Abram Onkgopotse Tiro

1. Sources:
2. Mdhlela, Joe (1999). The new dictionary of South Africa biography, volume 2, Pretoria: Vista University.
3. (1998). ‘Remains of murdered activist Abram Tiro to be reburied in SA’. South African Press Association [online], 20 March. Available at: doj.gov.za [accessed on 13 February 2009]

---

Activist Abram Onkgopotse Tiro grew up in Dinokana, a small village near Zeerust. He attended the primary school first at Dinokana and then at Motswedi and matriculated (grade 12) from Barolong High School in Mafikeng (the Mafikeng). His parents lived in Dinokana. Tiro had two brothers and one sister.

After completing grade 12, he enrolled at the University of the North to do a degree in humanities. He was elected president of the Student Representative Council (SRC) in his final year. At the university’s graduation ceremony in 1972, Tiro delivered a speech that sharply criticized the Bantu Education Act of 1953; this later became known as the ′Turfloop Testimony′. Many authorities at the university were angered by Tiro′s outspokenness and this speech precipitated his expulsion from the university. Despite demonstrations by the student body under the new S.R.C, Tiro was not readmitted.

In 1973, Tiro became involved in the activities of the Black Consciousness Movement. This was an ideology developed primarily by Black students after 1968 to encourage Black people to liberate themselves psychologically from the effect of the institutionalised racism and white liberalism. In 1969 he founded the South African Student Organisation (SASO), and in 1973 he became its chief organiser.

Subsequently he was offered a post as a history teacher by Legau Mathabathe, the Headmaster of the Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto, where he introduced his pupils to the Black Consciousness Movement’s aspirations and started a campaign to encourage students to question the validity and content of the history books prescribed by the Department of Bantu Education.

Morris Isaacson High School became known as a the ′cradle of resistance′ and produced the likes of Tsietsi Mashinini, one the student leaders who spearheaded the 1976 Soweto uprisings. Tiro was also instrumental in establishing the South African Student Movement (SASM), of which membership also included students from neighbouring countries. SASM and SASO were offshoots of the Black Consciousness Movement and its aim was to influence the direction of Southern African student politics. In 1972 he was elected the Honorary President of the movement at a congress in Lesotho. However, it was not long before the government started pressurising school principals who had offered employment to expelled students to dismiss them.

After Tiro had lost his teaching post, the apartheid government used its powers to silence or restrict SASO′s leadership. Those affected included Steve Biko (who had become SASO′s leader at its inception), Bokwe Mafuna, Strini Moodley, Saths Cooper and Harry Nengwekhulu. Nengwekhulu had returned to South Africa only shortly after spending nearly two decades in exile in Botswana. Biko, the father of the black consciousness movement, together with other black leaders, had broken away from the white dominated student body NUSAS to form the black-led SASO.

Travelling to all parts of Southern Africa, including Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana, Tiro won more support for the Black Consciousness 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 activities of the SASM, SASO and the Black People′s Convention (BPC). While living a simple life at the Roman Catholic Mission at Khale, a village about 20km from Gabarone, he was instrumental in forging links with militant revolutionary groups such as the Palestinean Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1973.

Throughout his life he showed a commitment to working for the well-being of the underprivileged. He believed that ′the primary source of income for blacks is land, and we need to restore land to the dispossessed′. Perhaps the fact that he had spent his childhood in the rural village of Dinokana had sharpened his appreciation for the importance of land.

On 1 February 1974, while still in Botswana, Tiro was completing an application form to continue his studies through Unisa when a student known only as Lawrence handed him a parcel supposedly forwarded by the international University Exchange Programme. As he was opening it, the parcel bomb exploded, killing him instantly. Tiro remains were buried in Botswana.

In 1998 Tiro's remains were exhumed by the Azanian People's Organization and his family and returned to Dinokana for reburial. Unfortunately the South African Truth and Reconciliation (TRC), failed to conduct an in-depth investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death. In a tribute to Tiro the president of the Azanian People′s Organization, Mosibudi Mangena, described him as ‘a man of strong convictions who refused to compromise his principles, a person of simple tastes who could not accept the way black people had been dehumanised by the apartheid policy, a man who lived by the motto that it is better to die for the an idea that will live than to live for an idea that will die′.