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Pan Macmillan South Africa - Gaongalelwe Tiro

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126 pages

English

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Parcel of Death recounts the little-told life story of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, the first South African freedom fighter the apartheid regime pursued beyond the country’s borders to assassinate with a parcel bomb.

On 29 April 1972, Tiro made one of the most consequential revolutionary addresses in South African history. Dubbed the Turfloop Testimony, Tiro’s anti-apartheid speech saw him and many of his fellow student activists expelled, igniting a series of strikes in tertiary institutions across the country. By the time he went into exile in Botswana, Tiro was president of the Southern African Student Movement (SASM), permanent organiser of the South African Student Organisation (SASO) and a leading Black Consciousness proponent, hailed by many as the ‘godfather’ of the June 1976 uprisings.

Parcel of Death uses extensive and exclusive interviews to highlight significant influences and periods in Tiro’s life, including the lessons learned from his rural upbringing in Dinokana, Zeerust, the time he spent working on a manganese mine, his role as a teacher and the impact of his faith in shaping his outlook. It is a compelling portrait of Tiro’s story and its lasting significance in South Africa’s history.

Sujets

Comparative Politics

Political

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Lettres et linguistique

Biography

Politics

Autobiography

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Publié par	Pan Macmillan South Africa
Date de parution	01 août 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781770106505
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0565€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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To Moleseng Anna Tiro

Gaongalelwe Tiro
Parcel of Death
The Biography of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro
PICADOR AFRICA

First published in 2019 by Picador Africa
an imprint of Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag x 19, Northlands
Johannesburg, 2116
www.panmacmillan.co.za
isbn 978-1-77010-649-9
e- isbn 978-1-77010-650-5
© 2019 Gaongalelwe Tiro
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recordin g or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Editing by Sean Fraser and Ester Levinrad
Proofreading by Wesley Thompson
Indexing by Christopher Merrett
Design and typesetting by Triple M Design
Cover design by publicide
Cover image courtesy of Gallo Images/ Sunday Times

Contents
Foreword by Mosibudi Mangena
Prologue
Chapter 1 Blown to smithereens
Chapter 2 Child of rivulets
Chapter 3 Nascent years
Chapter 4 Disrupted schooling
Chapter 5 Thrust into a political vortex
Chapter 6 Baptism of fire
Chapter 7 DNA of courage
Chapter 8 The Tiro Affair
Chapter 9 Religion and radical politics
Chapter 10 Inspiring young minds
Chapter 11 Black Consciousness roadshow
Chapter 12 Escalating the struggle
Chapter 13 Conspiracy to kill
Chapter 14 Remembering Tiro
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Select bibliography

