Cde van Rensburg: An original thinker, activist

He conceived an alternative pedagogy, which sought to intergrade learning and work in such a way that schools would serve not just as institutions for the propagation and transmission of abstract ideas and knowledge, but as centres for socially productive work and community participation and development.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the brigades which he had founded equipped hundreds of young Batswana with productive skills, thereby greatly contributing to the development of this country The Serowe brigade in particular, also became a hub of some South African Communist Party (SACP) activists who had fled from oppression in the then apartheid South Africa. They were also joined by some left intellectuals from Europe who were instructors at the brigade.  A number of Botswana National Front (BNF) cadres also worked at the brigade in that period.