The late ANC stalwart and trade unionist, Bonisile Norushe, will be laid to rest at his Keiskammahoek home in the Eastern Cape on Saturday.
The Presidency has accorded him a Special Provincial Official Funeral Category 2.
Norushe died at an East London hospital after a short illness aged 71. His friends have described him as a selfless fighter.
A member of the Veterans League, Wiseman Sorhasi, has called on the ANC to take better care of its veterans.
“The stature of comrade Norushe demanded that the whole of South Africa cared about his health, not only his family, his friends but the whole of South Africa the entire movement, your Cosatu, SACP, ANC and Sanco, not only the leadership even in those structures but the entire personnel you would find in those structures. I think they have done less to care about his health, they did not even know that he was not well during his last days because the caring movement we built and we were aspiring to build has not been achieved.”
Meanwhile, a group of former South African National Defence Force (SADF) soldiers and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) defence Unit members under the banner of the United Statutory Military Veterans have marched and delivered a memorandum of grievances to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
South African Defence Force Military Veterans Association (
He says they have decided to approach Ramaphosa as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army to complain about unequal treatment and benefits of former soldiers, especially those who used to work for the apartheid government.
“The only thing that makes us tired of going to the department of Military Veterans, they are so ignorant to us, they don’t want to listen to us. They are discriminating us as the military veterans. We thought that the last thing we must do, we better come and face the President himself as the chief of defence, and he is the one who can understand our problems than them. The president himself is the chief of the defence, the last person who can solve our problems.”
ANC Veterans request official funeral for Bonisile Norushe https://t.co/5GxxPctBP1 pic.twitter.com/SuDHpYQNgK
— SABC News Online (@SABCNewsOnline) February 2, 2019
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