Abraham Onkgopotse Tiro

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 in support of Tiro.

In 1973, Tiro became actively involved in the activities of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). However, it is at Turfloop that the first major outbreak of dissent occurred in 1972. Tiro not only precipitated this outbreak but was also at the centre of it. He took over as SASO’s Permanent Organiser after the banning of the SASO/Black Peoples Convention (BPC) leaders in 1973, and in same year, he was elected the President of the Southern African Students’ Movement (SASM), an affiliate of the All-Africa Students’ Union (AASU).

After his expulsion from the then University of the North, he went on to teach history at Morris Isaacson High School, in Central Western Jabavu (CWJ), Soweto, in 1973. It is here that he introduced his pupils to the BCM’s philosophy and started a campaign to encourage students to question the validity and content of the history books prescribed by the Department of Bantu Education.

Tsietsi Mashinini, who was an integral part of the 1976 student uprising, was one of Tiro’s students during the time he taught at Morris Isaacson, and many of his students had recalled his impact on their own politicisation during this period of student organisation in South African history. However, it was not long before the government started putting pressure on school principals to dismiss those students they had offered employment to after they were expelled from universities. After six months at Morris Isaacson, the Principal was put under pressure by the Apartheid government to fire Tiro.

Travelling to all parts of Southern Africa, including Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana, Tiro won more support for the Black Consciousness (BC) philosophy. However, towards the end of 1973 he found out that the police were planning to arrest him, and he fled to Botswana, where he played a leading role in the activities of SASM, SASO and the BPC.

After the parcel bomb had killed him, Tiro was buried in Botswana because the then Apartheid regime would not allow his body to be buried at his home in Dinokana Village. Abram Onkgopotse Ramothibi Tiro was finally laid to rest at Dinokana Village on 22 March 1998 following several interventions for his remains to be repatriated.

Gordon Winter, a spy for the apartheid government, revealed in his book, “Inside Boss”, that Tiro was killed by the Z-Squad, a Bureau of State Security (BOSS) covert unit. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) failed to investigate Tiro’s death.

In the April 1974 issue of Sechaba, the official journal of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, the ANC made the following statement: “Long after the world has forgotten the Vorsters, the van den Berghs and the Swanepoels, the people of our country will remember Abraham Tiro, student leader and a militant against apartheid tyranny. The African National Congress of South Africa salutes the memory of this brave and courageous son of Africa and pledges to avenge his death. This and other murders of our people’s heroes will not go unpunished and their memory shall ever be with us.”

Castro Khwela
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