Molefe Pheto | |
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Born | 1935 (age 88–89) |
Occupations |
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Years active | 1970–present |
Notable work | And Night Fell: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in South Africa |
Molefe Pheto (born 1935) is a former South African musician and music teacher who, as an activist in the Black Consciousness Movement, became a political prisoner in 1975. He was a friend and spokesperson of South African President Nelson Mandela. [1]
Pheto was born in 1935 in Alexandra Township, South Africa, where he grew up. [2] [3]
Pheto was an active participant in the Black Consciousness Movement since 1970. In 1971 he founded Mhloti, working with others such as Wally Serote, producing music, poetry, and theatrical events and performing speeches by political activists and schools, churches and political rallies. [4] He organised three Black Arts festivals for MDALI (the Music, Drama, Arts and Literature Institute in Soweto), of which he was a founder member and spokesman, and in 1975 he was detained under South Africa's 1963 Terrorism Act for 10 months. [5] He was held in Johannesburg's police headquarters, John Vorster Square. [6]
In 1977, Pheto left South Africa and, after the murder of Steve Biko, began a life of exile in Britain. [7] In 1983, Allison & Busby published his memoir, And Night Fell: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in South Africa, [8] [9] which was banned in South Africa. [10]
After 20 years in Britain, Pheto returned to South Africa and settled on a farm in Magaliesburg, publishing his second book, entitled The Bull from Moruleng: Vistas of Home and Exile, in 2014. [11] [10] He is a member of the Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO). [3]
Bantu Stephen Biko OMSG was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. His ideas were articulated in a series of articles published under the pseudonym Frank Talk.
The Black People's Convention (BPC) was a national coordinating body for the Black Consciousness movement of South Africa. Envisaged as a broad-based counterpart to the South African Students' Organisation, the BPC was active in organising resistance to apartheid from its establishment in 1972 until it was banned in late 1977.
The Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO) is a South African liberation movement and political party. The organisation's two student wings are the Azanian Students' Movement (AZASM) for high school learners and the other being for university level students called the Azanian Students' Convention (AZASCO), its women's wing is Imbeleko Women's Organisation, simply known as IMBELEKO. Its inspiration is drawn from the Black Consciousness Movement inspired philosophy of Black Consciousness developed by Steve Biko, Harry Nengwekhulu, Abram Onkgopotse Tiro, Vuyelwa Mashalaba and others, as well as Marxist Scientific Socialism.
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 Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The BCM represented a social movement for political consciousness.
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