, came to me in the mid 80s, after COSATU was formed, and said we now have to do seminars on the Freedom Charter.  I said, absolutely, no problem I will do it.  And as he knew and we knew that a lot of us were not ANC. And so what we did, what I did in particular was I said, okay, I’ll present a series of charters, all the charters.  We took the Unity Movement Charter, we took the AZAPO Charter, we took the Freedom Charter and that’s what gave rise to our work on the charters, on the workers charter in England in the early 19th century and the Chartist Movement and the booklets we wrote on that. 

Enver

I had to come back from Warwick and had no definite plans for the future. I just wanted to get out of law basically.  And I would come back and decide. 

John contacted me when I was overseas.  Actually, he came there, and asked: what are you going to do? And I said I’m not going back to law. And I said, I want to work in the labour movement, close to it, or in it. And he met me at the airport when I landed and he said, look, you’ve got to start tomorrow, next week at the latest. . He said, you can do what you like, as long as you run the office.  It was because there were some other complications about the office.    

Louise 

I’m getting irritated with all the interviews so far. They’re all talking about national programmes. And they’re all talking about Joburg. And everybody’s forgotten the centres. People are not talking about the centres. So talk about the centre.  

Enver 

I joined Durban Centre  and all it had there I think was the UNISA support programme. There wasn’t even Turret. yet  There was no UpBeat yet. When did UpBeat start? I don’t think there was UpBeat.  

Louise 

Eighties, but it might have, but it took a while to get distributed everywhere. 

Enver 

Precisely.  So it was essentially a UNISA program I think, Turret maybe.  And the staff, there were not many people. I may be wrong because I’ve never really studied what happened before I came, but I do know that some of the staff were, as it later turned out, to be close to ANC/MK. And that’s the reason why my predecessor  left the country within a few days of the murder of Griffith Mxenge.  She had to leave quickly.  It became pretty clear that there was also a need for an alternative wider educational programme.  

Louise 

Let me just say one thing which was quite interesting because Lindy said something very interesting about the change between David and Clive and then John and this will explain why your centre was like that. I mean they were very This is what you do, This is how you do it and there will be no deviations And she said, when John came in, there’s this freedom just, you had space.  

Enver 

Absolutely.  

Louise 

And that’s what you walked into.  Otherwise, up until then, it was, okay, this is the UNISA program, this is how you do it, this is what you do, this is a Turret programme, and that’s how you do it. 

Enver 

Yeah. Okay. So like the people who were working in the centre, all could see a space. So they could come in as MK, carry on doing their stuff and other stuff underneath that, I don’t know how much of that David and Clive knew.  

Louise 

That happened a lot in Grahamstown too. And in Pietermaritzburg. I think in most centres. 

Enver 

So it was possible for me to continue some of the work that I had been doing in the emerging labour movement.  And this then became an absolutely full time occupation for me, even on a seven day a week basis. 

As we all had to do that kind of thing. And we did a whole range of things besides the organized seminars and workshops and so on and so forth. but I’ll come to that a little later. This stage is also somehow when I got to Joburg, I saw the other programmes like Turret and later the Upbeat. 

And so to begin with, we started, I started recruiting new people into the office.  

Louise 

And you had the space and the money to do it.  

Enver 

Yes. And John was happy to support all of that. And we just started recruiting. And ultimately, I started setting up LACOM branches.  

And that’s how Pietermaritzburg started also after a while though.I was approached by John who knew Ishana. She happened to be his cousin’s daughter. And he mentioned her to me, and I was keen that we should think about something in Pietermaritzburg, so I went down to see her, and I met her either alone or with  Lyov Hassim it was pretty obvious that they they had strong links, or they were developing links with the  Food and Allied Workers Union because Ishana knew Jay Naidoo rather well.  Big Jay, she knew him well, and he was working in Pietermaritzburg at the time,  and so the idea of setting up a centre and the offices below  Lyov’s father’s legal office.  And I also knew him – the father –  well, although we had a break  with each other  because of my break with Unity Movement. But he had just come out of Robben Island and I felt I, I had to visit him anyway.  So that space was downstairs. We set up the second office in Natal there to begin with before it moved to a house in Longmarket street or  else and very soon we two centres of LACOM in Natal.  

