MEADOWLANDS, SOWETO. February 1st,
2003. On the Occasion of the Commemoration of the life of Onkgopotse Abraham
TIRO
I wish to
thank the Azanian People’s Organisation for bringing us together to celebrate
the life and death of Onkgopotse Tiro. I wish to thank AZAPO for the honour
bestowed on me to participate in this celebration and for giving me the
opportunity to bear witness to the life of one whom we once all admired, and
whose contribution to our freedom is not sufficiently appreciated. Of course, like
most of us, I cannot do justice to the memory of Onkgopotse; for the simple
reason that I did not know him sufficiently to do so. Nobody can claim to
totally know somebody.
Generally
speaking, people who really know others are members of one’s own family;
friends that one grows up with; schoolmates, church members and sometimes even
fellow workers. Another category is that of political comrades. In a sense my
relationship with Onkgopotse fell into the last category. I say in a sense,
because when I first met him it was during the course of my work as a
journalist at the now defunct Rand Daily Mail. Not as political activist.
Although I was one, even then.
I first met
Tiro when I was covering the upheavals at Turfloop University in 1972, which
had been sparked off by Onkgopotse’s now famous speech on the 29th
of April of that year. It was Tiro’s speech that sparked off the students’
revolt against the repressive system of apartheid, which he denounced in his
speech. The action, reaction and counter-action by the apartheid regime, the
students and the black community spread throughout the country and subsequently
led to the closure of universities, the expulsion of students, many of whose
careers were cut short and who had to face the wrath of the state and the
dismay of their parents, friends and society in general.
It is not
easy to appreciate today what courage it took in those days to stand up against
white domination and control, and to speak one’s mind. It was regarded as
insanity. It was dangerous and costly. Today we can speak freely. In those days
only mad people spoke the truth – and nobody listened, except informers.
Even
journalists were very reluctant to write about people and events that
challenged the status quo. It was quite acceptable, however, to cover the
Bantustan institutions and the Urban Bantu Councils. Nobody could dare mention
the ANC, or the PAC, both of which were banned during that period. The advent
of the BCM, through the formation SASO and later the BPC were not only a breath
of fresh air in the political landscape, it also meant real danger to the
proponents of this new outcry for freedom, which proclaimed loud and clear to
the Black people in this country that their destination was in their own hands.
It said
'‘Black Man You Are On Your Own’. Today, we are gender conscious, so we would
rather say: “Black People….You are on your own”! Or if we wish to stretch it: Black
Person etc.
I had the great fortune of having
met Steve Biko earlier in 1971, I think, after one Masindi Radali had told me
about him and a group of students at Natal University’s UNB (the Black Section
of the Medical School). They had told her about their ideas; about black
liberation; about black consciousness. Among them was Steve Biko and one
Mamphela Ramphela and Aubrey Mokoape and others.
I got to know these people too,
because at that time a group of us were going through a similar transition in
Johannesburg; in Alexandra Township. We were immersed in the ideas and writings
of Black leaders in United States of America; among them Stokely Carmichael,
Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Seal (who said “Seize The Time”), Eldridge
Cleaver – of Soul on Ice. That was our literature. And our music was of the
same genre. It was Coltrane, Monk, Nina Simone. She sang ‘To Be Young Gited and
Black’. We used to meet at No 67 Second Avenue, where I stayed. So when Masindi
told us about Bo-Steve and the others, it was music to our ears. Things moved
very quickly from then on.
I got to know the Sabelo Ntwasa’s
and the Justice Moloto’s and Bo-Debs Matshoba and Nomsisi Kraai. And of course,
u-Mtuli ka Shezi. And Barney and Strini; and so many others. Lovely people. In
the midst of all this I was one day assigned to interview one of the student
leaders from Turfloop. We had all heard of Tiro by then.
