Onkgopotse Tiro (9 November 1945 – 1 February 1974) was a South African student activist and black consciousness militant. He was born in

Dinokana Dinokana is a town in Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality in the North West province of South Africa. Early settlement The area became the main town of the Bahurutshe in 1849, when Kgosi Moiloa I settled it with about 1,500 people, who h ...

, a small village near

Zeerust Zeerust is a commercial town situated in Ngaka Modiri Molema district North West Province, South Africa. It lies in the Marico valley, approximately 240 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg. It lies on the N4, the main road link between South ...

. He was expelled from the University of the North (now known as

University of Limpopo The University of Limpopo is a university in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. It was formed on 1 January 2005, by the merger of the University of the North and the Medical University of South Africa (MEDUNSA). These previous institutions for ...

) in 1972 for his political activities. At university he had become an active member of the

South African Student Organisation The South African Students' Organisation (SASO) was a body of black South African university students who resisted apartheid through non-violent political action. The organisation was formed in 1969 under the leadership of Steve Biko and Barney P ...

, out of which the

Black Consciousness Movement The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Afr ...

grew. After his expulsion from the then University of the North in 1972, following his scathing critique of the

Bantu Education Act The Bantu Education Act 1953 (Act No. 47 of 1953; later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953) was a South African segregation law that legislated for several aspects of the apartheid system. Its major provision enforced racially-separated educatio ...

of 1953, he went on to teach history at Morris Isaacson High School near and around Central Western Jabavu (CWJ) in

Soweto Soweto () is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western Townships''. Formerly a se ...

in 1973. Tsietsi Mashinini, who was an integral part of the 1976 student uprising, was one the students during the time he taught at Morris Isaacson, and many of his students have recalled his impact on their own politicisation during this period of student organisation in South African history.Glaser, Bo-Tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935-1976
/

Death

Tiro was killed by a parcel bomb in

Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kal ...

in 1974.Activist Onkgopotse Abram Tiro
SA History Online

References

External links

Abram Ramothibi Onkgopotse Tiro
SA History Online 1974 deaths Extrajudicial killings South African activists Anti-apartheid activists 1947 births People from Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality Deaths by letter bomb {{AntiApartheid-activist-stub