Dingake: A hero of South African liberation struggle
It is not for nothing that Michael Kitso Dingake has been described as one of the foremost heroes of the South African liberation struggle which raged from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Bor n in 192 8 i n Bobonong, Mi chael Dingake, the founding president of the Botswana Congress Party ( BCP) who has been ill for a long time, passed away, on Sunday 7th April.
Dr Mpho Pheko, the BCP spokesperson said in an audio recording in both Setswana and English that Dingake, who spent 15 years in Robben Island alongside the late freedom fighter and South Africa’s first black President, Ne l s o n Ma n d e l a , was an “astounding revolutionary” whose name will stand as long as the world stands.
Dingake attended the Bobonong Primary School between 1936 and 1941. He then went to South Africa where he did his secondary schooling at St Ansgars Institution, Roodepoort, in the then Union of South Africa from 1942 to 1943, and Pax College, in Pietersburg ( Polokwane), in 1946.
He obtained his senior certificate through private studies from Damelin College in Johannesburg. He would later obtain his BA ( Political Science and Economics), B. Admin ( Public Administration and Local Government Accounting) and B. Com ( Business Economics and Accounting) while serving his jail term on Robben Island.
Although he went to South Africa to study, Dingake later found himself in an intense political activism when he could not sit and nonchalantly watch the dehumanisation and humiliation of Blacks at the hands of the minority racist South African whites. He jumped into the bandwagon of the South African liberation struggle after joining African National Congress ( ANC) in 1952 during the Defiance Campaign.
The Botswana- born political heavy weight held several positions in the party before his incarceration as the timid Boers were petrified by the determination of the oppressed black race in South Africa.
According to his profile on the website of South Af r i ca’s Presidency, in 1960, Dingake was recruited into the South African Communist Party ( SACP). He also served in the SACP District Committee. Further, he also served on the Umkhonto We Sizwe ( MK) Johannesburg Regional Structure, handling the recruitment of trainees abroad. Available literature indicates that Dingake assumed all responsibility for MK operat ions , including the infiltration of trained MK cadres.
In 1962 Dingake, narrowly avoided being arrested by the then Security Police when he went to a hideout. He disguised himself as a municipal policeman. Just as he got to the entrance of the house, the security guard who was at the gate saw him and signalled that he should go back, as the police were inside.
Further, the guard whispered that the police had arrested Maharaj ( Mac). Following the arrest of Maharaj, Dingake had to leave the country. He was sent on a mission to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. When he came back to Johannesburg he found more of the people who were working with him had also been arrested.
Eventually, in 1965, Dingake skipped the border back to Botswana where, from February 1965 to December 1965, he was the external contact with the ANC underground machinery
in Johannesburg while he organised infiltration routes for MK guerrillas from Zambia through Botswana.
The route had been opened and the first trainees had come through when he was kidnapped on his way to Lusaka, through Southern Rhodesia ( now Zimbabwe) which was under Ian Smith.
According to the Profile on the website of South Africa’s Presidency, Dingake was severely tortured prior to his trial. Following his release from jail, Dingake ventured into writing to free his people from illiteracy. He published his autobiography, ‘ My fight against apartheid’.
In Botswana, Dingake joi ned the Botswana National Front ( BNF), which at the time was led by its founder, the late Dr Kenneth Koma. Eager to benefit from Dingake’s vast political experience, the BNF amended its constitution to make provision for the position of Vice President which they gave to Dingake.
In 1 9 9 8 , the BNF experienced a violent split which gave birth to the BCP whose president became Dingake. Dingake was later succeeded by Gilson Saleshando when he retired from political activism in 2004.
Dingake was not just a politician. He was an erudite scholar. He has worked for the University of Botswana ( UB). Dingake has written several books among which works are, My Fight Against apartheid ( 1987), Apartheid, Questions and Answers ( 1989) and Politics of Confusion – The BNF Saga 1984- 1998 ( 2004) and an autobiography Better to Die on One’s Feet.
Dingake continued to write as a columnist for Mmegi newspaper. He looked at himself first and foremost as an African duty- bound to fight for the liberation of Africans on their continent. The fact that he was a Botswana national never prevented him from engaging in sacrificial struggles to realise the dream of a free, non- racist, nonsexist and democratic South Africa.
In April 2007, the South Af r i c an Gove rnment conferred Dingake with the Grand Companion of The Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Gold in recognition of his services to South Africa. May his soul rest in eternal peace!