Remembering Kgosi Lucas Mangope

The Lucas Manyane Mangope Foundation will on Wednesday, 18 January 2023, commemorate the 5th year of the passing on of Kgosi Dr Lucas Manyane Mangope.

The Former Statesman and Kgosi for Bahurutshe Boo Manyane passed on five years ago and was buried at the Royal Cemetery in his home village of Motswedi within the Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality.

According to the Foundation, the event will start with a Church Service followed by the laying of the wreath at the grave of Kgosi and Mother Leah Mangope and thereafter there will be a short formal programme.

On 13 March 1994, Kgosi Lucas Mangope was ousted as President of the homeland of Bophuthatswana. Kgosi Mangope came to power in Bophuthatswana in 1966 during the reign of former Prime Minister B J Vorster.  Mangope governed Bophuthatswana from 1977 until 1994. Kgosi Mangope was deposed in 1994 after he refused to allow free campaigning in Bophuthatswana as well as not wanting to take part in the general elections that was to be held during that year. In December 1991, like other homeland leaders at the Codesa talks, Kgosi Mangope attempted to present Bophuthatswana as a semi-independent territory, with the same status as the British protectorates of Swaziland and Lesotho. 

This ploy failed to change the view of Bophuthatswana as an Apartheid sham state. In March 1994, rioting broke out in Bophuthatswana and Mangope called in his erstwhile allies the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging (AWB) to support his regime and thus prevent the homeland from collapsing.  This invasion failed and the So6uth African Government in consultation with the African National Congress (ANC) ousted Mangope as leader of Bophuthatswana.