Belfast, June 18th 2004

Nimrod Sejake - an Irish cde remembers him

The comrades may have already received this news, however, I’ve just received a message that Comrade Nimrod Sejake passed away about a week ago.

Some of the comrades will remember that cde Nimrod was a worker leader in South Africa in the 1950s. He was a leading member of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (he was the secretary of the Iron Steel Workers) and of the ANC in Soweto in the 1950s.

He was treated very badly by the ANC in exile. In the 1980s he was featured on the front cover of an official history of SACTU, the ANC trade union. At the time the authors and the ANC presumed Nimrod was already dead. Far from it.

He joined the CWI and became prominent figure in the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC. The comrades in Dublin were particularly close to cde Nimrod.

Cdes throughout the country knew and meet and loved him. He traveled quite a few times to Letterkenny and stayed with the cdes. He was once stopped in West Belfast and was asked by the RUC where he was staying. The address he gave was “Billy’s place”.

After his return from exile he continued to struggle for socialist ideas and established socialist reading groups in his township, Evaton. He was a living inspiration to all the comrades he met.

Manus

Articles by or about Nimrod

The cwi is sad to announce the death of Nimrod Sejake, a life-long fighter against apartheid in South Africa, and a committed socialist. Nimrod died on 27 May 2004, aged 83 years. Forced into exile, Nimrod eventually arrived in Ireland in the 1980s. He became a supporter of the ‘Militant’, the forerunner of the Socialist Party (CWI affiliate), and joined the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC.
Read the rest of this note and the Irish Times obituary, 19/06/2004, here.
Several articles about trips by Nimrod to Derry and Belfast in 1985. Nimrod was later in a dispute with the Red Cross about his political struggles here.
Workers' Power and the crisis of leadership Writing in Inqaba ya Basebenzi, the journal of the Marxist Workers' Tendency of the African National Congress, No. 12 Nov. 1983 - Feb. 1984.
Militant, September 1988 - Nimrod Sejake Retreat from the Freedom Charter
Laurence Coates in, Offensiv, Swedish CWI paper, No. 385 (10th February 2000) - South Africa: Interview with Nimrod Sejake "The ANC has sold out!"
Examples of Nimrod's role in building support for Marxism in Ireland. A number of short reports found in the pages of our papers in the 1980's and 1990's which give some impression of the role Nimrod played in building support for Militant, the forerunners of the Socialist Party here.