Farewell, and thank you, Mama Sobukwe
A GREAT pan-Africanist freedom fighter, philosopher, intellectual, icon, a great thinker, comrade, Struggle heroine, educationist, veteran has fallen.
Zodwa Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, was the wife of founding PAC president Professor Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe.
She was a student nurse at Victoria Hospital and later also worked there as a nurse.
Her vision was pan-Africanism, black consciousness, Africanist socialist democracy, scientific socialism, African identity, Africanist socialist United States of Africa, self-determination, self-reliance, self-definition and self-acceptance.
Pan-Africanism, according to Mama Sobukwe’s ideology of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, is pan-Africanism: Ubuntu nomanyano
lwe Afrika. That is, the full humanity and unity of all Africans.
Pan-Africanism demands that the riches of Africa be used for the benefit, upliftment and enjoyment of the African people.
It was the dynamic forces of Pan-Africanism, led by pan-Africanist giants such as Nkwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Professor Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, W E B du Bois, Jomo Kenyatta, George Padmore, Zephania Mothopeng, Anta Diop, Ntsu Mokhehle and Marcus Gavey, which resulted in the ending of colonialism in Africa.
Pan-Africanism is a system of equitably sharing food, clothing, homes, education, health care, wealth, work, employment, land, security of life and happiness.
Pan-Africanism, according to Prof Sobukwe, is socialistic in content and democratic in form.
It is out to create a new social order, original in conception and Africanistic in orientation.
The ultimate objective of pan-Africanism is to bring about the United States of Africa.
Pan-Africanism is the indispensable unity of African people to empower themselves and to restore their full humanity and accelerate their economic development and technological advancement.
Pan-Africanism is African nationalism at continental and global levels. African nationalism is the privilege of the African people to love themselves and to give themselves and their way of life respect and preference.
Pan-Africanism is an ideology which promotes the unity of all African people in Africa and throughout the world, for their survival and security.
Pan-Africanism is anti-nobody. Its purpose is to prevent the repetition of the tragic experiences of slavery, colonialism, racism, and apartheid which Africans have suffered and the holocaust that has been part of African pain and humiliation. Pan-Africanism is pro-Africa. One of its leading exponents, Dr Edward Wilmot Blyden, a person of African descent whose ancestors were taken into slavery in the US, coined the noble slogan: “Africa for Africans, Africans for humanity and humanity for God and God for all.”
Without Pan-Africanism, Africans and people of African descent are heading for the worst holocaust in their history.
There is no ideology that has intellectually challenged pan-Africanism successfully this century.
There will be none in the 21st century and beyond until injustice against Africans has been defeated in the world.
The PAC is committed to the policy of guaranteeing the most equitable distribution of our countries’ wealth. Most of this wealth is in the land which was taken from the African people by force by colonialists.
In the land there are riches such as gold, diamonds, platinum, uranium, iron and coal, manganese, fisheries, marine oil, cobalt, nuclear, gas, oil, aluminium and all kinds of agricultural products.
Rest in Peace, Mama Sobukwe.