The story of Peter Mokaba was of a man who was not prepared to be defeated, of a man who, whatever his weaknesses, was at the forefront of the liberation movement and close to the core of the African National Congress.
His party says it will remember him as a free spirit and liberation fighter. Others outside the ruling party owe him more than they readily recognise. His courage and refusal to be cowed by pressure of the apartheid regime, even by violent abuse, inspired many young people to join the liberation struggle.
I was only 14 when I first met Mokaba. I had heard of him before. But it was during an ANC rally in Limpopo Province that I first made a personal contact with him. The rally was the fourth Mokaba had attended that day. It was hot, and my friends and I were sitting under a tree.
Among us there were potential teachers, doctors and mechanics. But there were also aspirant politicians, inspired by the stature of the likes of Mokaba. I can still remember my friends’ wishes: they wanted to be the next Nelson Mandela, the next Oliver Tambo — the next Mokaba.
It was not difficult to understand why. Although anti-apartheid activists were being harshly treated by the regime, young people — largely as a result of Mokaba’s fiery speeches — idolised them.
This was reflected in many ways. In their bedrooms pictures of Michael Jackson were being replaced by images of Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and, of course, Mokaba.
Have you ever wished that you could become someone else? That you could shed yourself like some old shirt and slip into something more pleasant? Yes? Well, that is what my friends wanted to do: they wanted to be Mokaba.
To many South African youth Mokaba was an ordinary man doing extraordinary things. But to a number of my old friends he was more than an ordinary man. Mokaba’s compassion for the oppressed made him an icon to many of the youth, who needed role models.
Mokaba fitted the role to near perfection. He led the struggle for radical social and political change from the front. But his involvement in the struggle did not hamper his education. A man from a humble upbringing, he taught maths and science at a local school before he went to further his studies at the University of the North.
When I first saw him I was struck by his face — so humane and sensitive. There seemed in this man such an obvious integrity that it demanded almost immediate respect; quite simply, he was not like other men.
He seems to me to have been a loyal ANC cadre. His loyalty to the organisation was perhaps the reason for his obsessive defence of dissident views on HIV/Aids also shared by President Thabo Mbeki.
That stance on Aids was more damaging to him than charges that he had been an apartheid spy for several years in the 1980s. The reason? The youth among whom he was most popular were those most vulnerable to the epidemic.