WHO KILLED ONKGOPOTSE TIRO??? – REFLECTIONS ON THE 38TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS ASSASSINATION

Wednesday, 1st February, will mark the 38th anniversary of the assassination of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro at St Joseph’s College, Kgale, Gaborone by the Apartheid South African government and its associates. Tiro was a teacher at St Joseph’s at the time of his assassination. He received a letter brought to him by a student known only as Lawrence which indicated that it was from the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF) in Geneva. It exploded when he opened it killing him instantly. Complicit

At the time Tiro was killed, a Bureau of State Security (BOSS) agent who had infiltrated the ANC, Craig Williamson was working for IUEF. When Inside Boss by Gordon Winter was about to be published in 1981, Craig Williamson who was in Europe, probably in Switzerland where the IUEF was headquartered, ran back to South Africa. Because there is no statute of limitations in murder cases, I think in all fairness and in the interests of justice, the Botswana government should institute extradition proceedings in respect of Craig Williamson to go and stand trial for the murder of Tiro. Craig Williamson will reveal his accomplices.

Winter, a former spy for the South African government, reveals in his book that Tiro was killed by the Z-Squad. That circus which was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) failed to investigate Tiro’s death. The TRC was a product of the imperialist-brokered secret negotiations between the Apartheid government led by the National Party and the ANC. After it has come to power through a rigged election in 1994 (see FW de Klerk’s book The Last Trek: A New Beginning), the ANC-led government has helped cover up Tiro’s assassination by bungling investigations into Tiro’s death. That’s why Nelson Mandela couldn’t mention the assassination of Tiro in his book Long Walk to Freedom published in 1994 but mentions the assassination of a white woman Ruth First who was also killed by a letter bomb years after Tiro’s death.

In his January 8 statement this year, ANC President Jacob Zuma also mentioned Ruth First but didn’t mention Tiro. I don’t remember hearing or reading former President Thabo Mbeki mentioning the assassination of Tiro. During their secret negotiations the ANC and National Party government agreed not to reveal the names of former Apartheid government spies from both the ANC and the white minority government. Why would the ANC protect former Apartheid spies if it didn’t have an axe to grind? By avoiding to mention Tiro’s killing through a letter bomb, coupled with the shoddy work of the TRC regarding investigations into Tiro’s death, gives one the impression that the ANC had a hand in the demise of Tiro directly or indirectly. Otherwise why would its leaders behave the way they do?

In his book Preparing for Power: Oliver Tambo Speaks, published in 1987, the late Tambo laments the fact that the Black Consciousness Movement was going to supplant the ANC. The ANC and the SACP in exile were hostile towards the BCM. The reason these organisations were negative towards BCM was that BCM had stolen the limelight from the ANC and Tiro himself did in less than a year what the ANC couldn’t do in thirty years. After his expulsion from Turfloop in 1972 following his scathing critique of the Bantu Education Act of 1953 he went to teach at Morris Isaacson High School where Tsietsi Mashinini, who led the 1976 student uprisings was a student. It was because of Tiro that High School students were conscientised and ultimately rejected Apartheid and its trappings like Bantu Education. Tiro had taken the baton from Zeph Mothopeng who was a fierce ciritic of Bantu Education in the early 1950′s. Mothopeng was a founding member of the PAC and was eventually convicted in 1978 for organising the Soweto Student uprisings.

It was at Morris Isaacson that Tiro introduced his students to the philosophy of the Black Consciousness Movement and started a campaign to encourage students to question the validity and content of the history books prescribed by the Department of Bantu Education. The Principal of Morris Isaacson was put under pressure by the Apartheid government to fire him. Thirty eight years after Tiro’s death we still have mediocre history text books prescribed by the Freedom Charter government of the ANC and ANC officials who distort and falsify history at public platforms and in the media.

In late 1973 Tiro got wind of the news that the Apartheid authorities wanted to arrest him and fled to Botswana where he played a leading role in the activities of the South African Student Movement and South African Student Organisation and Black Peoples Convention. He was instrumental in forging links with militant and revolutionary groups such as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. He travelled to all parts of Southern Africa. He won more support for the Black Consciousness philosophy.Tiro was born in Dinokana in 1947 where he started his Primary school and matriculated at Barolong High School in Mafikeng and went to Turfloop University known as the University of the North. How do Turfloop University, Barolong High and St Josephs College in Kgale honour this great son of the soil?

