BNF Commemorates ANC 1962 Lobatse Congress
Correspondent | Monday August 21, 2017 16:08
This will be on the 25th and 26th of August 2017 in Lobatse. The public lecture will be on Friday 25th August at Peleng Community Hall at 6pm. Cde Mike Dingake will be the main speaker at the public lecture to give an eye witness account of what transpired. The veterans meeting, motorcade and rally will be on Saturday 26th August.
BNF President, Cde Duma Gideon Boko will address the party veterans at 10am at St Theresa Primary school. The motorcade will start at the same time at Extension Gunners grounds in Peleng and the rally will commence at 2pm.
All opposition parties have also been invited for this historic occasion and several political leaders are expected to address the afternoon rally.
From South Africa, the ANC and the South African Communist Party have been invited to grace the event and make speeches.
Families of Fish Keitseng, Dingake and other activists who attended the conference have also been invited to grace the commemoration.
Cde Keitseng assisted the ANC cadres for years in Lobatse. He was a member of the ANC while working in South Africa and after being deported for political reasons to Botswana, he continued to assist the ANC in the liberation struggle at his house in Lobatse. During the height of the ANC liberation struggle, Keitseng housed South African former Presidents, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki at his Lobatse house. He also assisted thousands of the ANC activists en-route to other parts of the world for political and military training.
In October 1962, Cde Keitseng organised the ANC underground Congress in Lobatse where the party also launched its fresh armed struggle under their military wing, Umkhoto We Sizwe against the apartheid regime.
Keitseng and Dingake were to later contribute to the formation of the BNF in 1965 and it is their heroic and sterling contributions to the ANC, the people of South Africa and the BNF that their work is being celebrated. Lobatse residents have also over the years been loyal and a darling of the BNF. Cde Keitseng passed on the 28th March 2005 having been a BNF councillor in Gaborone from 1989 to 1994. He has since received the Order of Luthuli House (Silver) from South African government and his historic Lobatse house has been declared a national monument. The BNF salutes this Cde.
The BNF, all members of the Umbrella for Democratic Change and the public in general, are invited to attend in large numbers and grace this mammoth occasion.
Justin Hunyepa
BNF Publicity Secretary