And I later realized when, we had a big staff, Irna was there too, and Charles Ngema and Cyril Khawula and Europa Ncusane and Cyril Xaba and others too that we could open a branch in Pinetown. In fact by the time we opened the Pinetown office there was already a sizable  staff in Durban of Paul Tichmann, Shahid Vawda, Rohan Persad, Libbie Dreyer and Gareth Coleman, Jace Naidoo and Gladys Ryan and Debbie Bonnin. Paul and Shahid were one of the early people who joined me.  Shahid’s father I knew from Unity Movement and I knew him and the family well and Shahid came to see me when he came back with the Masters from Belfast d in anthropology . They were all interested in left wing workers politics and so on. 

And later – towards the end of the 80s I think we were joined by Oupa Lehulere and Maria van Driel. And Pietermaritzburg also had a sizable staff which incidentally included Adam Habib, now VC of SOAS. 

In DUSSPRO, there was first Khosi Mpanza and later Samiera Amod and in UPBEAT Fikile Mazibuko and later Naseem Omarjee. In the library were John Francis and Mbali, whose surname I have forgotten,   After Sibongile Khubeka left after her house was burnt down in the war with Inkatha and the death threats she got,  Vaneetha Moodley was key to our administration and finance supported by Felani Ncube. 

Sheila Tyeku (previously Jolobe), Chrystal Rosenberg and Gill Browne, Obed Xulo and later Max Singh. JUDY Malqueeny, Shea Dayaljee and others too but I cant remember exactly where they and some others who I may have missed were. 

Louise 

I’m just interested now, because you started something from completely nothing. 

So we never did any plans, or did you do plans? Did you do job descriptions?  

Enver 

Exactly. No, nothing was fully worked out though we knew what was important to begin with..  

Louise 

Okay. I just think, how did John manage to raise funds against that? . 

Enver 

I just said to him, John, I need money for this part of the work.  And then we had the most fantastic library. On workers’ rights and workers history and so on. Thousands of volumes. And at one stage I think he gave me like 50, 000 rands or something. A huge amount of money to support the library.   

Then we decided we’d set up a branch in Pinetown.  

But before that we switched our employment policy to say that whereas previously it was young radical academics coming out of university with a strong left inclination, now we will employ workers who came from union structures and had lost their jobs. Charles Ngema had been in the Chemical Union, I think, and Cyril Khawula and Cyril Xaba who joined Paul Tichman and the others.  

Then East London set up a LACOM and I was responsible for helping setting up a branch in Bloemfontein, through the contacts with Cape Town. It’s a very small branch.  

Louise 

That was with Ivan Abrahams.  

Enver 

Yeah, but Ivan was not LACOM. We employed somebody who’s no longer with us to set up the LACOM branch. He became regional head of COSATU I think.  

Louise 

Okay, so you taught, I just want to ask you this.  So you obviously taught skills, like minutes and this  and that and the other things, but did you do a lot of political education? 

Enver 

No, very little of the former.  Very little. All we did is, we produced booklets and we did some of it, no question about it. There were other people besides me who did some of that, but we very soon, because now there are these big national campaigns being mounted by every union, by the federation, FOSATU, later COSATU, they were hugely political and so essentially, for the best part of my work in those years, I was doing stuff in history And political economy  

Louise 

Oh, okay. Political economy.  Okay. On political ideologies.  

Break. Interview 2   

 

Enver 

So the real basis of our work was defined by what was going on in the labour movement, essentially.  And there, there were a whole range of organizational issues which they confronted.  and political issues, wider political issues.  

 

Louise 

So in a sense it was a reactive approach? 

 

Enver 

In a way it was an interpretive approach. I won’t call it reactive. It was because it’s not as though they told us exactly but the content of what we drew on were their resolutions. We sometimes participated in their discussions. 

