Molaole Montsho
Rustenburg – Former president Kgalema Motlanthe will deliver the eulogy at a special funeral service for Struggle stalwart Rebecca Kotane, the North West provincial government said on Friday.
In a statement, the provincial government said Kotane had been accorded a special provincial official funeral category 2.
Such funerals are accorded to distinguished people specifically and are designated by the president of South Africa on request by the premier of a province.
As a sign of respect, President Cyril Ramaphosa has instructed that all national flags be flown at half-mast in North West on the day of her funeral.
The funeral will take place in Pella, outside Zeerust, in North West on Saturday.
North West Premier Job Mokgoro and national government ministers Blade Nzimande and Lindiwe Sisulu were expected to deliver speeches and messages of condolences as part of the funeral proceedings.
Kotane, 108, who was the wife of late Struggle icon and former general secretary of the SA Communist Party Moses Kotane, died on January 31 in Diepkloof a few dys before her 109th birthday on February 12.
She participated in the Defiance Campaigns in the 1950s and the mobilisation towards the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955.
She was part of a group of women who played a leading role during the August 9, 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings and was among the women who were detained by the apartheid regime.
Moses Kotane was also the former treasurer-general of the African National Congress. He was one of the first activists to be banned under the Suppression of Communism Act.
He suffered a stroke in 1968 and went for treatment in the former Soviet Union, where he died in 1978.
He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, Russia, and was reburied at his home village, Pella, in 2015.
The Moses Kotane Local Municipality in North West was named in his honour.
African News Agency (ANA)