Speech of the Honourable Executive Mayor of Mogale City Local Municipality, Cllr Koketso Calvin Seerane at the funeral service of the late Chief Whip of the Mogale City Local Municipality, Cllr Lashman Baloyi held at the Kagiso Community Hall on the 8th April 2009.

Programme Director;
Speaker of the Mogale City Local Municipality, Cllr Noluthando Mangole;
Members of the Mayoral Committee;
Senior Managers of the Mogale City Local Municipality;
Leaders of the ANC Alliance in the West Rand and Provincially;
Honourable councilors and managers of various municipalities and government departments;
Leaders of other political parties;
Leaders of the non-governmental and business sector;
Members of the community and those who travelled from various places to join us during this solemn occasion.

We gather here today to pay our last respects to a gallant freedom fighter, an embodiment of resistance and a humble social giant. In the many recollections we will have about our beloved comrade and leader, we shall always declare like the Americans that, “DEATH IS A CREEP!”

Death has robbed us of a father, a brother, a community leader, a pathfinder and a selfless cadre of the democratic movement. We in the African National Congress know this too well. In the prime of his life and when the world had bestowed recognition on the nobility of the cause of our people, death took away our Chief Albert Luthuli.

In the throes of robust and hard bargaining for a democratic future for our beloved land and as freedom was no longer an uncertainty for us, death took away our Chris Hani. DEATH IS A CREEP!

Programme Director we are inclined to agree with the injunction of a popular Christian hymn that “Re bafiti mo lefatsheng lena.” The leadership of our municipality knows what the injunction means enough to advise the Baloyi family that their son had understood it too and had to resign to death as a matter of course and not as a matter of fate. The ANC had taught him to live a life of difference and not to be different. It is in this deep understanding that the life we lay to rest today is celebrated for the difference it made than for the difference it was.

As Felix Adler says: “A hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.” We do not bestow sainthood on our fallen heroes; we however know who our heroes are. It is also said that heroes can only be found in heroic places. Our country was born of the heroism of countless numbers of those who paid the high price for our freedom.

Our city will certainly recognize the gap in the political engagement that defined Cde Lashman as it is heralded by his departure. Here lies one of the rare political players who knew the basics of the national democratic revolution not to claim to understand something when he did not. Cde Lashman did not exaggerate his understanding to advance himself higher up within our movement. What he stood for was not elegance and sophistication of language but simply the effectiveness of our programme. For this reason, we as deployees of the ANC in government were always supportive of the deployment of Cde Lashman to any of the positions the movement had sent him. DEATH IS A CREEP!

Mogale City gets its inspiration from the valiant exploits and bravery of Chief Mogale Wa Mogale who fought for the birthright of his people. It is comrades of the stature of Cde Lashman who will stand as monuments to our people as Chief Mogale. When the repressive regime drove many to pessimism, despair and defeat, it was comrades like Cde Lashman who stood up for the people and became the shield that protects their desire for freedom. Even when the system threw many underground, and so many more to a life notoriously known as UKUPHAKAMA, it was the guiding influence of Cde Lashman and others who fought for the unity of the oppressed thus bringing into being a highly lethal mass movement capable of bringing the Apartheid regime to negotiating itself out of existence. Yes, death is a creep.

Like the devoted Walter Sisulu, Cde Lashman gave more that the minimum of any task he was given so much that many would be ashamed to complain when assigned. He served our city since transitional local authorities and as a member of two mayoral committees because of the confidence that our leaders had in him. In Cde Lashman we had a cadre who grasped quickly the changes in our revolutionary circumstances, and rose to the challenges and obligations of any new climate. It is no accident that he left us a few months after he had become the Chief Whip of our municipality.

We can make proud and bold claims today that Cde Lashman passionately engaged the housing problem of the people of Mogale City that developments like Chief Mogale near Azaadville will mark the legacy he left for generations to come. We can make these claims because we saw him bring to bear his organizing skills gained from the labour movement and his engaging persistence to ensure that the project is delivered in time. We wonder how many can stand here today and declare that when they fall people will say the same about their own legacy. We celebrate Lashman’s life for the difference it made than for the difference it was.