Unsung hero
ROBERT Mangaliso Sobukwe was born on December 5, 1924, in Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape. His father was a labourer and his mother had no formal education, but deep within him was a resolve to break out of the spiral of poverty that pre-determined the fate of millions of his compatriots. A scholarship to the famous Methodist Mission School at Healdtown set him on his way. From there, he went to Fort Hare University, where many others who would become leaders and political activists sat for degrees.
Sobukwe, a highly-principled activist, was a follower of ANC Youth League activist Anton Lembede, who argued passionately for the ANC to adopt an Africanist philosophy.
This, he said, would enable African people to regain their self-worth.
But after Lembede’s death, those who had previously supported this philosophy, activists such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, began leaning towards the notion of a non-racial ANC.
Sobukwe quit the organisation and on April 6, 1959, he became the founder and first president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).
From the outset he pledged to serve the poor. The PAC’s first major attack against apartheid was a campaign against the pass laws and in this regard, it was he who devised the plan and who led from the front.
On March 21, 1960, he walked 8km from his home in Mofolo, Soweto, to the Orlando police station, where he demanded to be arrested for refusing to carry a pass. South of Johannesburg on the same day, 69 protesters were gunned down at Sharpeville.
Sobukwe was jailed for three years. Just before his release, the apartheid government enacted the so-called “Sobukwe Clause” which empowered the state to jail for 12 months at a time anyone it regarded as likely to further the objects of communism. Sobukwe was held for a further six years in terms of this legislation, alone in a small dwelling on Robben Island.
The UK-based Spectator magazine remarked: “It is difficult to imagine a more refined form of torture than to wait until a man is within days of completing a long prison sentence and then announce that he is not going to be released after all, but will be kept in jail indefinitely.”
Sobukwe, who died of cancer in 1978, has never been acknowledged for the role he played in fighting apartheid. It is high time that his contribution is recognised.