Zinzile MavusoThe Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, along with many South Africans, mourns the loss of ANC struggle veteran, Isithwalandwe Seaparankoe John Nkadimeng, aged 94. The Foundation would like to express its sincere condolences to the family, friends and comrades of the late Comrade John Nkadimeng.
John Nkadimeng was born in 1925 in Sekhukhuniland in Limpopo. Upon completion of his primary school education, he moved to Johannesburg to work first as a domestic worker and later as a factory worker. He joined the African Tobacco Workers’ Union, becoming a shop steward in 1949. He was subsequently fired after a strike. He later became General Secretary of the non-racial South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). As the leader of SACTU, Nkadimeng worked tirelessly for the ideal of worker unity within a single national federation of workers. He ensured that SACTU combined political and economic struggles and fully supported the campaign for the Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter.
Nkadimeng joined the ANC in 1950. During the Defiance Campaign of 1952, he was arrested and detained. He was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in December 1955 at its Conference held in Bloemfontein. Comrade Nkadimeng was one of the 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance charged with treason in the 1956. The charges were dropped, and he was released.
On 24 June 1963, Nkadimeng was detained as a suspected saboteur and held in detention at the Fordsburg police station. Sabotage charges against Nkadimeng were later dropped but he was charged with furthering the aims of an unlawful organisation. He was convicted in May 1964, served his sentence at a prison in Orange Free State, and was released in 1966. Whilst in detention in Fordsburg in 1963, Nkadimeng was issued with a banning order, which remained in effect when he came out of prison. He was restricted to the area of Orlando West, Johannesburg. He remained under banning orders until he fled the country in July 1976, a month after the Soweto students’ uprising.
Comrade Nkadimeng went into exile in Swaziland where he continued to work for the ANC. He later moved to Mozambique where he served as Chairman of the ANC’s Regional Political Committee. From exile he was instrumental in the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
When the South African Communist Party was unbanned in 1990, and relaunched in South Africa as a legal body, it was publicly announced that Nkadimeng was a member of its Central Committee. In 1995, John Nkadimeng was appointed as South Africa’s Ambassador to the People’s Republic of Cuba.
John Nkadimeng will always be remembered for his selfless and lifelong contribution to the struggle for worker rights and liberation in South Africa.
Hamba Kahle Comrade John Nkadimeng.
Ahmed Kathrada Foundation
7 August 2020
