Adolphus Boy “JD” Mvemve

Adolphus Boy “JD” Mvemve

On 12 February 1974, Adolphus Boy Mvemve (aka “John Dube”) was killed by a bomb in a parcel addressed to the offices of the African National Congress (ANC) at the Liberation Centre in Libala, Lusaka, where he worked as Deputy Chief Representative. The bomb also injured ANC cadre Max Sisulu, who was in the office at the same time and another MK cadre, Roy Campbell, who suffered serious facial and hand injuries.

When the explosion occurred, it ripped a hole in the roof, shattering windows, and blowing out the doors of other offices in the Liberation Centre, where about seven organisations including the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), Revolutionary Committee of Mozambique (COREMO), Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), also had their Lusaka headquarters.

Adolphus Boy Mvemve, fondly known as “Comrade JD”, exhibited inexhaustible energy during the political campaigns as a leading member of the ANC Branch in Alexander Township, wherein he threw his weight to the successes of the underground structures after the banning of the people’s movement. He was always prepared to undertake dangerous assignments on behalf of the movement in areas within the Johannesburg complex. Like many dedicated revolutionaries in the country during those difficult times, he believed that it was not enough merely to identify and understand the root causes of the plight of the people, but also to participate in executing practical decisions for revolutionary change in the country.

As a founder and leading member of the People’s Army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), Comrade JD participated in the 1967 – 1968 Wankie campaign in the then Rhodesia as a guerrilla fighter of the Luthuli Detachment. He was convinced that the armed seizure of political power was the only practical solution to the plight confronting the oppressed people of South Africa. Comrade JD was a dedicated patriot, a true son of his people, as well as a convinced internationalist. He was a revolutionary combatant against imperialist reaction – the common enemy of all oppressed people.

During the last assignment before his passing on, which was to represent the ANC at the commemoration meeting held to mark the 13th Anniversary of the commencement of the armed struggle of the people of Angola under the leadership of the MPLA, Comrade JD reminded the audience of the Unholy Alliance of the fascist regimes of South Africa, Portugal and Rhodesia. Comrade JD emphasised that the Unholy Alliance had plans to ensure the perpetual political domination and exploitation of millions of people in Southern Africa, while at the same time consolidating the region to be a springboard of neo-colonial penetration of the independent African countries by aggressive imperialism. He then issued a clarion call for the unity of all the revolutionary forces in the region as a necessary pre-condition for an early victory and destruction of the common enemy, the Unholy Alliance.

The high profile given to Comrade JD’s funeral, which took place in the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the presence of diplomats, representatives of other liberation movements, and the leading party of Zambia, United National Independence Party (UNIP), and the government, reflected widespread shock at the first assassination of this kind on Zambian soil.

The South African Communist Party (SACP) cautioned against considering the murders of Abram Onkgopotse Tiro in Botswana eleven day before and that of Comrade JD in isolation. The Party maintained that “The killing of comrade ‘JD’ had yet another aim – to sow seeds of disunity, mistrust, mutual suspicion, rivalry and antagonism among the national liberation movements in Southern Africa. This is why South Africa was very quick to blame the act on one of the national liberation movements. To us the culprit is obvious” (Mava Lobengula, “Letter to the Editor: A Freedom Fighter is Murdered”, The African Communist, No. 59, Fourth Quarter 1974).

“The untimely death of Comrade J.D.,” according to the ANC, “… robbed the entire revolutionary movement in South Africa of a dedicated, disciplined and courageous fighter whose whole life was completely dedicated to the cause of his people, and whose many-sided qualities as a revolutionary patriot were a source of militant inspiration to his numerous colleagues, inside and outside South Africa and to those in the fascist dungeons. … We must not just mourn over the death of Comrade J.D. We must rededicate ourselves as never before: never to rest until the final liquidation of the reactionary white state. Unity of all the democratic forces is the key” (Editorial, “Comrade Boy Mvemve [J.D.] Murdered”, Sechaba, Vol. 8 No. 5, May 1974).

ANC President OR Tambo linked the death of Dube to the recent killing by parcel bomb of exiled South African Students Organisation (SASO) leader, Abram Onkgopotse Tiro in Gaborone, as well as to the assassinations of Amilcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane. He also attributed this attack to the success of the southern African liberation movements as a whole and the desperation of the apartheid regime. According to OR Tambo, “They have killed ceaselessly in South African and in Namibia, they are killing in this country, but their sun is setting and they know it…We are not losing, there is not even a stalemate, otherwise the enemy would not react the way he does. We are succeeding and he knows it” (“J.D. Died Like a Soldier”, Sechaba, Vol. 8 No. 8/9, August/September 1974).

“It has taken the death of Adolphus Mvemve to lay fresh emphasis to the fact that, in our midst, as long as white minority rule, with its imperialist backing, exists, we are all in danger; and what this means is that our safety, our future, rests in the elimination of these systems. And this is a task, not merely of the liberation movements, not only of the African National Congress, not only of the African people in South Africa. The people of South Africa as a whole have a danger in their midst, and that danger is a danger in the midst of the peoples of Africa and world. The removal of that danger has become a matter of great urgency. We of the African National Congress take special note of this fact. J.D. has not died in vain. He has died like a soldier, fighting a human cause, a war against the enemies of man. May he rest in revolutionary peace” (Ibid.).

Sources:
Hugh Macmillan, “The Lusaka Years: The ANC in Exile in Zambia”.
Stephen Ellis, “External Mission: The ANC in Exile”.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”.
Editorial, “Comrade Boy Mvemve [J.D.] Murdered”, Sechaba, Vol. 8 No. 5, May 1974.
Oliver Tambo, “J.D. Died Like a Soldier”, Sechaba, Vol. 8 No. 8/9, August/September 1974.
Mava Lobengula, “Letter to the Editor: A Freedom Fighter is Murdered”, The African Communist, No. 59, Fourth Quarter 1974.

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!