“His life epitomised the cold, calculating, vindictive brutality of apartheid. His mind and the heart proclaimed the abiding humanity of liberation.” This was a tribute to Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe by former President Nelson Mandela.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born in Graaff-Reinet in December 1924. He enrolled for a degree at the Fort Hare University.
Sobukwe wrote the first version of the 1949 programme of action, which was adopted by the African Nationan Congress (ANC) in December 1949.
This programme positioned the goal of the political struggle of Africans to be ‘free from white domination and the attainment of political independence’. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, with a group of Africanists like Potlako Leballo and Zeph Mothopeng broke away from the ANC in 1958 and in April 1959 formed the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). He became the founding President of PAC.
For his role in launching the 1960 anti-pass campaign, he was sentenced to three years of hard labour. He was due to be released on May 3, 1963 but this did not happen.
A special law ‘Sobukwe Clause’ in the general laws amendment act was passed to enable the settler colonial apartheid government to incarcerate him indefinitely.
He was placed in solitary confinement for six years on Robben island and thereafter, he was banished to Kimberley where he was under house arrest until his death on February 27, 1978.
John Vorster, the then Minister of Justice (settler colonial justice) claimed that Sobukwe deserved this treatment because he felt he had a mission to deliver his African people from slavery and oppression and could not be changed from this conviction, ‘this side of eternity.’
Vorster further made it clear that he could not treat Sobukwe in the same way as Chief Albert Luthuli, President of the ANC, who was merely restricted within his own area, because, in his own words ‘comparing Luthili to Sobukwe, Luthuli is a lightweight.’ As PAC in Estcourt, we would like to remind our youth about the importance of education. Without education, we are nothing as a country. Please, ladies and gentlemen, let’s stay away from alcohol, drugs and tobacco.
PAC, during April, wants to produce more leaders like Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Potlako Leballo, Zeph Mothopeng, Anton Lembede, AP Mda, Herbert Chitepo and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Ntsu Mokhehle of Lesotho and other.
Ize lethu!
Comrade Zwelithini Mchunu
PAC Branch Chairperson
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