The newly elected provincial chairperson of the youth wing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), the Pan Africanist Youth Congress (PAYCO), Eugine Khoza, said this week that the PAC youth are concerned about the ANC´s ´discrimination´ with regard to the renaming of towns, cities, streets and institutions in the country.

According to Khoza of Musina, Payco has been insisting that there should no discrimination in hounouring people who played significant roles to liberate the country. "The youth and the students who staged the war against the bantustan system should also be hounoured," he said.

He said that Payco in Limpopo demands that one of the higher learning institutions should be named after the PAC leader, Zephania Mothopeng. Khoza said that if the ANC-led government cannot rename one of the tertiary institutions after Mothopeng, they should name the current building of the Deparment of Education after their selfless leader.

According to Khoza, when the founding president of the PAC, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, led the anti-pass law protest, which certainly led to the massacre of defenceless people, Mothopeng was amongst those leading the fateful march.

The Payco chairperson said that Mothopeng was born a fighter. "When Mothopeng was still a student at St Peters in Johannesburg, he was a leader and he also led the masses during the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976," he said.

Khoza said that it was important for leaders of the ruling party to understand the fact that icons and heroes are not members of the ANC only. "As a president of the Transvaal Teachers’ Association, Mothopeng mobilised his colleagues to fight against Bantu education and that led to his arrest in 1963. Upong his release in 1969, Mothopeng revived his contact with students and the youth and that certainly led to the formation of Black Consciousness," he said.

Khoza said that the PAC youth are extremely concerned about the ANC´s discrimination in the current renaming process of towns, cities and institutions. "The fearless Zeph Mothopeng advocated liberation, so he must be hounoured," he concluded.