South Africa lost one of its most principled anti-apartheid veterans on Wednesday morning as Mosiuoa Lekota, the 77-year-old co-founder of the Congress of the People (COPE), died in a Johannesburg hospital after battling an undisclosed illness.
Lekota's death marks the passing of a figure who embodied both the liberation struggle's courage and the difficult choices that followed democratic victory. Unlike many who remained with the African National Congress despite mounting concerns about governance and corruption, Lekota broke away—a decision that defined the final chapter of his political life.
Imprisoned on Robben Island in 1974 while serving as Permanent Organiser for the South African Students' Organisation, Lekota stood among the generation that sacrificed their youth to dismantle apartheid. He was expelled from the University of the North for activism with the Student Representative Council and the Black Consciousness Movement—credentials that would later propel him into post-apartheid leadership.
After the 1994 democratic elections, Lekota served as Premier of the Free State, then as Minister of Defence from 1999 to 2008. But his most consequential political act came in 2008, when he co-founded COPE after breaking with the ANC over what he viewed as erosion of democratic principles and governance standards.
That decision proved politically costly. COPE never achieved the electoral breakthrough its founders envisioned, struggling to gain traction beyond a core of disaffected ANC members. Yet Lekota's willingness to stand apart when he believed the ANC had lost its way represented a form of democratic accountability that South Africa desperately needed.
"He was a credible individual," Deputy Defence Minister Bantu Holomisa stated. "His role in the struggle is well documented, and he led from the front."
In South Africa, as across post-conflict societies, the journey from apartheid to true equality requires generations—and constant vigilance. Lekota understood that vigilance sometimes meant breaking with comrades, even at great personal cost.
COPE leadership declared that "history will forever remember him for his contribution"—a contribution measured not just in years spent fighting apartheid, but in the courage to demand better governance from those who inherited power.
Lekota stepped back from politics in August 2025 to focus on his health, ending a public life that spanned from student activism through imprisonment, cabinet service, and opposition politics. His death comes as South Africa continues grappling with the very governance challenges that prompted his 2008 break with the ANC: corruption, service delivery failures, and questions about accountability.
The anti-apartheid generation is passing, taking with them both the moral authority of the liberation struggle and the uncomfortable questions they sometimes posed to their former comrades. Lekota leaves behind a legacy that includes both the courage to fight apartheid and the conviction to criticize those who, in his view, betrayed the democratic promise they had fought to achieve.
Whether COPE's electoral failures diminish that legacy or whether Lekota's principled stance represents a road not taken in South African politics remains an open question—one that will be debated long after his funeral.