Some of us were occasionally invited to participate in discussion at a policy level.  And so a lot of it was our interpretation of what is to be done and what kinds of seminars had to be organized.  There were seven day seminars, two day seminars, there were all day seminars, there was and especially I remember having to do a lot of what is called Siya lalalah!. We are sleeping here starting on a Friday evening and ending off before football on Sunday,  especially on issues like the Russian Revolution.   

 

Louise 

And how many people would you have?  

 

Enver 

Oh, on some occasion, there were 3/400.  These were not very pedagogically good.  

 

Louise 

No, but how the heck did you feed them and keep them? 

 

Enver 

Oh, sure. No, they did all of the logistical and organizing.  

 

In my case, I just had to be present there for that period, sometimes very difficult because we just went on from day to night to day to night with some breaks and this was the rhythm of things. Really it was daily. And then you get back to the office and start preparing materials and reading packs and etc. I always also took a little box of books, especially when there was a long three day, seven day seminar, and I would take some reading material, inevitably, working class struggles and so on and so forth. And people could borrow, take books from there and read them if they were in that period. And I must tell you, we never lost any books like that.  

 

At the end, I remember from my own collection of books, of novels basically, I gave toboth the Durban Workers Library and the Joburg Workers Library, I would say, collectively about 50 boxes of books.  Because I had a very significant, big collection.  I don’t have any now of novels and all of that. Some of the classics, but we did that so workers were reading.  

 

But as I said, the main point about this, the big issue which really forced us to think about the nature of the education programme was this, these resolutions on socialism and workers’ control.  

 

So I did a lot of seminars on those kinds of issues. And I didn’t just do them, by the way, in Durban, because from 85 onwards, I was doing them for COSATU. I did them all over the country.   

 

Louise  

You were head of a national programme of LACOM as well as the centre.  

 

Enver 

But as part of my own work, besides whatever role I had as coordinator and making sure that the work was done, which wasn’t difficult and  getting John to find the money for all this.  

 

Louise 

Do you remember where the money came from?  

 

 

Enver 

I never asked, but quite frankly, I didn’t care.  None of us did.  

 

I must say that simultaneously while doing all of this, setting up new branches, getting new people to come and, in Durban, we’re also beginning to expand , the place was burgeoning. And we had Turret.  Sheila was working for for Fatima Meer’s Phambili School. I met her somewhere, and I asked her whether she’d come and join us.  And she and Gill and Crystal and half a dozen others, at least a quarter dozen others came to form the Turret programme, and then Upbeat. 

 

At that time, from the early days, when I first joined, there was Fikile Mazibuko, who later became Vice Chancellor of Zululand University.  She did Upbeat very successfully.  They had a good model.  

 

Until Inkhatha thought this was subversive stuff. They had also burned down Sibongile Khubele’s house.  Before she left and went abroad and eventually became one of O. R. Tambo’s assistants or secretaries.   

 

So we were doing Upbeat, Turret and of course, you know I remember Samiera Amod working for Dusspro. That was the Unisa programme and there were a few others with her. So we had a sizable staff, a full time librarian. We must have had about 20 full time staff and then all the teachers. So we had a fairly expansive office and we moved twice as a result to get to bigger offices.  And the one office was at was in the building where below us was the Gandhi Library. In the centre of the city. And it was a good place to be because the train and bus stations and all were nearby.  

 

Especially for Turret and so on. We had a lot of rooms where we were doing classes.  And I also had some, on the side, some other classes going with young students.  Essentially on political economy, young students, including Ann Colvin and Errol Vawda, who were hardly  young students, and people like Naeem Jeenah,  Rajend Naidoo, Amina Goga, Rashad Cassim (who ironically is now a Deputy Reserve Bank Governor] and so on and so forth. Quite a few young people and one or two not so young people.  Who stuck with that political economy course for a whole year.  

 

We also, did some of those sort of things on the side, as it were.  But they were just Saturday afternoons, really.  

 

Louise 

These courses, they were not accredited and things like that? 

 

Enver 

No. , not ever.  

Louise 

And not even, did you give certificates of attendance?  

 

Enver 

 Nothing. We just, if they wanted to, they came, and if they didn’t want to, we didn’t bother. 

