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Zikhona Valela Profile picture
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10 Apr, 9 tweets, 3 min read
Chris Hani was assassinated on this day in 1993. This was taken 30 years ago on 8 December 1991 at the relaunched SACP's first congress in 41 years.
📸: Walter Dhladhla Image
The SACP (the CPSA) had disbanded on 4 May 1950 ahead of the inevitability of the commencement of the Suppression of Communism Act (26 June 1950). The CPSA remained active, but underground. It was in 1961 that Chris would join this party. The following year her joined MK.
A year before his assassination, Chris stepped down as MK's Chief of Staff and threw himself into SACP work campaigning for the Party that was about to be independent of the tripartite alliance created in 1990. His work as a campaigner gained him a huge following in townships.
Mainstream story telling of his death rarely ever reveals how through Chris, the SACP was a far more palatable organisation to young people at the time and how it would probably have gone on to really be a serious contender in elections.
This assassination came about 9 months after a previous attempt, an unidentified man followed Chris while he walked through Marshall Street. This attempt failed because the would-be assassin was spotted. But the South African Police refused to investigate.
The assassin on this day in 1993 was Janusz Walus, a man who at the time had dual citizenship in Poland and here in SA. Here's an article describing how he is regarded a hero among some Polish youth.
bbc.com/news/world-afr…
He was sentenced to death for killing Hani. That sentence was commuted to life after capital punishment was abolished. He is has so far spent 28 years in prison and has been applying for parole for a while now.
iol.co.za/pretoria-news/…
Chris in 1992 speaking with Klaas De Jonge. This was taken in Mthatha. De Jonge was one of those who supplied weapons for MK.
📸: Pieter Boersma Image
Chris in Gugulethu in 1991. Image

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Zikhona Valela Profile picture
7 Apr
Educator, organizer, writer, chorister Charlotte Maxeke was born Charlotte Mokgomo Mannya in Botlokwa Ga-Ramokgoba, Polokwane on this day 150 years ago. Maxeke was the first Black South African woman to obtain a degree. She is an alumnus of Wilberforce University in Ohio.
Her birth place is often mixed up with either her sister, Katie's who was born in Fort Beaufort in 1873 or with her husband's, Marshall Maxeke born in Middledrift. Perhaps because the Mannya's did live in Eastern Cape for a lot of Charlotte's childhood before moving to Kimberley.
In 1891, at 20, Charlotte joined and toured with African Jubilee Choir which toured the UK, USA and Canada from 1891-1893. They were raising funds for a college. It was while they toured that Charlotte was offered a scholarship to study in Ohio.
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6 Apr
Solomon Mahlangu was executed on this day in 1979 even though the court knew he was not responsible for the killings on Goch Street on 13 June 1977. His death took place on what was called Van Riebeeck Day, which marked the official arrival of the VOC on 6 April 1652.
Mahlangu joined MK after the riots that broke out in response and solidarity with the learners of Soweto. The ANC used June 16 as a rallying call to the military training camps and young people responded in their numbers. Mahlangu was among them. He left in September that year.
He would return the following year on 11 June 1977 coming into South African soil through Eswatini, having received training in Angola and in Mozambique. He was with 2 others, Monty Motloung and George Mahlangu. They were intercepted on 13 June while on their way to Soweto.
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1 Apr
Prof Wangari Maathai would've turned 81 today.
Prof Maathai was the Kenyan woman to obtain a PhD when she graduated from the University of Nairobi in 1971. She is apparently the first woman in the East African region to obtain this qualification. She would later make history as the first African woman Nobel Laureate.
She founded the Green Belt Movement after more than 20 years of conservation activism in an attempt to curb deforestation. Of course there are links between clearing land of trees, privatization & corruption. Her work would lead to harrassment by the state including being jailed.
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Zikhona Valela Profile picture
28 Mar
The first group of enslaved people, about 174, arrived at the Cape on this day in 1658 aboard the Amersfoort. Most of them were children. But they actually were not meant to be here, they'd been captured from a Portuguese slaver ship headed to Brazil from Angola.
The Amersfoort basically intercepted the Portuguese ship on which 500 enslaved were aboard taking 250 of them. Not all of those 250 made it to the Cape as 76 of them passed away from illness.
The VOC in the Cape didnt have slaver ships, the Amersfoort was a merchant ship coming from the Netherlands and heading to the Cape when its crew decided to kidnap the 250 people kidnapped from the Angolan coast. Van Riebeeck had been appealing for a couple of slaver ships for a
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25 Mar
Journalist, writer & activist Ida B Wells passed away on this day in 1931. She was born into slavery on 16 July 1862 a year into the American civil war. As an investigative journalist she was the first to expose lynchings in the south. ImageImage
Her work on lynchings was inspired by her friends murder, businessman Thomas Moss & his business partners Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell who were killed on 9 March 1892 all because they had a thriving grocery store business that outrivalled their white counterpart.
Her findings showed that this sort of mob "justice" had nothing to do with Black people being a danger to society, none of the justifications for this were adding up. Rather it was just an act of terrorism against Black people especially those who were competing economically.
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21 Mar
It's the photographer, Ernest Cole's birthday today. He would've turned 81. This photo of Ma Ngoyi was included in his book House Of Bondage.
Cole was born Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole in Eersterust, Pretoria. He dropped out of school when Bantu Education was introduced and would later join Drum as a photographer and later Bantu World. He also was a freelancer.
He was the first black freelance photographer and in the 1960s was reclassified "Coloured" soon after changing the spelling of his surname from Kole to Cole. By 1962 Eersterust was declared a Coloured township under the Group Areas Act. He left for France in 1966.
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