Arthur Letele

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Elias Letele (born October 2, 1916 in Maseru , Basutoland , today Lesotho ; † December 20, 1965 ibid) was a politician and doctor in South Africa and Basutoland.

Life

Letele's father Elias Letele was Mosotho and worked as a school inspector, his mother Catherine Letele was Xhosa . Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Ladybrand, South Africa . Arthur Letele received his secondary education at the Lovedale Institute with Alice . He then began studying medicine at the South African Native College , which he continued at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg . In 1946 he graduated as a doctor. In 1944 he had already joined the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1947 he began working as a doctor in Lovedale, in 1948 he moved to Kimberley . In the same year he married Mary-Anne Nombulelo Grace Nkolombe, with whom he had four sons and a daughter.

In 1952 he took part in the Defiance Campaign against the apartheid regime and was imprisoned several times. He was sentenced to nine months in prison for inciting violence and was suspended. In 1953 he was elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. In 1955 he prepared for the Kimberley area the Congress of the People and took part in it. In the same year he became treasurer of the ANC. The following year he was among the 156 defendants in the Treason Trial , but was acquitted. In 1960 he was arrested again for publicly burning his passport in Orlando . He had to leave the country and from then on lived in neighboring Basutoland, but remained a member of the executive committee of the ANC, which was now banned in South Africa. In 1961, the day before the proclamation of the Republic in South Africa, he tried together with other politicians to take over the leadership of the Basutoland Congress Party in order to support the ANC; but this failed. In 1961 he took part in the third and final All-African Peoples' Conference in Cairo as part of an ANC delegation , where he called for sanctions against South Africa. He then traveled to Sweden , the United Kingdom , Nigeria and Tanganyika as a representative of the ANC ; In 1963 he visited the Soviet Union , where he attended a meeting of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee.

Letele suffered from an incurable disease. He died of suicide on December 20, 1965 .

Awards

In 2014 Letele was posthumously awarded the Order of Luthuli in silver.

literature

  • EJ Verwey: New dictionary of South African biographies. Vol. 1. HSRC Press, 1995, ISBN 0796916489 . Excerpts in the google book search

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on September 12, 2018
  2. ^ Facsimile of the New Age of April 6, 1961 (English; PDF)
  3. ^ The Presidency: Appreciation on the occasion of the award ceremony thepresidency.gov.za (English), accessed on September 13, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Letele, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Letele, Arthur Elias (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African and Lesothic politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Maseru , Basutoland
DATE OF DEATH December 20, 1965
Place of death Maseru , Basutoland