The Department of Military Veterans

Remembering PAC anti-pass activist, Ntate Philip Kgosana

20 April 2017

The Pan-Africanist Congress military veteran and stalwart of the liberation struggle Philip Ata Kgosana has died at the age 81.
The Department of Military Veterans and the entire Military Veterans community is mourning his death and sends its sincere condolences to his family and friends.

"The Military Veterans community is indeed poorer without his critical and incisive mind as well as his impeccable leadership capabilities. Ntate Kgosana departs when the DMV and the entire Military Veterans community needed him most. May his soul Rest in peace. Our sincere condolences to his family." says the Acting Director General of the DMV, Mr. Max Ozinsky.

Kgosana became a regional leader of the PAC at the age of 23.He was arrested on the eve of the anti-pass campaign in the 1960s.

When the (PAC) regional chairman was arrested on the eve of the Anti-pass Campaign in March 1960, 23-year-old Kgosana inherited local leadership of the organization. He emerged as the leader and spokesman for 30,000 African demonstrators who marched into the centre of Cape Town on March 30. Police were temporarily paralyzed with indecision, and the event has been seen by some as a critical and turning point in South African history. In return for a promise that leaders would be given an interview with the Minister of Justice, Kgosana persuaded the crowd to disperse; instead of honoring their promise, the police arrested him later the same day.

Tried for incitement with other PAC leaders,Kgosana fled South Africa while on bail in late 1960 and later resumed his university studies in Ethiopia.

"To minimize and reduce the racism cancer, we need to revisit how Sobukwe defined the African continent: Africa for Africans, Africans for humanity, and humanity for God. Why? Because all of us belong to the human race,” said Kgosana

At a time of his death he was working closely with the Department to republish his book entitled “Lest we Forget” as part of enhancing reconciliation, social cohesion and nation building.