Foreword
A biography of Onkgopotse Tiro is long overdue. It is rather surreal that a personage of Onkgopotse’s calibre, who was at once a catalyst and an active change agent in the South African struggle for freedom, would not have a book written on his life until 43 years after his brutal death. In Parcel of Death , Gaongalelwe Tiro pulls together various facets of Onkgopotse’s short but eventful life. Even those of us who worked with Onkgopotse and think we knew him still have a lot to learn through this book.
The Tiro Affair, which was triggered by Onkgopotse’s now famous valedictory speech at the 1972 graduation ceremony at the University of the North (Turfloop), now the University of Limpopo, threw black universities throughout the country into turmoil. Many students terminated their studies, went into serious political activism and got arrested, while some went into exile. Even students at a few so-called white universities, such as the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town, found themselves involved in protests and clashes with the police. In this sense, the Tiro Affair gave impetus to the struggle for freedom, while at the same time completely changing the life trajectory for many young people. Some of those people who played sterling roles in the resistance against oppression continue to engage prominently in the political life of contemporary South Africa.
I first met Onkgopotse at the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) General Student Council in Hammanskraal in 1972. The ructions at university campuses, in which he had played such a critical role, were still simmering. He was rather calm and measured in his demeanour and interventions for someone who was at the centre of such a big storm. He was not one to make bombastic, reckless and demagogic statements. Even when some students stood up to propose that SASO consider violent forms of struggle, he remained restrained. That was not because he did not believe in armed struggle, but like many of us in that Council, he did not deem it appropriate to articulate such a position in an open forum like that.
We met several times thereafter in the SASO offices in Braamfontein in the first half of 1973. At the time, Onkgopotse was working with Harry Nengwekhulu and I was the national organiser of the Black People’s Convention (BPC). The three of us had agreed, as organisers, to share notes from time to time. Tiro’s discipline and uprightness came through constantly, leading some of us to consider him too austere for his age.
There is no doubt that his upbringing and religious affiliation played a substantial role in his highly disciplined behaviour. Eric Molobi, a fellow Black Consciousness adherent and Seventh-Day Adventist Church member, who found me on Robben Island in 1976, was also highly disciplined and steadfast in his beliefs.
It was Eric Molobi who gave me the low-down on Onkgopotse’s murder when he arrived on Robben Island. He described the room in which Onkgopotse was murdered as a horror scene and how, at the mortuary, he could only recognise his forehead: the rest of his face blown away, along with his hands and front.
In Parcel of Death, Gaongalelwe provides us with a powerful lens through which we may understand Onkgopotse. His childhood was difficult. His mother, Moleseng Tiro, and the extended family who brought him up, were people of limited means. They struggled to put him and his four siblings through school. Onkgopotse had his schooling halted in one instance due to financial difficulties. As a youth, he even had to work at a mine to earn some money for the family – an experience of hardship, pain, exploitation and racism that went a long towards shaping his future political activism.
The resistance against the imposition of passes on women by the Bahurutshe ba Moiloa in 1957 disrupted schooling in the area. Chief Abram Pogiso ‘Ramotshere’ Moiloa supported the struggle against the passes and was exiled to Ventersdorp, from where he subsequently fled to Botswana. He continued his opposition to oppression in exile, leading to the recruitment of some young people to be trained abroad as freedom fighters. This must have made a huge impression on the young Onkgopotse. The disruption of education by the imperatives of the struggle for freedom did not start at Turfloop as far as Onkgopotse is concerned. His Bahurutshe community had long exposed him to this kind of sacrifice.
For many decades, freedom fighters leaving the country for Botswana or coming back into the country were harboured, fed and guided by the communities around Onkgopotse’s Dinokana. They understood the movements and routine of the security forces, and thus knew how to sneak around them. It is this community, which always cocked a snook at the oppression and injustice, that brought Onkgopotse up. He and his family personally accommodated freedom fighters in their home and helped them to skip the country.
Onkgopotse’s emergence from the patriotic environment created by the Bahurutshe might explain, at least in part, his taking to Black Consciousness like a duck takes to water. Black Consciousness provided the much-needed framework for the articulation of the problem of settler-colonialism and the required response by its victims. He became one of the most ardent and energetic proponents of the philosophy, spreading it everywhere he went. He did that in his village, at the University of the North, at Morris Isaacson where he taught after his expulsion from Turfloop and in the southern African region, particularly after his election as president of the Southern African Students’ Movement (SASM).
His political activism within the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, challenging the church’s racial discrimination against its black congregants, was most remarkable. His mobilisation of especially young members in combination with the direct attack of racial practices within the church changed the fortunes of its black members for good.
Tiro did not only espouse African continental solidarity as he did in his graduation speech at the University of Limpopo, but he demonstrated his commitment to it through his excellent work in the SASM. He fervently believed that the fate of the African continent lay in the collective hands of Africans working together.
Throughout the book, Onkgopotse comes across as a man of principle, action, courage and conviction. He not only urged his comrades to be prepared to make huge sacrifices for the cause, but he led by example. He said what needed to be said at Turfloop, regardless of the consequences for himself. He paid the price for his teaching of relevant history at Morris Isaacson High School and his spreading of Black Consciousness among students in Soweto, having to leave his family and country when his activism put the forces of the regime on his tail as they tried to put him under a banning order. Finally, the regime caught up with him and murdered him with a parcel bomb. His assertion: ‘It is better to die for an idea that would live than live for an idea that would die,’ had an echo in his own fate. In addition to his eloquence, these are probably the attributes that earned him so much respect and the following of so many people.
When the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo), started working towards bringing his remains back to South Africa for reburial on 22 March 1998, it found ready collaborators who supported that effort. Some people contributed cash, an undertaker offered to bring his remains from Botswana to Dinokana free of charge and another donated a tombstone. That talked to the respect Onkgopotse commanded among many in South Africa.
The narrative in Parcel of Death leads the reader to realise that the stories of Onkgopotse Tiro, Tsietsi Mashinini, the Soweto uprisings of June 1976, the murder of Steve Biko and the banning of the Black Consciousness organisations in 1977 are part of an integrated continuum.
Considering Onkgopotse’s immense contribution to the struggle for freedom, it is appropriate that his death is observed every year by Azapo and the University of the North, which runs the annual Onkgopotse Tiro Memorial Lecture in