By Sam Ditshego
(The writer is a member of the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI))

Related articles

• The Raping of History – Rejoinder to Pallo Jordan’s ‘On a Century of Movement’ (mayihlome.wordpress.com)
• ANC accused of airbrushing allies and rivals out of anti-apartheid struggle (guardian.co.uk)

 

THE ANC OF TODAY IS ONLY 57 YEARS – NOT 100 YEARS OLD!

ANC Today

What was the fundamental objective of the ANC when it was formed in 1912? Did the present ANC leaders, especially since June 1955 pursue the primary goal of the 1912 ANC as envisaged by the founding fathers including the African Kings amongst them? Is the present ANC 100 years old or 57 years old? Does it have the same objectives and policies as the 1912 ANC? Why was South Africa last to be “liberated” on the African Continent, and without repossession of the land, economic power and with so much poverty among the African people?

On the 8th of January 1912 when opening the inaugural conference of the ANC (then called the South African Native National Congress [SANNC]), Dr. Pixley ka Seme said, “Kings of the royal blood and gentlemen of our race, we have gathered here to consider and discuss a scheme my colleagues have decided to place before you….In the land of our birth, Africans are treated as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The whites have formed what is known as the Union of South Africa in which we have no voice.”

African kings had fought many wars of national resistance against colonialism for over 2OO years until their spears succumbed to the guns of the colonial aggressors. All had their lands forcefully taken from them. Others like King Hintsa had fallen by the bullet of the foreign invader in combat defending the African country against rapacious colonial forces.

What Precipitated Formation of ANC in 1912?

An ANC leader, Dr. S. Moridi Molema described these colonialists in 1952 as “men who are nothing else but robbers, villains and traitors to the highest and noblest teachings of Christianity which they so blatantly profess, men shockingly contemptuous of their conscience and now in a frenzy of self-adulation preparing to embrace each other and shake their bloody hands…and ready to commence another evil era of rapine and oppression.”

The colonial laws that precipitated the formation of the ANC in 1912 were the Union of South Africa Act 1909 and the Native Land Act 1913.The British Parliament enacting the Union of South Africa read as follows: “1. This Act may be cited as the South Africa Act 1909…44. The qualifications of a member of the House of Assembly shall be as follows: He must… be a British subject of European descent.”

In 1909, there were five million Africans in Azania (South Africa). But this union of colonial settlers was as follows: Cape Colony (167,546), Natal (34,784), Transvaal (106,493), and Orange River Colony (41,014). This was a total population of 349,537 colonial settlers according to the 1904 Census. The five million indigenous Africans remained helpless spectators as the tragedy of their land dispossession unfolded before them. The draconian British colonial law was followed by another genocide law called the Native Land Act 1913. This colonial law allocated 93% of the African country to 349,837 European settlers and 7% to five million Africans.

Sol Plaatje who became the first Secretary of ANC in 1912 wrote about why Africans were dispossessed of their land: “In the harvest of 1911, there was panic among white farmers because an African had garnered 3OOO bags of wheat and another 1,6OO bags…in a neighbourhood where their white neighbours reaped 300 to 400 bags of wheat. African export produce was looming in the not distant future. Then public opinion which in this country stands for white opinion asserted itself. ‘Where will we get servants?’ It was asked, ‘if the Kaffirs are allowed to become skilled? A Kaffir with 3000 bags of wheat! What will he do with the money? If they are inclined to herd pedigree stock let them improve their masters (whites) cattle and cultivate for them.”

Earl Glen, a British official had put the issue of land dispossession of the African in South Africa, colonially clear: “The Africans are generally looked upon by Whites as an inferior race whose interests must be systematically disregarded when they come into competition with their own, and should be governed with a view to the advantage of the superior race. For this reason two things must be afforded to white colonists obtaining LAND…the Kaffir should be made to furnish as large and cheap labour as possible.”