The arrangement were done through
one Harry Nengwekhulu, who was my main contact within the student movement. By
then Harry was the National Organiser of SASO. He introduced me to Onkgopotse
and I started reporting on some of the insights he gave me on the students’
movement and their campaigns and ideals. Now if ever there was an idealist it
was Onkgopotse Tiro. He was unshaken in his ideas. And he was disciplined. Not
many students in those days could be described as disciplined. He was. I would
say he was actually, conservative. I could not understand him easily. He was
like Shezi in so many ways. Both did not drink; nor did they smoke. Both stood
out for not being womanisers. They were somehow ‘Special’ and yet very warm and
magnetic. Shezi, who was affectionately called Nick, was the Tiro of Ngoya.
One day I had to interview Tiro
extensively on his involvement in the struggle. We used to call it the
Struggle. And there was also the System against which the struggle was waged.
And there were the Non-Whites and the ‘People’. I cannot remember exactly where
the interview with Tiro took place (perhaps it was here in Meadowlands or even
Moletsane). I have even forgotten a good part of what we talked about: the
actual events in Turfloop, what led to the ‘speech’ and the subsequent events
that unfolded around the country.
But I’ll never forget the essence of
what Tiro revealed to me. I discovered the power behind this young man who was
on fire for the liberation of his country. I discovered that he had worked on
the mines (in Mazista) during a break in his studies, I think before he went to
University. He despised the Bantustan leaders and he regretted that he had
believed in them at the beginning. He said they were misleading people; but he
also realised that they were being misled themselves. It was a case of the
blind leading the blind. He saw the role of the intelligentia as crucial in
opening up the people’s eyes.
I heard him speak with the greatest
reverence and respect for his mother. He told me that she was working as a
domestic servant in Emmarentia. Later he took me there and I met her for the
first time. She was tiny and reserved.
Yet full of dignity and caring.
It was during that interview that I
realised that Tiro was driven by a value system that he had absorbed from his
mother; from his family. And from their love for God. How that man was
passionate about his God. But he was not flounting and displaying his beliefs
as the Pharisees in the Bible. No. He was the Quiet Fire.
Onkgopotse was driven by his Passion
for the Truth. By his respect for Elders. By his native Integrity. By the
simple value system of uBuntu-Botho. And he had learnt this from his home; from
his village in Dinokana. When I interviewed him it was oozing out of his
spirit. His concern for the people, the ordinary people, was overwhelming. And
he was able to communicate with the ordinary people; with the workers. He was a
product of the working class; and he belonged there. He was at ease with them.
Many students were not. They were floating in no-man’s-land. I mean the type
that did not invite their mothers to their graduation ceremonies.
Tiro turned the whole world
up-side-down because he realized that his parents (and those of other students)
were not accorded their proper place at graduations. They were not recognized.
He was working class – a product of the working class, and proud of it.
Tiro, Shezi and myself spent hours
and hours discussing about organizing black workers and how to bring in the
adults into what was exclusively a students’ revolution. I remember how I used
to always go and introduce all these SASO people to my father-in-law, Douglas
Mvemve. He was an old stalwart of the ANC in Alexandra, and was among the first
detainees under the Terrorism Act in 1969. He was 72 years then.
The result of all our activities –
and those of many other activities in SASO, was the creation of the Black
Workers’ Project and the formation of the Black People’s Convention.
Nengwekhulu played a crucial role in helping to formulate our ideas in those
days. It was him and I who organised black journalists and created the Union of
Black Journalists (UBJ) which was subsequently banned.
Harry worked very closely with Tiro
on Saso’s projects – and later in Botswana when Tiro was in charge of creating
the Southern African Students’Movement (SASM).
While we were not unique, our
discussions were somehow informed by our working class experience. Shezi, too,
had been a worker between his studies. He, too, was very close to his mother.
