Statement

Yesterday, the President of South Africa conferred the Isithwalandwe/Seaparankwe award to Ntate Cholo on his 100th birthday at his home in Soshanguve. On Saturday, 25 October 2025, Tshwane University of Technology will be celebrating Ntate Cholo’s 100th birthday and acknowledging his selfless contributions to the struggle

Cde Tlou Cholo, receiver of the Isithwalandwe/Seaparankwe award, turns 100 on 20th October.  Here,Cde Mavuso Msimang, ANC Veterans reflects on the life of Cde Cholo after reading his biography about three years ago

THREE years ago, I came upon a biography of Tlou Theophilus Cholo, a distinguished uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) veteran who has been awarded the long-overdue recognition as the ANC’s unquestionably distinguished Seaparankoe. The book, authored by Dr Tlou Setumu, bears the title: Heeding the Call to Fight for the Fatherland.

It chronicles an indestructible commitment to the freedom cause and courage in the face of relentless, savage torture. What kind of physical, mental and spiritual conditioning enables a mortal being to spurn death, as Cholo did? No simple answer there, but this book has been a therapeutic and gives those associated with the ANC a badge of pride. Such is the quiet, dignified demeanour that has characterised Comrade T. T. Cholo’s long life. He turns 100 years on 20 October 2025!

In the foreword to Cholo’s biography, the respected, late Professor Shadrack Gutto observes that it is only “the partial histories of leaders constituting the tip of the iceberg that are recorded. The mass of the millions who participate in historic revolutions rarely get their stories written.”

Setumu’s work should thus be welcomed for contributing to filling this gap. In his elegy, the English poet, Thomas Gray observes: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness in the desert air.” Surely, we should not allow Cholo’s breath-taking accomplishments to lie buried in the pit of unsung heroes.

TEMPERING THE STEEL 

Cholo was born into the Bakone ba Ga Matlala clan in Limpopo on 20 October 1925. The tempering of his steel for the struggles that lay ahead began when, having started school at age 12, to do grades 5 and 6 he had to walk 30km daily to and from school. After finishing primary education, he went to find a job in the City of Gold, in the now appropriately named Gauteng Province.

A black man, he had to have a special permit to be allowed into the Witwatersrand. His expired before he could land a job, resulting in him spending a weekend in detention in the Yeoville police station. He took up a succession of demeaning jobs in white households that offered low pay and entailed long working hours, all done in an oppressively racist human environment.

Employment at the Union Building Corporation in 1949 enabled him to join a trade union, which brought him into contact with ANC members John Nkadimeng, Mark Shope, Alfred Nzo and others, all of whom were to become prominent struggle stalwarts. This distinguished company of comrades got Cholo started in struggle politics as an organiser of workers. For his troubles he lost his job.

A man of the moment, he participated in the 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws. He campaigned for the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955. He was in the Commissioner Streetcrowd that burnt their dompases, as directed by ANC president Chief AJ Luthuli when he visited Jozi in 1960.

When the ANC was banned in the same year, Cholo was among the first people to be instructed to continue its work covertly and n 1962 he left the country for trade union, political and military training in Moscow. He speaks with pride about the privilege of meeting Fidel Castro, the late Cuba and Nikita Khrushchev who was the president of union of Soviet Socialist Republics, now dissolved.

Upon completing his training in 1966, Cholo was back in Africa, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, ready to return home to mobilise for the commencement of the armed struggle. Next, he and Uria Maleka are cross the Zambezi River hidden under a false bottom in a special compartment covered by a pile of frozen fish and ice and created at the at the back of a fisherman’s bakkie. The ‘fisherman’ was comrade Benjamin Ramotse, an ANC guerrilla with whom I trained in Moscow. The designer of the false bottom was comrade Peter Masemola, the ANC’s highly skilled carpenter who ran the ANC-owned Star Furniture in Lusaka. Ramotse steers his precious cargo under the pile of fish safely to shore past a South African checkpoint mounted on the bridge in the middle of the mighty river. They reach the southern bank freezing cold but greatly relieved that they managed to fool the apartheid security police.

POLICE AMBUSH

Disaster strikes when the person who is supposed to meet them on the Botswana side fails to pitch. Up and down they pace in the bush alongside the road, to no avail. A Masarwa (San) man approaches them and offers to help them find transport to Francistown, their destination. Instead, he delivers them straight into a police ambush. They are promptly driven to Kasane police station, where the station commander, called Martin, a relic of the departed British colonial administration, oversees their dreadful treatment.

They are subsequently charged with being in the country illegally, carrying false passports and bearing weapons of war. Sentenced to three years and nine months’ imprisonment, they appeal against the sentence, but lose. They are transferred to Gaborone prison to serve their sentence and are well treated. Botswana rejects the apartheid government’s request for Cholo and Maleka to be deported to SA and instead sends them to Zambia.

After a refresher course in Russia in 1971, Cholo joins a select group of ANC guerrillas on a year-long naval training programme in Baku, Azerbaijan. It includes learning how to pilot a submarine. ANC president Oliver Tambo, Moses Mabhida, Joe Slovo and Chris Hani travel to Baku to discuss the mission. A Greek vessel, the Aventura, has been chartered for the voyage to SA. They’ll be dropped off at several selected spots along the Indian Ocean coast between Durban and the former Transkei.

