Publisher’s note: This extract explores the enduring mystery surrounding the death of Tsietsi Mashinini, one of the most prominent leaders of the 1976 Soweto uprising. Living in exile for more than a decade after becoming a symbol of youth resistance against apartheid, Mashinini spent his final years moving between several African countries while grappling with political isolation, personal struggles and deteriorating mental health.
Drawing on interviews, family testimony and historical records, this passage examines the unanswered questions surrounding his death in Guinea in 1990, the grief of those closest to him and the lingering search for truth and justice that continues decades later. This passage is a lightly edited excerpt from Sam Mathe’s biography, Tsietsi Mashinini – Elusive Hero of Soweto.
Should we understand Tsietsi Mashinini’s demise against the background of violent and fatal ideological clashes?
In the absence of evidence to prove that his death was politically motivated, conspiracy theorists have been tempted to choose this route, a line of thought that suggests he had been made to pay the ultimate price for his refusal to join the ANC.
There are too many unanswered questions but, in the absence of solid facts or circumstantial evidence, it would be unfair and irresponsible to point fingers at any organisation or individual.
By some accounts, he was assaulted but the identity of the assailant or assailants remains a mystery after all these years.
There was never an arrest, let alone a trial for his murder.
In Portia Rankoane’s documentary film, Tsietsi My Hero, Ma-Mokete recounts that Miriam Makeba phoned her a week before his death and explained that he was in hospital, seriously ill — but there was never mention of an assault. Was he perhaps assaulted in his sick bed?
In an interview, Barney Mokgatle said that when he offered to go to Guinea to participate in the repatriation of the body, Makeba discouraged him and instead suggested that he join the repatriation team in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“I don’t want what happened to Tsietsi to happen to you,” the singer reportedly told Mokgatle.
Unfortunately, Mokgatle died on 13 November 2025 after a long illness that made it impossible for follow-up interviews that might have clarified matters such as this one.
One of the reasons why there’s so little information in the public domain about Tsietsi’s life in exile, especially his final years, is the absence of detail in some of the books written by those whose paths crossed his.
For instance, in Makeba: The Miriam Makeba Story, published in 2004, the singer writes extensively about her recollections of people like Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s deposed head of state and renowned pan-Africanist; Sékou Touré, the first president of Guinea and her host; Stokely Carmichael, her ex-husband, fiery Black Power activist and orator; and even a relatively unknown South African expatriate musician named Muntu Mvuyana.
But, for some reason, she wrote little about Tsietsi, her son in exile. This, of course, doesn’t suggest any wrongdoing on her part. It only deepens the mystery.
About him she writes, “I know someone like Tsietsi went to Liberia, then I heard that he was in Senegal, then Nigeria, then all was quiet.”
A well-known fact is that, after staying in those countries, Tsietsi’s last stop was Guinea, where he lived with Makeba after he was ousted from the South African Youth Revolutionary Council leadership.
Welma, his ex-wife, says that at that stage he was battling with mental illness and struggling to cope with living far away from home.
The marriage had failed due to his unstable state of mind and occasional violent outbursts. Under such circumstances, she says Makeba did her best to ensure that his needs were met by getting a housekeeper for him.
The singer’s hospitality was legendary. Several exiled musicians at the time, including Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Caiphus Semenya and Letta Mbulu, have spoken about how she had helped them with scholarships and accommodation when they arrived in the US in the early 1960s.
On the continent, her prominence as Mama Africa coincided with the attaining of independence by many countries. She became a highly sought-after performer and guest of honour at independence celebrations, inauguration ceremonies and state banquets.
According to Welma, who was one of Makeba’s backing singers, her concerts were about sounding the cause for the freedom of the continent and South Africa in particular. She used her connections with heads of state to push efforts that were made by student leaders such as Tsietsi.
Yet when she was expected to perform for her own black president in 1994, she was snubbed. She didn’t even get an invitation to the tables that were graced by her American friends such as Nina Simone and Harry Belafonte, the man she once fondly referred to as Big Brother.
Why was the artist who sang for President John F Kennedy and spoke against apartheid at the United Nations refused the ultimate honour on home soil — to sing for Madiba?
Some say her pan-African stance and links with Tsietsi had something to do with it. It seems like, just as with the circumstances surrounding Tsietsi’s death, this is another mystery that might never be solved.
In Tsietsi, My Hero, which is available on YouTube, Portia Rankoane says Miriam Makeba refused to speak to her. Welma explains that Makeba maintained her silence to avoid controversy after she realised that there were too many stories and theories surrounding his death.
Makeba died on 9 November 2008 at the age of 76, after performing at a concert in Italy.
During her testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1996, Ma-Mokete told the nation that she was very sad that her son couldn’t come back in 1990 when exiles were returning home.
The distraught mother said that for years she had been nursing the hope of seeing him come back to his family and country. She had heard reports that Tsietsi was mentally unwell and had hoped to see him being admitted to one of the local psychiatric facilities.
“But unfortunately, we couldn’t make it because we had no money to fetch him,” she said. “That’s when we knew that he was staying in Guinea because all along we didn’t know where he stayed.”
Shortly after Tsietsi’s death, Ma-Mokete told the TRC that the family received a letter from the Government of Guinea written in a “strange language” (probably French) that they couldn’t read but understood to mean that he had died of natural causes.
She continued: “But when his corpse was brought to South Africa, it was not like natural death. He had wounds all over the body and a big one behind the ear. He had a big wound which after three weeks was still bleeding and one of his eyes had fallen in. The eye socket was a hole and the other eye was swollen. There were many bruises in the face. All these injuries show that he was brutally murdered.”
Tsietsi’s mother went to her grave in 2008, aged 73, eighteen years after her son’s death, without knowledge of the circumstances surrounding his tragic end. Her decision to oppose a post-mortem was one that she would live to regret.
In 1990, Thabo Leshilo was working as a reporter at The Star. A day or so after reports of Tsietsi’s death, a phone in the newsroom rang and he picked up the receiver. A black male with a Francophone accent blurted out: “Tsietsi didn’t die of Aids. He was murdered.”
Before the journalist could respond, the line went dead. The caller never phoned again. In 2012, the PAC and Azapo called for an inquest into Tsietsi’s death, a call supported by the Mashinini family. However, to date, the South African government has not responded.
There have been numerous cover-ups of circumstances surrounding the deaths of apartheid activists over the years, including those of Abram Tiro, Steve Biko, Mapetla Mohapi, Griffiths and Victoria Mxenge, Dr Fabian and Florence Ribeiro, Nokuthula Simelane, the Cradock Four (Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkhonto, Fort Calata and Sicelo Mhlauli), the Pebco Three (Sipho Hashe, Champion Galela and Qaqawuli Godolozi), David Webster, Dulcie September, Bheki Mlangeni and many others, not forgetting the victims of 16 June 1976.
Family members of the victims — including Tsietsi’s mother — testified at the TRC but many of them are still waiting for justice. Others have gone to their graves with the pain of not knowing what happened to their loved ones and, after three decades, many of those who are still alive have not found closure.
At the time of writing, former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma are facing intense scrutiny about their alleged roles in stalling the prosecution of apartheid-era killers who were refused amnesty by the TRC.
While they have denied accusations of secret deals with the apartheid state, they tried to remove Justice Sesi Khampepe from the judicial inquiry investigating the allegations of political interference in these post-TRC prosecutions.
Tsietsi Mashinini: Elusive Hero of Soweto is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers