13 August 2003
Tomorrow the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Blade Nzimande, will address the following events:
1. EXHUMATION OF THE LATE LINDA JOBANE (MK COMBATANT KNOWN AS "DORDON DIKWEBU" OR "THE LION OF CHIAWELO")
Date - Thursday, 14 August 2003
Time - 09h00
Venue - Avalon Cemetery, Soweto
The biography of Jobane is contained below. Jobane died on 20 November 1980 during a shootout with the Soweto Special Branch of the SAP. Jobane was underground operative of MK and SACP member.
2. MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR LESLEY MANYATHELA
Date - Thursday, 14 August 2003
Time - 12h00
Venue - Standard Bank Arena, Doornfontein
Nzimande will speak at the service as a friend of the Orlando Priates Football Club and he has been asked to speak on "Why we called him 'Slow Poison'".
The Lion of Chiawelo
Petros Linda Jobane (MK name' Gordon Dikebu') is just one of the many young workers and SACP martyrs who died on active service in the ranks of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Born in Soweto, Jobane's father died while he was still very young. His mother could only afford to keep him at school until Standard Five, after which he worked to help support the family.
His working class experience and the 1976 Soweto Uprising led Jobane into the revolutionary movement.
Early on the morning of November 21, 1980 the enemy, in large numbers, surrounded his hide-out in the Soweto township of Chiawelo. The police called on Jobane to surrender.
Instead, Jobane defiantly fired back. he fought to his last bullet. Witnessess say he ' fought like a lion'. The police, who had assembled a huge force, had to keep a respectful distance. Some were seen to be hit. Jonabe finally died in a grenade explosion - he was determined not to be taken alive.
What emerged from his combat unit, after his death, was that they called him 'ikomanisi' because of his dedication and determination.
ANC STATEMENT ON THE EXHUMATION OF THE LION OF CHIAWELO
The Jabane family of White City Jabavu in Soweto are busy with preparations to exhume the remains of their son, Linda, a battle-steeled combatant of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), who fell in action in 1980, for a dignified reburial.
Linda died in a grenade blast during a shoot-out, in the early hours of 20 November 1980, with the apartheid security forces who had uncovered his hideout in Chiawelo, Soweto. The enemy troops had surrounded the house where Linda was and called out through a loud-hailer for him to surrender. But, having sworn never to be captured alive and, in line with the MK spirit of no surrender, Linda chose to take them on and fight to the bitter end. Neighbours, who witnessed the fight from the safety of their unlit houses, described Linda, who operated under the combat name 'Gordon Dikebu', as having fought like a lion, hence the name "The Lion of Chiawelo" which he earned posthumously. The apartheid security forces, who had assembled a huge force, had to keep a respectful distance and some were seen to be hit and falling during the fierce exchange of fire. A member of the Moncada Detachment of MK, Linda was born to a poor family, the eldest of five children. His mother could only afford to pay for his schooling up to standard five, after which he was forced to leave school and look for a job to help her support the family.
The detachment was named in appreciation of the heroic contribution made by the government and people of Cuba to the liberation struggle of progressive forces of the world in general and South Africa in particular.
It was named in honour of the first military operation by Cuban freedom fighters against the regime of Fulgencio Batista when, on 26 July 1953, Fidel Castro led the liberation army's first military operation in which 100 men and women attacked the Moncada army barracks near Santiago de Cuba.
Though the operation led to the arrest of Castro and others, as well as the torture and killing of many more, it laid the foundation for the final overthrow of the Batista regime.
Having been forced to swell the ranks of the working class at an early age, Linda became very sensitive to injustice and was actively involved in the student's uprisings in 1976, even though by then he was no longer a student.
In 1977, together with several other youths from Soweto, he left the country to join the ranks of MK. He received military and political training at Novo Katenga in Angola and immediately impressed his commanders and commissars through discipline and commitment.
In January 1980, Linda came back into the country to join what was known as the G5 unit of the Transvaal Urban Machinery of MK. The unit was based in Soweto, living in dugouts around mine dumps on the outskirts of Meadowlands.
By that time, the unit had survived for three years and had carried out some daring operations. MK used dugouts (underground shelters), as a survival mechanism following a visit by the ANC and MK leadership, led by the late President Oliver Tambo, to Vietnam, where they were highly impressed by the effective use of the structures by fighters of the Vietnamese liberation army. The fighters used the meticulously constructed and camouflaged dugouts as shelter and retreat bases when not in combat, as well as for storage of war material, supplies and other logistics including medicines.
The unit, which had within its ranks hardened guerilla fighters like Anthony 'Bobby' Tsotsobe and others, had a specific task of carrying out attacks on police institutions, which terrorized communities in general and activists in particular. Linda and Bobby were part of the unit that carried out one of MK's most daring operations; an attack on Booysens Police Station, in which an RPG 7 rocket launcher, also known as a 'Bazooka', was used for the first time on South African soil.
One of the unit's other operations was an attack on Uncle Tom's Hall in Orlando West, which housed offices where residents paid rent. At that time a rent boycott by residents of Soweto was underway and the attack was carried out in support of that campaign. Municipal records were destroyed and the municipality's efforts to trace rent defaulters were paralysed.
The unit was forced to abandon their hideout when one of them was killed in a shoot-out with the police in Meadowlands. They split up and went to live in houses in Soweto. It was after one of them was arrested that Linda's hideout was exposed and heavily armed units of the security police surrounded the house with the aim of capturing him. He would not let them do it and fought to the last bullet and died in a grenade blast. Like all freedom fighters who were killed by agents of the apartheid regime, his body was not released to his family to give him a decent burial.
The family has begun preparations to exhume his remains so that they can give him a burial deserving of a national hero of his calibre. They are working in close cooperation with the ANC, of which he was a loyal and devoted cadre.