Obituary: Kaone Lobelo, MK cadre and mayor with R1m car who neglected his town

Kaone Lobelo, who has died at the age of 58 in a car crash in North West, went from being a struggle hero to the controversial executive mayor of the Greater Taung municipality.

Lobelo was among the first students to leave South Africa to join Umkhonto weSizwe after participating in the June 1976 student uprising that began in Soweto and quickly spread to other parts of the country, including Mafikeng, where he was in matric at Barolong Secondary School.

In October 1976, he and nine fellow pupils sneaked across the border into Botswana. Lobelo did not see his home again for 18 years.

The 10 were promptly arrested by the Botswana police and thrown into Lobatse prison. They were released in late December, joined the ANC and were flown to Angola.

In January 1977, Lobelo was sent to East Germany for military training.

When he returned after six months he was involved in reconnaissance operations in Bophuthatswana with a view to setting up military bases in the homeland.

On the eve of Zimbabwe's independence in April 1980, Lobelo was involved in joint operations with the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army to plan future incursions from Zimbabwe into South Africa.

He spent several years in Maputo, in Mozambique, working for the ANC's department of information and publicity on propaganda pamphlets that were smuggled into South Africa.

In 1983, he was moved to Lesotho. He was in Maseru during a raid by South African special forces in 1985 which killed a number of ANC cadres. Soon thereafter, the administration of prime minister Chief Leabua Jonathan was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by Lesotho army chief General Justin Lekhanya. As part of an agreement with South Africa, Lekhanya deported 60 ANC cadres to Zambia in January 1986.

Lobelo was one of those deported. Soon after arriving in Lusaka, he was sent back to East Germany for a one-year course in politics. He returned to Lusaka where he married a Zambian woman before being sent to Botswana in 1988.

For the next three years, he was involved in the highly dangerous task of smuggling AK47 rifles, grenades, pistols, explosives, ammunition and trained cadres into South Africa.

He would pack the weapons and ammunition into a false bottom welded underneath his bakkie, drive it across the border and unload its contents in pre-arranged hiding places. Or he would take the weapons across on foot and hand them over to reception parties.

Lobelo, whose nom de guerre was "City Mmusi" (Mmusi was his middle name), also had to transport trained cadres to the border and arrange their crossing into South Africa. He also received cadres coming from South Africa and sent them to safe locations.

Spies and informers were everywhere and the fact that Lobelo evaded them was regarded as testimony to the tight discipline with which he ran his networks.

In 1991, he was sent back to Lusaka as an aide to the ANC's chief representative in Zambia. He liaised with donor countries, agencies and embassies and after the unbanning of the ANC helped to organise the repatriation of cadres to South Africa.

He himself arrived back in South Africa in 1994. He was made chairman of the Reconstruction and Development Programme and the housing committee in Taung.

In 1995, he became chairman of the executive committee of the Stellaland Regional Services Council. In 2000, he became executive mayor of the Greater Taung local municipality.

He spent just under R1-million of municipal money on his official car, a new BMW X5, despite complaining that the municipality was struggling to deliver services because it had a budget of only R27-million.

After 15 years of his leadership, two-thirds of the community still had no flush toilets, a third had no access to piped water and, according to opposition councillors, the council's books were a mess.

To add insult to injury, Lobelo's official car was spotted outside a local shebeen. He denied he had gone there to drink (he was only buying food, he said) although pictures on social media told another story.

Lobelo was born in Veertien, Taung, on May 5 1958. His father was a school principal and inspector. His older brother Derrick, better known by his nom de guerre Vusi Mayekiso, left South Africa to join MK at about the same time as Lobelo.

He was executed in 1977 in an ANC camp in Angola called Novo Catengue, after cadres suffered severe, but not fatal, food poisoning. The ANC leadership blamed enemy agents for putting poison in the camp's food supply.

An investigation fingered Derrick Lobelo as the chief culprit. Under severe interrogation he confessed and was executed with three others including Timothy Seremane, the brother of future DA chairman Joe Seremane. Seremane was beaten so severely during interrogation that he advised the others to "tell them anything they want to hear".

The food-poisoning incident, known as Black September, was later believed to have been caused by poor-quality tinned meat given to the soldiers. Vegetarians were unaffected.

Kaone Lobelo is survived by his Zambian wife, Lillian, a son and a daughter.

1958-2016