Prominent lawyer Peter Tshisevhe delivered a powerful speech a fortnight ago at the annual Griffiths and Victoria Mxenge Memorial, challenging both apartheid-era abuses and contemporary injustices in South Africa.
Recalling the assassination of anti-apartheid lawyer Griffiths Mxenge, Tshisevhe described it as “a ritual of unspeakable cruelty”. He added: “Mr Mxenge was assassinated — not merely killed, but desecrated. His executioners… delivered a frenzy of violence — 45 incisions that ruptured his lungs, liver, and heart.”
The address characterised the murder as “an act of political butchery, a spectacle of calculated terror”.
Epitaph of a state at war with its conscience
The speech linked such atrocities to the broader moral collapse of the apartheid state. “Their testimonies lay bare the pathology of power untethered from justice. A system that had abandoned legality for extermination… The account of Mr Mxenge’s death is thus not just the story of an individual tragedy. It is the epitaph of a state at war with its conscience,” Tshisevhe asserted.
Highlighting Victoria Mxenge’s response after her husband’s death, Tshisevhe emphasised her defiance.
“Mrs Mxenge did not flinch. She seized the pulpit and named the violence for what it was: ‘dastardly acts of cowardice’… She summoned the fallen to bear witness in the afterlife. And declared that they should ‘tell [their] grandfather [that] we are coming because we are prepared to die for Africa’.”
Turning to post-apartheid South Africa, the address accused some in leadership of economic betrayal.
“Entrusted with the levers of economic justice, many have instead become custodians of the old order. They are replicating the exclusions they inherited rather than dismantling them. This is not transformation; it is betrayal,” Tshisevhe said.
The address condemned “fronting” as a form of modern complicity.
Betrayal of the Black condition
“Fronting is nothing less than a betrayal of the Black condition… They have become brokers of white capital, agents of systemic inequality dressed in kente cloth.”
Concerns were also raised about youth disengagement.
“It breaks my heart. No, it enrages me – that the youth of today have been lulled into cowardice and suffocated by apathy… Our young people no longer shake the foundations of power. They scroll past it,” Tshisevhe lamented.
Legal education was criticised as well.
“Legal education in South Africa has become a deeply conservative enterprise… Excellence in defending legal formalism while poverty eats away at the majority.”
As the speech closed, there was a call to return to the sacrifice exemplified by liberation leaders.
This poverty shall pass
“Their parents didn’t sacrifice their lives only for us to chase private jets and branded suits. We have no agenda beyond our immediate families, and that is our biggest failure.”
Tshisevhe concluded with a personal childhood mantra. “This poverty shall pass. I am not going to live like this.”
The memorial event underscored ongoing frustrations with South Africa’s progress since democracy. It urged collective action and renewed commitment to the ideals for which the Mxenges and others fought.
