It is with great sorrow that, we learned of the death of comrade Eric “Stalin” Mtshali, who died on Friday, October 12, after a long illness, at the age of 87.
Comrade Mtshali was leader of the struggle of South African workers against the racist regime of apartheid and also a leader of the working-class movement of Africa.
Mtshali entered the fight in 1951, where he was distinguished for his organizational and leadership skills in Durban’s dock workers where he worked himself on the docks. In 1957 he became a member of the Communist Party of South Africa, and in 1961 he was a founding member of the MK, the armed leg of the fight against apartheid.
His action against apartheid will lead him to exile. He will find shelter in Prague, Czechoslovakia, at the then headquarters of the World Federation of Trade Unions, where he will represent the South African class trade union movement. As a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions, he helped organize the trade union movement in Africa, with a prominent role in creating the first trade unions in Ethiopia and other countries. While in very difficult conditions he will be one of the founders of historical union SACTU which will be a key element of the struggle of the trade union movement of South Africa against apartheid.
Comrade Mtshali remained until the end of his life a faithful, modest militant of the working class, whose main feature was internationalism and devotion to the struggle to abolish exploitation of man by man. Even at an advanced age he continued to serve and support the action of the international class movement, and was awarded for his contribution by the WFTU.
At the 17th Congress of the WFTU in South Africa in 2016, in the country which he struggled to see free from racism and exploitation, he was the one who raised the flag of the WFTU giving the signal for the first World Trade Union Congress ever to be held in the African continent.
PAME, the class trade union movement of Greece, expresses its warm condolences to his family and comrades.
