Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe: Activist widow of PAC founder 1927-2018
Subjected to years of cat-and-mouse torment while he was on Robben Island
● Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, widow of PAC founder Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, has died in Graaff-Reinet at the age of 91.
When they met, she was a trainee nurse and one of the leaders of a strike at Victoria Hospital in Alicedale in the Eastern Cape, and he was lending support to the striking nurses as president of the ANC Youth League at nearby Fort Hare University.
He sent her with a letter to youth league secretary-general Walter Sisulu in Johannesburg to bring his attention to the plight of nurses in the Eastern Cape.
The relationship blossomed and they married in 1954 in Johannesburg, where he was lecturing in African studies at Wits University.
Zondeni, who was born on July 27 1927 in Hlobane, KwaZulu-Natal, said she had no illusions about what she was letting herself in for.
“Nothing came to my surprise or shock, because from the day I met him he was in the struggle,” she told the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997. “Everything was to be expected.”
Six years into their marriage, on March 21 1960, Robert rose earlier than usual, ate the breakfast she had cooked for him, kissed her goodbye and walked 4.5km from their tiny house in Mofolo, Soweto, to hand himself in at Orlando police station for refusing to carry a pass. It was the start of the PAC’s antipass law campaign, which led hours later to the Sharpeville massacre.
He was arrested and sentenced to three years in jail for incitement.
She was left to look after their four children, aged six, four, and 18-month old twins.
She had to do this while somehow earning a living.
He was due to be released on May 30 1963, and she counted the days.
But, as she poignantly told the TRC, “he was not released. The government refused.”
When she went to fetch him in faraway Witbank, where he’d been held, she was told he had been transferred to Robben Island under what she was informed was the Sobukwe Clause.
This was a special amendment to the Suppression of Communism Act, rushed through parliament before his sentence ended, to provide for people convicted of certain political offences to be held in continual detention after completing their sentences, if the minister of justice believed that they were likely to “further the aims of communism” on their release.
The then minister of justice, John Vorster, who called Sobukwe a “man of magnetic personality”, decided that he had to be held in continual detention.
This meant that neither Robert nor Zondeni, nor their children, knew when, if ever, he would be released and be able to come home.
Every year she prayed that this would be the year.
And every year just before she and the children caught the train to Cape Town to fetch him from Robben Island, the Sobukwe Clause was invoked and she’d start counting again.
Sometimes officialdom waited for them to get to Cape Town before telling them that his sentence had been renewed for another year.
Strip-searched
His sentence was renewed each year for six years, during which time he was kept without trial in virtual solitary confinement.
At home she had to endure consistent and intimidating police harassment. It got so bad that she enrolled the children in boarding school in Lesotho to protect them.
The police “would not even give us a peaceful night”, she told the TRC.
Having them in boarding school was “better for me, because at work I would be at peace as my children were at boarding school. Between nine and 10 the police would always come. We tried to cheer ourselves up as the ladies, and we would laugh, make a joke out of it.”
In November each year she would have to apply to visit Robert on Robben Island with the children. At the docks they would be strip-searched. All of them. Even the twins at the age of four had to strip off.
Twice every year she wrote to prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd requesting that Robert be released on the grounds of his worsening health. Twice every year she would be told to write to justice minister Vorster. Twice every year her request would be denied.
On every visit she saw how badly his health had deteriorated, how much worse the chronic cough he’d developed since being sent to Robben Island had become.
In May 1969 he was released and banished to Kimberley, where he lived with her under house arrest.
His health got worse. She nursed him as best she could but the doctor they were assigned in Kimberley wasn’t much help, and they were refused permission to go to Johannesburg to see a specialist.
When eventually they were allowed to go, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. A lung was removed at Kimberley Hospital but it was too late.
He died in Kimberley in 1978 at the age of 53.
His funeral was hijacked by angry, chanting youths who demanded that IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi leave.
Zondeni was asked at the TRC how she felt about people being chased away from her husband’s funeral. “A funeral is a funeral,” she said.
“Even if you are a witch you should not be chased away from a funeral. There is no dignity in that, no honour.”
After his death, Zondeni lived in a humble home in Masizakhe township, Graaff-Reinet, where her husband had been born in 1924.
Her life was honoured by the poet Es’kia Mphahlele in 2003 with a poem entitled Tribute to Zodwa Veronica, A Great Woman.
She received the Order of Luthuli silver class this year “for her tenacious fight for freedom and her steadfast support of incarcerated freedom fighters”.
She is survived by three children. — Chris Barron
At home she had to endure consistent police harassment. She enrolled the children in boarding school in Lesotho to protect them