Gert Sibande

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Richard Gert Shadrack Sibande (* 1901 near Ermelo , South Africa ; † March 13, 1987 in Manzini , Swaziland ) was a South African fighter for better living conditions for black farm workers during the apartheid period .

Life

Gert Sibande was born in 1901 near the town of Ermelo in what was then the Eastern Transvaal (today Mpumalanga ). His father was a tenant farmer. Gert Sibande also worked in agriculture and, from the 1930s, represented the interests of black agricultural workers on the potato farms around Bethal , whose working conditions were poor, as a “ grassroots activist ” . He founded the Farm Workers Association , the first of its kind in South Africa. Sibandes nickname was Lion of the East, German: "Löwe des Ostens". In 1942 he joined the ANC. One of his goals was a fairer distribution of land in South Africa, similar to the ideas of the former ANC president Pixley ka Isaka Seme . Besides Ruth First , he was the first to educate the public about the unreasonable conditions of farm workers. From 1952 Sibande took part in the Defiance Campaign of the ANC.

In 1956 Sibande was elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. From 1956 to 1961 he was one of the 156 defendants in the Treason Trial . In 1958 he was elected during the trial as ANC chairman of the Transvaal Province , and in 1959 he was re-elected with a narrow majority. In the same year, in cooperation with the ANC and the trade union umbrella organization South African Congress of Trade Unions in Bethal, he organized the " potato boycott ", which was triggered by a report in Drum magazine and forced white potato farmers to make concessions on working conditions. Like the other defendants, Sibande was acquitted in the Treason Trial. However, he had to move to Komatipoort and was banned . Nevertheless, he founded the Plantation and Allied Union (about: "Union of plantation workers and similar professions"). He went into exile in Manzini in Swaziland, where he died in 1987. He was buried in Manzini.

Honors

  • 2002: Designation of the Gert Sibande College for Further Education and Training, GS College for short , in Ermelo and other places in Mpumalanga
  • 2004: Designation of the Gert Sibande district in Mpumalanga
  • 2007: Order of Luthuli in Gold (posthumous)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Biography on the website of the Gert Sibande district ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  2. ↑ a b Address by Jacob Zuma on the 50th anniversary of the opening day of the potato boycott (English), accessed on December 22, 2012
  3. ↑ a b portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on December 22, 2012
  4. ↑ GS College website , accessed February 8, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Sibande, Gert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sibande, Richard Shadrack (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African anti-apartheid fighter
DATE OF BIRTH 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH at Ermelo
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1987
Place of death Manzini , Swaziland