When Joe Slovo died in 1995 his body was carried on an army gun carriage through Soweto in post-apartheid South Africa's first state funeral. Forty thousand people sat through the long tributes in Orlando Stadium, the ANC high-ups arriving in Nyala armoured cars. Impala jets - developed by sanctions-struck South Africa to fight the likes of Slovo - flew overhead in salute. Apart from this ceremonial flummery there was much genuine grieving, for in the last five years of his life Slovo had won an enormous army of admirers. In many ways he was an even more important figure than Mandela in South Africa's transition. He was the man who made the key constitutional deals, who set the election date and who effectively removed socialism from the ANC's agenda, thus making possible the symbiosis between white capitalism and the rising black middle class which is the central reality of the ANC's 'revolution'. It was an ironic achievement for a Communist.

LRB 21 March 1996 | PDF Download