Dr Aubrey Maitshwe Mokoape

Dr. Maitshwe Nchaupe Aubrey Mokoape, a medical doctor at the King Edward VII Hospital, Durban, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) became invovled in politics at the young age of 13 and by the time he was 15 years old, he was a spokesperson of the Pan Africanist Congress youth, the party he joined as a schoolboy before the Sharpeville massacre of 1960.

When he finished school at Orlando High in Soweto, Johannesburgm he attended the medical school in Durban, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), where he qualified as a medical doctor.

After Mokoape took up medicine he had already served a prison sentence and had endured a year of exile in Lesotho before he was  declared a prohibited individual there and returned to South Africa. 

A founder member of the Black Peoples Convention (BPC), Dr Mokoape was detained in September 1974 and sentenced in December 1976 to 6 years imprisonment, on Robben Island,in a trial (known as the Frelimo Trial) of nine BPC and South African Student Organisation (SASO) members. Dr Mokoape was SASO's Assistant Director of Publications. He was banned and restricted to Durban.

On 13 September 2008, he was elected President of the Black Consciousness Movement, a vehicle meant to unite parties on the left of the political centre.