The Order of Mendi for Bravery in

Silver

Major General (Maj Gen) Peter Lesego Tshikare aka Peter Boroko (Posthumous) Awarded for:

His selfless contribution to the struggle for the liberation of the people of South Africa. He gallantly joined the armed struggle with the conviction that no one deserved to be treated with indignity.

Profile of Major General (Maj Gen) Peter Lesego Tshikare

Maj Gen Peter Lesego Tshikare was a veteran in the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) where he served as a commander. Maj Gen Tshikare, who for years was known by his MK name “Peter Boroko”, joined MK in 1963 two years after its formation. He was a contemporary of the late Joe Modise, an MK commander who went on to become the first Minister of Defence in democratic South Africa, and the late Alfred Nzo, a former ANC secretary- general and former Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Maj Gen Tshikare left South Africa shortly after enlisting for the ANC underground army and began his initial training at Odessa in the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), where he qualified as a company commander.

In 1966 he completed his security and intelligence studies in the USSR and returned to Tanzania, where he was based. In 1970 he returned to Moscow to complete an advanced course in security and intelligence before returning to Lusaka, where he assumed duty as an ANC intelligence officer under the late Mzwai Piliso.
 
In the second par t of 1976 he was posted to Angola to negotiate for the establishment of MK camps with the Angolan government. Maj Gen Tshikare returned to Lusaka the following year and assumed the position of Chief of Intelligence for South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho.

In 1982 he was appointed deputy intelligence chief. He then enrolled for a diplomatic course in the then German Democratic Republic in 1989 before serving as the ANC’s chief representative in Egypt. Maj Gen Tshikare held this position until 1992.

After 32 years in exile, he returned to South Africa in 1993. The next year, he was appointed Maj Gen in military intelligence in the South African National Defence Force before retiring in January 1998. Maj Gen Tshikare was appointed as a director of Dewina Africa in that year and in 1999 joined the board of Armscor as a director. He died in 2008 at the age of 75