Joe Slovo (1926 - 1995) Revolutionary and first Minister of Housing; resident in Urania Street
Harrow Road is soon to be renamed Joe Slovo Drive – because of this revolutionary’s strong ties with the area.
Slovo, anti-apartheid firebrand and member of the African National Congress, arrived as an eight-year-old immigrant from Lithuania and settled with his parents in Yeoville.
His father was a truck driver in Johannesburg, and young Joe attended the Jewish Government School from 1935 to 1937, Observatory Junior (1937 to 1939), Yeoville Boys' (1939 to 1940) and finally Observatory Junior High School, where he was influenced by militant Irish teacher, John O'Meara.
Slovo left school after Standard 6 in 1941 due to poverty. He worked as a dispatch clerk for a chemist while studying law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he graduated with BA and LLB degrees. As a shopsteward, he was involved in organising a strike. He joined the SACP in 1942.
He lived in Urania Street, Observatory, until he passed away of leukaemia on the 6 January 1995. At the time of his death Slovo was the Minister of Housing in the government of national unity. He was also national chairperson of the SACP and a member of the national executive committee of the African National Congress.
Did you know?
Helena Dolny and Nelson Mandela.
At the time of his death, Slovo was married to agricultural economist Helena Dolny and lived in Urania Village. Urban legend has it that there was an assassination attempt from the observatory on Slovo’s life. Here are the facts: Soon after Slovo’s death, in May 1997, Dolny became Managing Director of the Land Bank. Two years later she was forced to leave after Bonile Jack, then chairman of the bank's board of directors, accused her of mismanagement, racism, nepotism and irregularly increasing her own salary. As part of an intimidation campaign at that time, Helena claimed a bullet was shot through the skylight at her home in Urania street one night. Where the shot was fired from and who shot at the house were never discovered. Dolny is currently Head of Coaching at Standard Bank SA.
In 1949 he married Ruth First, the daughter of SACP treasurer Julius
First. She was killed by a parcel bomb, sent by
the apartheid regime to her office in Maputo, Mozambique in 1982.
In January 1986, a British court awarded Slovo substantial damages against a South African newspaper group over a report in The Star that he had orchestrated the murder of his wife.
Slovo and First had three daughters - Shawn, Gillian and Robyn. Shawn's account of her childhood has been turned into a successful Hollywood movie A World Apart. Her sister Gillian’s novel about the TRC, Red Dust, was also turned into a movie. Shawn and Robyn are currently producing Hot Stuff, a movie based on Patrick Thibedi's life. Shawn was introduced to Patrick by her father, who was Patrick's commander in Umkhonto we Sizwe. The movie is scheduled for world-wide release in 2006.
Slovo contributed to the drafting of the Freedom Charter, but was unable to attend the Congress of the People in Kliptown because of his restriction order. He watched the proceedings through binoculars from a nearby rooftop.
When Joe Slovo was held at Johannesburg's Old Fort prison, now part of Constitution Hill, warders queued to seek legal advice from him in his "Chambers". In the prison setting this was the toilet - the only private place for white males. Black males had no such privileges - their toilets were located in the middle of their cells.
Despite the propaganda about "the KGB general", Joe Slovo was not fluent in Russian or Lithuanian. He spoke one language: English.
Always portrayed as an arch-Stalinist by the former South African government, Slovo surprised his critics with his "Has Socialism Failed?" pamphlet in 1989, acknowledging the weaknesses of socialism and excesses of Stalinism.
Slovo loved classical music, particularly the work of Mahler, and his favourite book was Gogol's Dead Souls.
He wrote numerous articles for the African Communist, of which he was former editor, as well as countless pamphlets. He also contributed to several books such as No Middle Road.
By July 1995, the failure of the national housing policy was evident, as Minister Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyale labelled the programme she had inherited from her predecessor 'toilets-in-the-veld' and as rates payments in many Gauteng townships fell to below 5% (Bond and Ruiters, 1996).
Slovo's career in brief:
Ruth First
Both First and Slovo were listed as communists under the Suppression of Communism Act of 1954 and could not be quoted or attend public gatherings in South Africa.
Slovo was a founder member of the Congress of Democrats. He represented COD on the national consultative committee of the Congress Alliance which drew up the Freedom Charter.
He was arrested and detained for two months during theTreason Trial of 1956. Charges against him were dropped in 1958. He was later arrested for six months during the State of Emergency declared after Sharpeville in 1960.
In 1961, Slovo emerged as one of the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
In 1963 he went into exile on instructions from the SACP and ANC. He spent his exile years in the UK, Angola, Mozambique and Zambia.
In 1966 he did his LLM at the London School of Economics.
Slovo was based in Mozambique until 1984, when he was elected general secretary of the SACP. At this point he was also MK's chief of staff and a member of the NEC's working committee.
Slovo was commander of MK and commanded the Special Operations Unit in the 1980s, which amongst other things bombed the SADF headquarters in Pretoria and masterminded attacks on Sasol. It was for all this that he was declared by the apartheid regime its enemy number one, whilst the liberation movement honoured him with Isithwalandwe - the highest honour given by the ANC.
Slovo returned to South Africa in 1990 to participate in the early "talks about talks" between the government and the ANC. He was living in Yeoville, the run-down Johannesburg suburb, in the general neighbourhood where, as a young émigré from Lithuania, decades earlier he had settled with his father.
Gillian Slovo, one of Joe's 3 daughters
Following a short period of ill health, he said he would not stand again as SACP general secretary. At the party's congress in South Africa in December 1991 Slovo was elected SACP chairperson; the late Chris Hani was elected general secretary.
After the 1994 elections Slovo was elected to the cabinet where he served as Minister of Housing until his death in 1995.
Famous Quotes
'The real question is not whether a system works, but for whom it works.'
‘A house is not a home without a tree.’
"A trade union is the prime mass organisation of the working class.'
'In years to come we need to be able to look around us and say that housing has indeed become the physical expression of a country which is healing itself.'
“The late Joe Slovo, the then Secretary-General of the Communist Party, said that I would become nothing but a smell from the dustbin of history. He also stated two down, one to go to signify that after the fall of Ciskei and Bophuthatswana, KwaZulu would also fall under the control of the ANC and the TEC. Obviously, neither prediction was even remotely accurate.” - Mangosuthu Buthelezi
Sources: www.doj.gov.za/trc; www.anc.org.za; www.sacp.org.za; Daily Dispatch; www.twosisters.org.za; LitNet; Mail & Guardian; www.dplg.gov.za; Who's Who in South African Politics IV: Pg 291; South African History Online
