Deputy President Paul Mashatile will visit Limpopo over the weekend to deliver a keynote address at the Tshivhase Day Celebration.

The Deputy President will be attending the event in his capacity as Chairperson of the Inter-Ministerial Task Team on matters of Traditional and Khoi-San leaders.

The event will take place on Saturday, 14 October 2023 at the Prince Thikhathali Stadium in Tshikombani, Venda.

This year’s event will focus on and celebrate the life of Chief Frans Rasimphi Tshivhase’s contribution to the struggle for a free, just and democratic South Africa.

According to Chief Tshivhase’s profile on the Presidency website, he was born in 1900 in Mukumbani in the former Transvaal.

He took over the chieftaincy of the Tshivhase people in April 1930 after the death of his father two months earlier.

“At a time when the Land Act, which sought to dispossess black South Africans of their land, was being implemented across the country, Chief Tshivhase was resolute in his opposition to the expropriation of the land of his subjects and strident in his defence of the rights of his people.”

Throughout his life, the Presidency said he refused to have his people impoverished and waged a monumental struggle in defence of the inheritance of his people.

“Realising that the serious and difficult challenges faced by his mostly rural constituents required a political response, he was among the first traditional leaders of the period to forge strong organisational links with more urban political organisations such as the South African Communist Party, of which he was a member,” the profile reads.

Despite opposition from the apartheid government, Chief Tshivhase continued to defy the authorities by mobilising the local inhabitants against the government.

"He was forcibly removed yet again in 1952, this time to even more distant Ermelo in the eastern part of the former Transvaal, where he was reputedly slow-poisoned.”

He died at Mills Hospital in Johannesburg.

Source: South African Government News Agency