So was Steve; and so was Barney. And a whole lot of of SASO people were the
same. I remember Maphela too was very close to her other. The closure of the
universities in 1972 led to community projects and Tiro was exceptional in the
literacy campaign. We had all been trained by one Anne Hughes, in using the
method of Paulo Fereira, the Brazilian revolutionary. We taught the youth whom
we were organising into NAYO the same methods.
What followed from 1973 is history.
The repression came down hard and fast upon us all. Eight of us were banned in
February 1973. The SASO 8, we were called. People like Keith Mokoape and others
had left the country earlier to join the liberation forces in exile. The
country’s mood shifted from singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ to ‘Madoda Asihambeni’.
There was impatience about Conscientization; people were singing more militant
songs, and the poetry of the times was boiling hot. Everybody knew that the
hour had come to move it – to move the mountain.
People were asking:
conscientization, and then what? The armed struggle was beckoning. The system
was devouring the people with ferocity. The arguments about what to do were
intense and pulling us apart; and it was during that period that Onkgopotse was
thrown into wilderness again. He pioeered the way forward, again.
He was assigned to go to Botswana to
organise a Southern African Students’ Movement, which would create a vehicle
for opening the route to the unknown world out there; across the borders and
hopefully towards the fields of armed struggle. Soon after arriving in Botswana
he found a job as a teacher at St. Joseph’s College in Kgale, near Gaborone.
That was the perfect cover. So we thought.
When Nengwekhulu, Nosi Matshoba,
Tebogo Mafole and myself arrived in September, Tiro had set up an international
network that we started using towards creating an infra-structure to propagate,
promote and organise an underground movement and the facilities for military
training. We had spent the night at Tiro’s home in Dinokana on the day we
escaped from South Africa.
Subsequently, hundreds of other
students and youth passed through that family on their way to Botswana. I
believe very few have ever gone back to thank the Tiro family for the real
danger that we all exposed them to. Even I took a long, long time before going
back to Dinokana to go and say thank you to our mother.
I do not wish to dwell on the
details of that period, as it might take up the whole day. After securing
asylum we were based in Lobatse, living at Cyril Shabalala’s home. He had been
a physics lecturer in Turfloop. Tiro used to travel, after school, and on
week-ends, to Lobatse to concur with us. We were new to the country and to the
outside world. We were also naïve. And innocent.
And then the terror was unleashed.
In February 1974.
Onkgopotse Tiro was the first
casualty in the new terrorist war that was used to break the spirit of
resistance among those who dared to stand up for their ideas – and to speak of
freedom. The parcel bomb that tore him to pieces was the introduction of a new
era of the freedom struggle. Nobody has ever owned up to that deed at the TRC
hearings. Not that we expected it.
In the very same week another parcel
bomb exploded in the face of another freedom fighter, in Lusaka, at the ANC’s
Head Office. His name was Boy Adolphus Mvemve known as John Dube, in MK. He was
my brother-in-law. Max Sisulu survived that bomb attack miraculously. Our
common tragedy brought us together. The BCM and the ANC. Thabo Mbeki came to
bury Tiro. He was with Mendi Msimang. Afterwards they bought a plane ticket for
me to go and bury my brother-in-law in Lusaka, too.
We buried our dead in strange lands.
In Africa, thank God. Then the ferocity
of the terrorist bombers increased. They claimed Ruth First. Later they came
for Thami Mnyele and George Phahle and his wife, Lindi, in Gaborone in 1985.
They started unleashing the bombs in South Africa, too. They used our people
against each other. The dirty war had been declared, especially inside the country.
Thokoza became a killing field. The same monster of divide and rule that Tiro
had denounced in his speech in Turfloop had grown eight heads like Godumo-Dumo,
and it was eating up the children of Africa.
Three years ago we were able to go
and fetch the bones of Onkgopotse Tiro;
he now rests in Dinokana. Boy Mvemve and Ruth First and many others still have
to be re-patriated. Let’s hope Comrade Wally Serote will remember to include
them to be among the first to adorn the Freedom Park, which will be dedicated
to our fallen heroes and beloved ones. Their bones must rest near their homes.
