Dr. Maitshwe Nchuape Aubrey Mokoape (6 September 1944 – 26 December 2020) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and a leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress and Black Consciousness Movement.
[4] Aubrey Mokoape was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he grew up as a child but later moved to Pretoria with his family.
Mokoape's 'political baptism' (as he calls it)[4] happened for him during the Pebco bus strike and this was the first political activity he took part in.
This was one of the first and popular strikes to occur since buses were boycotted and students were forced to walk 7–8 kilometres to school.
[4] After being sentenced to three years due to his involvement in the Sharpeville Massacre[5] Mokoape was released from prison and pursued a career in becoming a doctor and studied at the University of Natal where he met Steve Bantu Biko.
On top of building schools and day care centres and taking part in other social projects, the BCM through the BCP was involved in the staging of the large scale protests and workers strikes which gripped the nation in 1972 and 1973, especially in Durban.
He was known as the founder member of the BPC and a medical doctor at the King Edward VII Hospital in Durban.
At the time of his banning; he was charged under the Terrorism Act, in the Pretoria Supreme Court at the so-called Palace of Justice he was detained in September 1974 and sentenced in December 1976 to 6 years imprisonment, in a trial of nine SASO and BPC members.
He had been ill with high blood-sugar, and tested positive for COVID-19 on Christmas Day during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa.