“I am proud to be what I am…
The storm of oppression will be followed
By the rain of my blood
I am proud to give my life
My one solitary life.”
-Benjamin Moloise (1985)
These lines of poetry by Benjamin Moloise were penned before he was executed by hanging during the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa by the hard-line government of P. W. Botha on October 18, 1985. No amount of international resistance, including that of USA and the USSR could persuade the apartheid state to prevent the controversial conviction to save his life. One among the black majority who were long treated as second-class citizens in their own land; Moloise was a factory worker, member of the then banned African National Congress and a poet. In the context of violent resistance to apartheid in South Africa's black townships, attacks on black officials and police officers who administered state authority were common. Convicted in a plot to kill a black police officer in 1983, his execution further escalated the existing racial violence against the furious black rioting protesters, that inversely grew into a mass movement throughout the small townships. Benjamin's last lines spread by word of mouth like wild fire vindicating Moloise's final message, and subsequently became a catalyst at anti-apartheid rallies.
Though the vestiges of apartheid still shape South African politics and society, the negotiations to end apartheid led to democratic elections in 1994 and were won by the ANC, under Nelson Mandela.
