Struggle icons Moses Kotane and JB Marks’ remains arrived yesterday and were given a hero’s welcome by President Jacob Zuma during a ceremony for the repatriation of their remains from Russia.
Presidents Jacob Zuma said their homecoming is a beginning of a new chapter.
“It enables us to celebrate their contribution, and to raise awareness amongst our people, especially the youth, of what these two great men did for this country,’ said Zuma.
Kotane was the secretary general of the SACP from 1939 until his death in 1978. He was selected to study at the Lenin School in Moscow.
Kotane, one of the first activists to be banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, suffered a stroke in 1968 and went for treatment in the then-Soviet Union, where he died in 1978.
Political activist and trade unionist John Beaver (JB) Marks served as president of the Transvaal Branch of the African National Congress and was elected chairman of the SA Communist Party in 1962.
In 1963 he was sent to the ANC external mission in Tanzania.
He became ill in 1971 and went to the then-Soviet Union. He died of a heart attack in Moscow the following year.
Both were buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Kotane will be reburied in Pella, North West, on March 14 , while Marks would be reburied in Ventersdorp on March 22.
