Parcel of Death, Gaongalelwe Tiro, Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781770106499
ONKGOPOTSE Abram Tiro was the first South African freedom fighter who was pursued and killed beyond the country’s borders by a parcel bomb by assassins of the apartheid regime. This method of killing had mixed ‘success’ as it left some of its intended targets dead, and others injured for life.
The regime used parcel bombs and other methods, including car bombs, to dispatch people it considered a threat to the continued existence of apartheid.
Following on the killing of Tiro, John Dube was also killed by a parcel bomb in Zambia, the same year. Another famous activist, Ruth First, was killed the same way a few years later, in Mozambique.
Written by the son of Tiro’s brother, Gaongalelwe Tiro, Parcel of Death is an important story in the history of South Africa. Sadly, it is one that few people are taught in history classes and even fewer are told as part of the verbal passage of history between generations.
Gaongalelwe Tiro has painstakingly pieced together the story of his uncle from research in writings and interviews with people who knew the activist from childhood.
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Written in a simple narrative as a biography, this book shares anecdotes from Tiro’s childhood in Dinokana, Zeerust, and his youth work as a permanent organiser of the South African Student Organisation (SASO).
He delivered his now infamous speech, Turfloop Testimony, at his university’s graduation ceremony in 1972. He sharply criticised the Bantu Education Act of 1953 and it was soon after described as poisonous and was the cause of his expulsion.
The story of Tiro’s life, as crafted by his nephew, describes him as a “contributor” on the book’s cover. It also includes the various working roles and the impact that his faith had in forging him into the man who many hail as the “father” of the student uprisings of June 1976.
It is a compelling portrait of Tiro’s story and his lasting significance in South Africa’s history.
For anyone wanting to learn more about the real history of South Africa’s thought leaders, this is a great point of beginning.
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