That is an essential aspect of African
culture.
Tiro’s speech in Turfloop was
informed by his passion for the people. It infuriated the System to the point
where they needed to destroy him They killed him brutally. They killed JD
brutally. And Steve; and Mapetla. And Shezi. And the Mxenge’s. The list is
endless. But we are still here, aren’t we? The people are still here. But can
we claim victory, or should we say we have at least gone through the first
hurdle in the relay? In the theatre of life’s drama?
If we look at the state of our
schools, our education, our homes – or at the lack of shacks we call our homes;
at the remnants of orderly and disciplined family life in our society. If we
look at the devastating effects of unemployment and under-employment; the
ravages of drugs and alcoholism in our families; if we ask ourselves what has
happened to us that has led us to start raping our children and grand-mothers; if
we reflect at the greed and corruption that is informing our ethics and
morality; if we reflect on the underlying causes and dynamic driving us to
crime and violence towards each other; if we try to ask ourselves why we are so
bent on self-destruction? If we ask ourselves why we don’t really care for
ourselves and for each other? Was it only the repressive apartheid regime that
bound us together during the struggle days? Is the struggle over? What about
the economic struggle? Who must conduct it for us? Is it the responsibility of
the ANC alone – or are they the convenient scapegoat? What about our own
xenophobia? Why is it everyone for him/herself?
We pride ourselves about our African
Culture. How much does this african culture
- or ubuntu/botho inform our behaviour and norms?
Why can’t we come together
consciously to erect living monuments to the Tiro’s and Biko’s whom we pride
ourselves so much that we knew them; that we struggled alongside them.
Struggled for what, I may ask – or better, they may ask. We say we believe in
ancestors. So, if these comrades have become our ancestors, do we think we are
honouring their memory by our inability to even scratch ourselves? Where has
our black pride gone? Can we still sing To Be Young Gifted and Black with any
conviction? Or is it only nostalgia that informs our every thought, aspiration
and motivation? What about our vision of society?
We are living in times of change and
challenge. We are living in times of opportunity like our grand-fathers never
even imagined. But we are also living a dangerous lie by thinking we can do
without each other. The African idiom that says: Motho ke Motho ka Batho – is
the essence of the African Renaissance. If we cannot make it to become the
beacon of our dreams and visions, we are doomed.
The same vision and power that has
always driven human beings to greater heights of achievement and service in the
face of adversity is still available to all of us. We only have to re-focus and
to take each other by our hands. We have to hunt together. The BaPedi say: Ntja
Pedi Hae Hlolwe ke Sebata.
But, lest we sink in gloom, let us
remind ourselves that Life is Bigger than all these challenges, and that we
partake of the Breath of Life. We are not in the Universe – we are part of the
Universe. And the Universe is Order that comes out of chaos. It is Change that
changes everything all the time. And so, we must Change, too. Life is Change.
We must believe in Our Selves – in the Spirit of Life that Flows through us;
the spirit of life that connects us to the memory of our beloved ones. Bo-Tiro
le babangwe ba ba robetseng. Lastly, lest
we forget – let us honour our people, especially our mothers, by
striving to make our country a place worth writing home about. Let us honour
and respect each other.
Can Azapo pick up the gauntlet and
lead the race? Maybe. If we really
believe in what we have always proclaimed, let’s do it. Let’s get our heads
together and organise our own destiny together. Otherwise we’ll sink together.
Tiro would have understood that. In fact he was a living example of that. He
was a role model. How we need role models! The Time Is Now. Life is NOW. Not
yesterday, not tomorrow. NOW is the time. Now is the TIME!
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF TIRO ...LONG LIVE
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF BIKO…LONG LIVE
LONG LIVE AFRICA….LONG LIVE
LONG LIVE THE TRUTH….LONG LIVE
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF UNITY…LONG LIVE
With Love and respect
01/02/2003