Abram Onkgopotse Tiro

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Abram Ramothibi Onkgopotse Tiro (born November 9, 1947 in Dinokana near Zeerust , † February 1, 1974 in Kgale (Khale), Botswana ) was a leading activist of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in South Africa . He was one of the first anti- apartheid activists to be murdered by agents of the South African secret service.

Life

Abram Onkgopotse Tiro was born in the village of Dinokana. Little is known about his father Nkokwe Peter Tiro, his mother Moleseng Anna Tiro worked as a domestic help in Johannesburg . He had two brothers and a sister. From 1951 he attended the Ikalafeng Primary School. He was expelled from Naledi High School in Soweto for a passport violation; henceforth he attended Barolong High School in Mafikeng , where he passed his Matric .

Tiro began studying humanities at the University of the North on the Turfloop campus . In 1972 he was elected President of the Students' Representative Council . He gave a speech at the April 29, 1972 discharge ceremony that has since become known as the Turfloop Testimony . In it he sharply castigated Bantu Education . As a result of the speech, he was forcibly de-registered. In May and June 1972 there were solidarity strikes for Tiro at numerous South African universities, mostly by black students.

1972 Tiro took part in the congress of the Southern African Students Movement (SASM) in Lesotho , the international arm of SASO. He joined the Black Consciousness Movement in 1973. In 1973 he became a permanent organizer of the South African Students' Organization (SASO) after its top leadership was banned . In the same year he was elected President of the SASM. According to other information, SASM stands for South African Students' Movement , which, analogous to SASO, was aimed at South African students.

Tiro became a history teacher at Morris Isaacson High School in Central Western Jabavu in Soweto in 1973 on the initiative of the school principal there . He influenced the students in the spirit of the BCM, including Tsietsi Mashinini , who was instrumental in the 1976 uprising in Soweto . After six months, he was forced to leave school under pressure from the authorities. Then Tiro visited the neighboring countries Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland as president of the SASM . One of his most important theses was the demand for land ownership for blacks.

At the end of 1973 he fled to Botswana, where he lived in the Catholic mission station Khale and continued to work as SASM president. Among other things, he made contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He died on February 1, 1974 in Khale from a parcel bomb given to him by a South African agent on behalf of the International University Exchange Fund, which had been infiltrated by Craig Williamson . It was later revealed that the murder of Tiros had been initiated by the secretly operating Z-squad , a division of the South African Bureau for State Security (BOSS).

aftermath

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission mentioned Tiro's murder, but did not conduct an investigation. His body was exhumed in Botswana in 1998 and buried in Dinokana on March 22 of the same year.

In 1999 he was posthumously awarded the Order for Meritorious Service in gold by the South African government .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Curriculum vitae on the University of Limpopo website , accessed April 20, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d e f portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on April 20, 2016
  3. ^ Petrus Cornelius Swanepoel: Really inside BOSS: a tale of South Africa's late intelligence service (and something about the CIA). Piet Swanepoel, 2007, ISBN 9780620382724 . Excerpts from books.google.de
personal data
SURNAME Tiro, Abram Onkgopotse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tiro, Abram Onkgopotse Ramothibi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African activist
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Dinokana , Zeerust
DATE OF DEATH 1st February 1974
Place of death Kgale , Botswana