WeeklySA_AdminDEDICATED: Tributes celebrate him as leader who courageously led students during dangerous times
By Staff Reporter
The June 16 Foundation paid tribute to Soweto’s 1976 student leader Dan Sechaba Montsisi, who passed away yesterday due to Covid-19 complications today.
The Foundation’s project director, Thabo Ndabeni, said Montsisi earned his stripes “honourably in the most difficult, trying and dangerous times in the history of struggle that made students to take to streets”.
Montsisi was one of the key quartet of leaders – Tsietsi Mashinini, Khotso Seathlolo and Trofomo Sono – who led the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) at the height of the 1976 uprisings, when students protested against the use of the Afrikaans language as a medium of instruction.
Ndabeni said Montsisi, taking SSRC leadership reins after Tsietsi Mashinini and Khotso Seatlholo, assumed the leadership role with calmness that few of his age at the time could muster.
Ndabeni added: “The class of 1976 is sad to lose an important historical reference point of Montsisi’s standing. The loss is not only limited to his family, the ANC he served post-Robben Island incarceration, and former MPs but also the June 16 Foundation. He will be sorely missed”.
In a statement, the Government sent “its deepest condolences to his family and friends”.
The statement said Montsitsi was one of the leaders in the SSRC that led the student marches against “the encroachment of Afrikaans language as a medium of instruction in schools”. His activism led to him being arrested in June 1977.
“He was one of the presidents of the SSRC, served in the South African Student Movement in 1974, and was an executive committee member of the National Youth Organisation.
“After 1994, he became a member of the democratic Parliament of South Africa and served as a member of the joint standing committee of defence as well as other select committees,” the statement added.
Government Communication and Information System director-general Phumla Williams, said: “Montsisi was known for being vocal in the fight for equal education for the youth.
As a country, we are grateful for the resilience and determination by the youth of 1976 that was led by leaders like Montsisi who stayed the cause for a fight for a free and just democratic South Africa.”
