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))
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February 2, 2012 at 3:25 pm
A.o Tiro on that said-day was preparing for applying for a BA 2 UNISA. The agent with the bomb meet bra Tiro busy with the application form and this its self clearly indicate that there was conspiracy well-planned and knowledgeble about his intentions that time. One day he said “…the primary source of income for blacks is land, and we had to restore land to the dispossed”. This noble stance was one of the factors that so cowardly angered the children of the settlers and their black allies. LONG LIVE! THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF BRA TIRO LONG LIVE!
February 1, 2012 at 4:34 am
Thank you Ngubeni. Many of us passed through your humble home as we went to join the Freedom Fighters. You have many stories to tell.
January 31, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Sadly I believe I was the last person to see Tiro alive, except of course, the persn who gave him the letter bomb. I was told he was killed 30 minutes after we separated. Tiro and I had discussed the danger of assination by letter or parcel bomb.
January 30, 2012 at 11:02 am
Another fallen hero to be commemorated yet again A.N.C. has got it’s hands dirty and turning a blind eye hiding the pepetrators,Why BECAUSE THE MASTER SAID SO.i mean who are we kidding.Lala kahle qhawe lamaqhawe POWER to the BCM.
January 30, 2012 at 9:54 am
I was a time of war and in war people get killed. I do agree the TRC was a farce, as it offered selective justice, aimed at appeasing the black masses. In the end, it helped very few people and clearly has not made reconconciliation a reality.
I personally do not see peace in RSA, until the country is split up to give those who want it, their own countries. Freedom means different things for different people and the masses cannot and should not control the freedom asperations of smaller nations. If that happens, eventually civil war follows and that no-one really wants or needs that.
January 30, 2012 at 3:35 pm
yah this is a bit depressing because of the painful memories of what happened and to know that some of the perpetrators are living among us comfortably with the truth…the main challenge is making the peace, but you cannot have peace without justice, and you cannot have justice without the truth, and you cannot have truth without honesty! I remember Tiro, we know the story and some of the things that have been whispered even about what happened to the BCM in exile, as another political organisation that was outside the country! Let us not go there here, but someday the whole sordid sorry truth needs to be told in full. My big fear is that magua are going to recolonise us because in the process of fighting with and lying to one another, they will once more run away with the bone! Who are we going to cry for then? The story of Tiro reminds all of us once more that when the death squads of apartheid killed, they did not target one political organisation in exile, they killed anybody they saw as a threat to White supremacy.