Upon completing their programme, group members travel clandestinely to Mogadishu in Somalia to start their journey home. No sooner has the Aventura set sail than it develops engine problems, forcing it to return to Mogadishu for repairs. The vessel leaves again but starts floundering due to the same mechanical problems. The mission is aborted. Suspecting sabotage, the ANC and Somalian authorities have the captain and the crew detained for questioning.

SETBACKS

Undaunted by these setbacks, Cholo and his colleagues are ready to explore other ways and means of getting to SA. In July 1971, Cholo, Sandi Sijake and Joe Guma fly to Matsapha airport, in Eswatini, on their way to Polokwane for Cholo, and the Eastern Cape for Sijake and Guma. Alex Moumbaris, a French national who is part of the ANC infiltration machinery, drives them out of Eswatini and drops them a few kilometres from the border post. They enter the country through the border fence close to the hut of a security sentinel. Fortunately, they pass unnoticed. An emotional Cholo kneels down to kiss the ground, delighted to be back home. For the second time in his experience, the person assigned to meet them does not show up. They spend the night in the bush and resume their trek at the crack of dawn. On the road a truck driver gives them a lift. Sitting on its load of tar-coated poles, they arrive in Ermelo quite a sight.

Observing strict security protocols, they board the evening train to Johannesburg. Sijake and Guma change trains along the way and head for the Eastern Cape. Cholo arrives at the Park Station terminal sporting a beard and sunglasses. He strolls down the street and waits for dusk before taking a train to Molapo in Soweto. There lives the Sekwele family, which has a close relationship with Ntsana Samuel Chokwe, a traditional healer.

“Seanne”, as Cholo introduces himself to the Sekwele family on whose door he knocks that evening, claims that he lives in Randburg and is looking for a traditional doctor called Chokwe, originally from Matjitjileng village in the Mokopane-Mogalakwena area of Limpopo. His story is convincing and the Sekweles welcome him and offer him accommodation pending his meeting with Chokwe. In fact, Chokwe and Cholo used to be close friends and members of the ANC in years gone by. After gaining the confidence of the Sekweles, Cholo decides to change his story and discloses his true identity. It works sublimely.

Chokwe eventually comes back from his travels in the Free State and meets Cholo at the Sekweles. It is agreed that it would be too risky for Cholo to return to his village. Chokwe, therefore, recommends that Cholo go to Burgwal and stay at the home of Vendah Pheme, Chokwe’s sister. Pheme will be told that Cholo is Chokwe’s patient and be asked to accommodate him while awaiting Chokwe’s arrival from Joburg.

At one point, fearing that he might be killed, Cholo signals to the black guards that he is ready to talk.

On the train from Pretoria to Polokwane, Cholo suspects that he is being shadowed by a young man. He proceeds, anyway, and after alighting from the train he takes a bus to Burgwal, bound for the Pheme home where he is warmly welcomed after explaining the circumstances of his sojourn.

DAYS OF TORTURE

All is well until one morning, some two months later, two policemen enter the Pheme homestead and arrest Cholo. A scuffle breaks out and he is overpowered, handcuffed and placed in leg irons. The suspicious young man is in one of the cars. Ten police vehicles are parked nearby, ready to escort the captured “terrorist” to Polokwane police station, thence to a Pretoria prison. Verbally abused by his captors along the way, on his arrival Cholo is thrown into a basement cell where he is interrogated and subjected to torture for days on end. Stripped naked and his hands and feet tied together, he spendsmost of the time suspended from the roof of the cell. They pull out his toenails. Bleeding, he is splashed with cold water from a high-pressure hosepipe.
For days he isn’t given food. His tormentors continue trying to extract information from him. Nicolaas Jacobus Arlow, the brute who masterminds the persecution, is reputed to have taken a number of black lives. At one point, fearing that he might be killed, Cholo signals to the black guards that he is ready to talk. The message is conveyed to jubilant white officers who give instructions that he should be taken down from the ceiling and given his clothes. A press conference is arranged for him to tell all, but Cholo somehow can’t bring himself to say anything that might compromise his comrades. He is promptly sent back to his cell for more assaults.

Finally, Cholo is charged and makes his first court appearance in December 1972. He is joined by Peter Mthembu, Justice Mpanza and Sandi Sijake. The other co-accused are Alex Moumbaris and John Hosey. The trial starts in March 1973. Cholo, Sijake, Mpanza and Mthembu have pro deo representation. They are found guilty and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. Moumbaris and Hosey, both of whom are represented by George Bizos, get five years for what is considered a lesser crime.

Significantly, the state does not charge Jackson Mlenze and Joe Guma, who are part of this group. They had become informers. Cholo and his colleagues will eventually serve the bulk of their sentences on Robben Island.

WIFE PERSECUTED

For 10 years while in exile and underground, Cholo did not contact Mmaphuti, his wife. In her own right, she was persecuted for being the wife of a “terrorist”. Cholo only learnt about the death of his second son, Kgabane, long after his passing.

Ninety-nine years and soon to become a centenarian, Cholo is elated that the apartheid government is no more and very happy that the ANC is in government. He is, however, gravely disappointed that it has lost so much public trust that it could not form the government and that it seem capable of getting rid of corrupt people among its ranks. He is also saddened by the fact that so many people continue to live in abject poverty thirty years after the achievement of political freedom. He is distressed by the high levels of crime, including gender-based violence. His take is that the law is too lenient on criminals.

In 2018 the Tshwane University of Technology conferred the honorary doctorate in public administration on Tlou Theophilus Cholo. This exceptional man lives in Soshanguve.

END//

Cde Mavuso Msimang
former Umkhonto WeSizwe member
Member of the Veterans League