In only two years
of its life the Communist Party of Swaziland lost its founding National
Organiser, Comrade Simphiwe Mkhatshwa, popularly known among his comrades as Tinker. Comrade Tinker died on 12 October 2013 when the car he was travelling in
was involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle near Middelburg, in
Mpumalanga Province, South Africa.
Comrade Tinker was a committed cadre of the Party who had cut his teeth in the struggle for the freedom of the people of Swaziland especially in the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO). Thus his experience proved invaluable to the Party and had trusted him enough to be its National Organiser on its founding Conference on 9 April 2011, a position he executed with commitment and humility.
In 2013, mourning his death and celebrating his contribution to the
struggle, the Party recalled that Comrade Tinker,
“was a stalwart activist in the students' movement, in which he worked to
defend the rights and interests of students.” The Party went on to state that
he “was active in the communities of Moneni and KaKhoza [in Manzini], where he
struggled to advance housing rights and better living conditions…, took a
prominent role in mobilizing workers in strikes for better pay and conditions,
and was a dynamic organiser in the communities of rural Mafutseni [northeast of
Manzini city]”.
Indeed Comrade Tinker, as the
Communist Party of Swaziland said after his death, shared his life with the
poor and marginalised. Liciniso takes the opportunity to
remember the work of Comrade Tinker and calls upon all workers of Swaziland and
the world to intensify the struggle for freedom in Swaziland and for a
socialist world in his honour!
Liciniso
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