On 1 February 1974, when Abraham Ramothibi Onkgopotse Tiro opened a parcel at the house where he was living in St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Mission in Khale, eleven kilometres south of Gaborone, Botswana, it exploded and killed him instantly.
Tiro was a South African student activist and a black consciousness militant. He was born on 9 November 1945 in Dinokana, a small village near Zeerust. He was expelled from the University of the North (known as Turfloop – now known as the University of Limpopo) in 1972 for his political activities. At the university’s graduation ceremony in 1972, Tiro delivered a speech that sharply criticised the Bantu Education Act of 1953. This later became known as the “Turfloop Testimony”.
Authorities at the university were angered by Tiro’s outspokenness and, following the speech, Tiro was expelled from the University. He had become an active member of the South African Student Organisation (SASO), out of which the Black Consciousness Movement grew, and was elected President of the Student Representative Council (SRC) in his final year.
Tiro’s expulsion from Turfloop had far-reaching consequences that the university’s management could not have anticipated. In May 1972 there were a number of strikes on black campuses across the country in support of Tiro. By the beginning of June all major black campuses endorsed a solidarity strike in his support and on 2 June 1972, students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) demonstrated i
