Freedom Park mourns the loss of Mama Rebecca Kotane, wife of the late former SACP general secretary, Comrade Moses Kotane. She passed away on Sunday before her 109th birthday.
She will be remembered for her role in the Defiance Campaigns of the 1950s and the mobilisation towards the Congress of the People in 1955. Mme Kotane was a comrade and the oldest stalwarts of our movement. She was the only remaining elder of the movement and ironically the same age as the ANC.
On this day 1 February 1974, Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, a leader of the South African Students' Organisation (SASO), was killed by a parcel bomb near Gaborone, Botswana.
‘Tiro was completing an application form to continue his studies through the University of South Africa (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 bomb exploded, killing him instantly. A Bureau of State Security (BOSS) hit squad, also known as the Z-Squad, was allegedly responsible for sending him the parcel bomb”.
