SA loses another fighter | Towards the end, veteran Ratshitanga was disappointed in president’s tolerance of wrongdoing for the sake of unity, writes Mathatha Tsedu
The year was 1977. Bantu Biko had been killed in police detention and virtually all organisations aligned with the black consciousness philosophy were banned.
He realised I meant business and he gave us the money. It emerged later he was actually stealing some of the money for himself.” With his trademark long hair and long beard, Ratshitanga was, however, more than just a political animal. Aside from being a lifelong political activist of the real left, he was a film producer and an orator of note.He was fearless of the notorious Venda security branch, the white establishment and, of late, even the leadership of his own movement, whom he felt had gone astray.
On September 24 1977, a bus ferried activists from the entire north to Biko’s funeral. Roadblocks were mounted near each town that we passed and reasons for our travel varied from a soccer match to a funeral in the next town. That detention was the third of four such incarcerations, all ending without trial. In the last detention in 1984, he was held at the Masisi police cells, which were in a corrugated iron structure that was extremely hot in summer, leading to excessive sweating, but police would not give him water.
Ratshitanga, who only went to formal school up to Grade 10, or a junior certificate as it was known then, believed in the power of education. Thus he improved his qualifications and obtained matric through correspondence before doing his degree in political science and literature at Wits University. He received the National Order of the Baobab in Bronze for his immense contribution to the struggle for freedom.
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