 

There was enough work, remember We had tons of work, Saturdays, Sundays, the whole two days. You never, ever  stopped. I began to go at some stage, Once a fortnight to Mphopomeni, where a thousand workers were fired by Sarmcol, the British multinational. And I started doing sessions there. And Charles Ngema was doing literacy there and I was doing other things there. And I went with Ravi Joshi who was asked by NUMSA to help with setting up the computer system and teach computer literacy. He was a maths lecturer at the time and we went together and he also helped me with the two little booklets I did at the time. One on human evolution and one on the solar system. 

 

 Louise 

These we need.  Yeah,  

 

Long discussion on location of resources 

 

Enver 

The reason for me was very simple. The reason was that we would never be subjected to the hardships. The purpose would be if we promoted a particular course of action, for instance, a militant fighting struggle within Inkhatha, for instance, which is real, or creating divisions amongst workers along the divide between those who were being seduced by the Chartists  and those who were regarded as independent of the Chartists. 

 

Our job was to make them think about it and just argue amongst themselves. And so when Alec, for instance, came to me in the mid 80s, after COSATU was formed, and said we now have to do seminars on the Freedom Charter.  I said, absolutely, no problem I will do it.  And as he knew and we knew that a lot of us were not ANC. And so what we did, what I did in particular was I said, okay, I’ll present a series of charters, all the charters.  We took the Unity Movement Charter, we took the AZAPO Charter, we took the Freedom Charter and that’s what gave rise to our work on the charters, on the workers charter in England in the early 19th century and the Chartist Movement and the booklets we wrote on that. 

 

It all grew out of the need to, and I must be honest with you, workers going to these seminars, listening in at these seminars and having their own debates.  Inevitably we heard very strong criticisms of the limitations of these charters, particularly the Freedom Charter, because it was not a socialist programme. It never was intended to be.  

 

But that’s very different from saying that COSATU members would politically mobilize against, the people who were driving the Freedom Charter. Because politically and socially and in their communities, these things meant breaking up the liberation movement and having those conflicts. 

 

Workers in general wanted to stay out of the fight between Azapo and ANC and so on and so forth. And, Jay said to me, small Jay, not big Jay.  He said, because I did manyf seminars for Saccawu, I know your view of the Charter, but it’s impossible to work it out by listening to the way in which you present these discussions.  I said, yes, because it’s not about my view.  It’s about workers, and as you saw, Jay, workers are extremely critical of the limitations of Charters anyway. I don’t have to tell them about my criticisms of it. 

 

Anyway, that’s not my role there. It’s to facilitate a discussion, and they work it out for themselves so that they can take it up the ladder for national decision making.   

 

Louise 

You didn’t think about methodology. That’s perfect adult education methodology.  

 

Enver 

We did it every day without knowing, but I must tell you though, our pedagogy was really limited. A lot of it was chalk and talk, it was seminars and then getting people to discuss. It wasn’t as deep as it could be.  As we now know. But look, there was a certain urgency in those days. There wasn’t the time to take one little document and subject it to translation.. 

 

N A lot of the work I did needed translation also. There was  Pauline Stanford, she was wonderful.  She was a graduate in IsiZulu and she was the NUMSA organizer in Howick Pauline, she was a wonderful person.   

 

Louise 

So she translated. She translated. Did she do it as you were talking or did she? 

 

Enver 

As I was talking. Into IsiZulu. She should be interviewed.  And you know who she is?  She’s the partner of Imran Valodia.  The Dean of the School of Management and Economic Sciences at WITS. And Imran himself worked in TURP with Jill Nicholson.  

 

Enver 

 I interviewed him for her, for the job they wanted to give him.  I was flying to Joburg and Jill said to me, Enver, there’s this chap  Imran Valodia.  Will you interview him for us?  And I interviewed him at the airport.  And I came back to Durban.  

 

. And I said, he’s really good. He’ll be very good for you guys. And he was, he turned out to be really good. And later, of course, today he’s very high up in, set up that Institute for Inequality Studies and so on and so forth. 

 

Louise 

See, the more you talk, the more there is stuff coming out.  It’s exhausting!