태산 누운풀

맑스 무덤 인근의 'SELLO MOETI'라는 사람의 묘비명이다.

"적과 싸울 준비가 되어 있는 사람은 행복하다!"는 말을 자주 했던 사람이란다.

일단 ANC 홈페이지에 있는 그에관한 자료다.

SELLO MOETI (MICHAEL LEBESE)
1953-1988

Obituary in Sechaba, December 1988

Sello Moeti was born on December 1, 1953, in Waggendrif (Cullinan), about 45 km east of Pretoria, the seventh child in a family of nine children.

The family moved to Mamelodi in 1961. Sello began school at Morotele Lower Primary, moved to Mogale Higher Primary, and then to Mamelodi High School, where he obtained a first class pass in the Junior Certificate in 1974.

Even in Form One of high school, his resistance to the hated Bantu Education was evident. Sello loved debate, and engaged in intense discussions with family and friends. Highly perceptive and politicised from his early years, he had a strong awareness of oppression and degradation.

He was in one of the earliest groups to join the ANC following the victory of FRELIMO in Mozambique. A few months before the 1976 Soweto uprising, he left South Africa and went to Mozambique, where, through FRELIMO officials, he sought contact with the ANC. Talking to a friend about this experience, he said that he had been inspired by the victory of the Mozambican revolutionary war, and greatly influenced by the political programmes from Radio Mozambique which he used to monitor regularly with his close friends in Mamelodi.

He arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, while the Soweto uprising was still at its height.

Reflecting the impatience of that generation, Sello demanded that he, together with others, should quickly be given military training in order to go back and meet the challenge of the fascist apartheid regime. This group was undeniably motivated by the most militant of revolutionary spirits, but they also reflected the immaturity of their generation at that time. They had a limited perception of the problems then confronting the ANC. Anger against the Boers had to be reinforced by the analytical ability to situate the Soweto uprising in the context of the overall struggle, and not only the armed struggle.

Sensing this analytical deficiency in the Soweto generation, the ANC leadership organised political classes to be conducted for them. It was in those political classes that Sello distinguished himself in his grasp of the political problems in South Africa. His ability to make objective assessments increased, and his contributions in the class tended to be less emotional, and more calm and reasoned.

Here, Sello developed his own personality, and developed a partisanship to the ANC that reflected his depth of understanding of the problems that made it impossible for the armed struggle to grow at the rate he demanded. Observing his political qualities, the ANC leadership selected him to join a small group sent to the Soviet Union to study political propaganda. What had inspired Sello in Radio Mozambique was now to be expected from him when he came back from his training to broadcast on Radio Freedom.

The strategic thinking in the leadership at that time was that the ANC needed to develop cadres who would be responsible for the Radio Freedom stations all over southern Africa, since that phase of our struggle depended, almost exclusively, on the successful conduct of political education and propaganda among the oppressed people. Sello's group was the first-ever group after the Soweto uprising to leave Dar es Salaam to acquire training and skills, and also the first from the Soweto generation to train in skills of that kind.

Sello found a particular interest in political propaganda. Political training did not change, but only developed, his personality. He liked argument, but not for its own sake. Highly principled and incorruptible, he demanded from others what he demanded from himself. He judged people by their innermost qualities. When he detested people, it was for their lack of principle, sloppiness and inattentiveness to the problems of the people. It mattered little to him what position a person held in the ANC; as long as there was a point to challenge, he did it with the tenacity that did not augur well with those few who always expected praises in the assessment of their work. This characteristic was with him throughout the period of his work in the ANC.

In Luanda, he was made deputy head of the Radio Freedom unit, working closely with a group of comrades who subsequently became his close friends. Careful in selecting his friends, and also difficult to make friends with, Sello carved for himself a unique and at times controversial character. For those who were far from him, he was simply an arrogant young man, but for those who were happy enough to have his confidence and be close to him, he was a sensitive and highly cultured human person. He was forthright and straightforward almost to a fault. His hatred for corruption was not only directed against others, but was an important index of his own moral standing in the organisation.

If anybody thought that Sello would abandon these qualities over the years, they were proved wrong. Fortunately, the ANC was able to read in them the potential for an uncompromising young revolutionary, who was soon made head of the Radio Freedom unit in Dar es Salaam.

Dar es Salaam, however, was to be a place where Sello's health would seriously deteriorate, as he got repeated malaria attacks which inevitably contributed to the lowering of his general resistance and immunity to disease.

So frequent and devastatingly severe were these attacks that, when he arrived in London from Dar es Salaam, the doctors told him his white blood count was very low and that therefore his resistance to infection was also low.

Sello's health was never to be the same again; where others would normally take the full stress and strain of work, Sello's response became that of a nervously wrecked, and at times highly explosive, personality. And this ate up the very intellectual engine that nature had endowed with extraordinary reasoning powers, and a uniquely solid and forthright personality.

One of Sello's closest interests was the development of armed struggle in South Africa. His skills, however, took him to a battlefield of a different type, and required him to employ a different weapon in the same fight - his pen. He wrote skilfully, using the sharp language that derived partly from his political anger, but also partly from his own cultural background among the militant BaPedi people of King Sekhukhune, whose reputation at one time was to rout the Boer invaders so mercilessly that they fled to Pretoria.

Sello left unfinished work. He was working on a book on the struggle of the women of South Africa, having selected as his focus of study Lilian Ngoyi and Elizabeth Mafekeng. He also left the unfinished manuscript of a novel which he began in Dar es Salaam, but could not complete because, according to him, people would "expect a perfect work from a mind as critical as myself."

Towards the end of his life, he was studying the counter-revolutionary strategy of the Pretoria regime.

Sello strongly suspected that he might die, but faced this possibility with extraordinary courage. Those who went to see him in either Homerton Hospital or St. Mary's, intending to give him inspiration, came back themselves inspired by him. He died in the early hours of October 27, 1988, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Sello's mother was there during her son's last days, and was also present at the funeral, which was conducted in a fitting, political manner.

As Sello liked to say: Uyadela Wena Osulapho! (Happy are you, who are already grappling with the enemy!)

Lala Ngoxolo, ndoda Yama doda!