Tsietsi mashinini grave
Teboho MacDonald Mashinini
Student leader of the Soweto Uprising
Teboho "Tsietsi" MacDonald Mashinini (born 27 January – ) born in Jabavu, Soweto, South Africa, died in the summer of in Conakry, Guinea, and buried in Avalon Cemetery, was the main student leader of the Soweto Uprising that began in Soweto and spread across South Africa in June,
Life
Teboho Tsietsi Mashinini known by his pet name "Mcdonald" was born in , 27 January.
He was the second of 13 children of Ramothibe (father) and Nomkhitha Virginia (mother) Mashinini.
Tsietsi mashinini biography definition EBOHO Tsietsi Mashinini, the leader of the Soweto student uprising, was a charismatic and theatrical character, whose love of literature prompted a classmate to call him "Shakespeare's friend in Africa". Yet he was far from a bookish dullard. A softball and karate fiend, he was a real 70s stylista, who wore an Afro, bell-bottoms and peace signs. Girls adored him, and later in life he married a former Miss Liberia. On June 13 at a meeting of hundreds of students at the DOCC, Mashinini suggested they have a mass demonstration to protest against the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools.He was a bright, popular and successful student at Morris Isaacson High School[1] in Soweto where he was the head of the debate team and president of the Methodist Wesley Guild.
A move by South Africa's apartheid government to make the language Afrikaans an equal mandatory language of education for all South Africans in conjunction with English was extremely unpopular with black and English-speaking South African students.
A student himself, Mashinini planned a mass demonstration by students for 16 June [1] This demonstration which would become known as the Soweto Uprising lasted for three days during which several hundred people were killed.[citation needed]
Having been identified as the leader of the uprising by the South African government, Mashinini fled South Africa in exile, first to London then later to various other African countries, including Liberia where he was briefly married to Miss Liberia , Welma Campbell.
He died under mysterious circumstances, possibly of homicide, in the summer of while in exile in Guinea.[2] His body was repatriated to South Africa on 4 August where he was interred in Avalon Cemetery. His grave bears the epitaph "Black Power".[3]
Legacy
There is a statue of Teboho Mashinini by Johannes Phokela in the grounds of his old school that was unveiled on 1 May by Amos Masondo, the Mayor of Johannesburg.[4]