Mark Shope

Mark Williams Shope SCOB (1919–1998) was a South African trade unionist and anti-apartheid activist. He rose to prominence as the chairman of the African Laundry Workers' Union between 1952 and 1963 and he was the second general secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). He was also a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress and an Umkhonto we Sizwe commissar.

Early life and career Shope was born in 1919 in Letaba, a village near Tzaneen in the former Northern Transvaal. His father, a railway worker, died when he was a toddler. Instead, he and his six siblings spent their childhoods herding cattle, and at age 13 he began work on a nearby citrus plantation. At age 15, he moved to Johannesburg to find work on the gold mines. He remained in exile for the next three decades. He was among the first ANC members to receive military training in the Soviet Union under the auspices of the party's new armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and he served on the ANC's unelected National Executive Committee in exile during this period.

In 1969, during the ANC's Morogoro Conference, SACTU formalised its organisational presence in exile, setting up provisional headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia; Shope was reappointed as SACTU general secretary, a position he held until 1975. He and Jack Simons became famous inside MK for the political education lessons they delivered at the camp to the so-called June 16 Detachment; which ranged over historical materialism, South African political history, and the philosophy of non-racialism. According to Stanley Manong and James Ngculu, who lived at the camp during this period, Shope's slogan was, "a soldier without politics is a mercenary."

Shope also represented the ANC as its chief representative in Nigeria for a period. In 1987, a group of Security Branch officers attempted to assassinate him, Lambert Moloi, and two other MK members while they were visiting Gaborone, Botswana; in 1999 the officers testified about the plot at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and were granted full amnesty.

Retirement in South Africa Shope returned to South Africa during the negotiations to end apartheid and was named as honorary president of the Post and Telecommunication Workers' Association.

Honours In August 2002, the post-apartheid ANC government of Tzaneen Local Municipality announced that the town would be renamed Mark Shope in Shope's honor. The renaming encountered strident resistance from the opposition Democratic Alliance and some members of the local community, and the National Geographical Names Council ultimately rejected the renaming, finding that it was not necessary because the name Tzaneen carried no racist political connotation. Observers linked the local opposition to tribalistic rejection of Shope's Tsonga name by Sotho residents.

On 10 December 2002, South African president Thabo Mbeki admitted Shope posthumously to the Order of the Baobab, Gold. He received the award for his "exceptional contribution to the struggle against apartheid and the development of the labour movement." and politicians Ntombi and Sheila. His family joined him in exile in 1966.