The Order of Luthuli in Bronze

Mittah Seperepere (Posthumous) Awarded for:

Her excellent contribution to the fight against apartheid and serving the country with bravery, ensuring that all South Africans enjoy democracy.

Profile of Mittah Seperepere (Posthumous)

Mittah Seperepere was born in 1929 in the Northern Cape. She was a member of the ANC, an anti-apartheid activist, freedom fighter, humanitarian, political activist and community builder. Seperepere attended school in Majeng, the Magareng area of the Frances Baard District Municipality, in the Northern Cape.

She served in the ANC under the late Comrade Dr Arthur Letele in Kimberley where she was elected Secretary of the ANC Galeshewe branch and also worked in the ANC Women’s League under the leadership of comrades such as Mary Letele and , Monica Matshediso.Seperepere participated in sowing the seeds of the struggle for women emancipation and actively resisted the anti-pass laws by mobilising women in the anti-pass law campaigns. Inspired by the 1949 Programme of Action of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), Seperepere joined the ANCYL and got actively involved in the underground structures of the movement.

Her involvement earned her the wrath of the South African Police’s Special Branch, culminating in her imprisonment in 1965. Upon her release she was incorporated into the underground structures of the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Having been exposed to the constant harassment by the apartheid regime, she, together with her husband, Maruping Seperepere, skipped the country into Botswana in 1966. They later relocated to Tanzania, from where she served in the Regional Political Committee of the ANC.

She became the welfare officer and started the primary school of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (Somafco) a college, which was established by the ANC on land donated to it by the Tanzanian government in 1977. Seperepere served in the underground structures with male comrades such as Gauta George Mokgoro, Johannes Molehe Mampe, Andrew Mapitse, Joe Morolong, John Mahoko Itholeng, Martin Oliphant and others after the ANC was banned.

After her husband’s passing on in 1981, she relocated to Lusaka in Zambia where she joined the ANC’s Women’s Section. Seperepere and Dulcie September were elected to represent the ANC Women’s Section at the World Congress of Women for Equality, National Independence and Peace that was held in Prague, Czechoslovakia in October 1981.