User:Lmashalane/sandbox

Early Life

Molapatene Collins Ramusi was born on 3 July 1925, in the village of Ranhlokana during the Bantustan and white regime, the land of the Batlokwa people of Molemole, where the Tropic of Capricorn cuts across at 30 degrees longitude. The orphan son of an illiterate tribesman was a herd boy and only went to school when he was fourteen at Khurukhutshu Mission School. His education was constantly interrupted due to his family's inability to pay school fees not required of his white peers. He moved to Pretoria where his struggle forced him to move from one house to another as a servant for white middle class people, before going back and completed his higher education in the year 1949 at Douglas Lain Smith High School in Lemana. He then went to study social work at Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work, which was part of the Bantu Men’s Social Centre through scholarship in Johannesburg.

Career

After qualifying as a Social Worker, he edited Bona magazine while studying law by correspondence through the University of South Africa. He qualified as an Attorney, Notary and Conveyancer of the Supreme Court of South Africa in 1964. Collins was one of the struggle lawyers of the dark days of apartheid who assisted victims of racial abuse, yet an enemy of the apartheid government. After fighting for an independent Bantustan legislature, was forced into exile in 1974 living in Chicago, for eight years where he studied for his Masters of Arts degree in Anthropology at the Northwestern University in Illinois, America.

Awards

Collins was the first from his Babirwa clan back in Molemole village to get higher education. He continued to defend victims of apartheid until he became a Member of Parliament after 1994. Published a book in 1989, Soweto My Love that is detailed account of his life that was of service to his own people. He passed on, 7 June 1996.

Relationships

Ramusi became an associate of Nelson Mandela and an early member of the Pan Africanist Congress; his militancy sharpened by the death of his son Selaelo Ramusi at the hands of South African security police, an older brother to Mothibi Ramusi. One of his co-students, Eduardo Mondlane, went on to found the People's Republic of Mozambique. He collaborated with Ruth S. Turner in his book Soweto My Love.

References