Commemorating Our Fallen Heroes
Commemorating Our Fallen Heroes: Cdes Benjamin Moloise and Abraham Mngomezulu
- 5 May 2025
On June 3, 2025, the ANC held a dignified reburial ceremony for Cdes Benjamin Moloise and Abraham Mngomezulu at the West Park Cemetery in Johannesburg.
The ANC Veterans League pays its most profound respects to the families of Cdes Benjamin Moloise and Abraham Mngomezulu, courageous freedom fighters who were brutally executed by the apartheid regime and buried as paupers.
On 18 October 1985, the racist regime callously hanged Cde Benjamin Moloise, a dedicated movement cadre and talented poet, at the young age of 30.
His crime, which was not proven, was the murder of a black policeman. At the time, the African National Congress claimed responsibility for the murder and rejected that Moloise was involved.
Despite the international community pleading with the racist regime not to go ahead with the execution, it went ahead. His grieving parents waited outside were denied the right to perform final rituals or grant their son a dignified farewell.
It executed a barely 30-year-old South African who was committed to the liberation of all South Africans from the yoke of the apartheid regime. That is how brutal and evil the apartheid regime was.
Similarly, on 25 May 1989, the regime executed Cde Abraham Mngomezulu, an ANC underground activist convicted for the 1987 killing of Mandla Khoza during a Soweto rent boycott protest.
At the time, Black South Africans were barred from democratic representation, and the ANC rightfully supported mass resistance against apartheid structures. The executions of these heroes sparked widespread fury, intensifying township unrest and spreading resistance even to previously untouched areas like the Johannesburg CBD.
As the ANC Veterans’ League, we honour these martyrs who sacrificed everything for our freedom. Though they were buried as paupers, today they rest with the dignity and recognition they deserve. Their legacy lives on in our hard-won democracy. We appreciate the role that was played by the two brave patriots who were fighting for the liberation of all South Africans.
We thank the African National Congress for ensuring that the families find closure as they were buried as paupers.
Long live the spirit of Cde Benjamin Moloise!
Long live!
Long live the spirit of Cde Abraham Mngomezulu!
Long live!
Amandla!