A few correct facts about Sobukwe

I am one of those ANC members who salutes struggle heroes, whether from the party, the Pan-Africanist Congress, Black Consciousness or any other formation. But Liepollo Pheko’s article on Robert Sobukwe, published late last year, contained false information.

First, the ANC Youth League was formed in 1944 as the Congress Youth League, and many young activists were part of it — but not Sobukwe. He was a student at Healdtown College and only joined in 1948 when Godfrey Pitje, a lecturer at Fort Hare University, formed a branch. Pitje said Sobukwe and others “asked a number of critical questions, clearly showing that they were not yet quite certain about entering the African National Congress”. But they eventually joined, in 1948.

Second, Sobukwe did not work with Anton Lembede, the first president of the ANC Youth League. Sobukwe was not yet a member when Lembede died in 1947.

Third, some historians see the league leaders at the time of its launch as belonging to three ideological groups: Marxists (William Nkomo, Lionel Majombozi), nationalists (Pitje, AP Mda, Oliver Tambo) and Africanists (Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Peter Ramoroka). Walter Sisulu was thought to belong to all the groups, which says something about the non-partisan way he operated, even early in his career. In fact, few of these leaders could be pigeonholed; their theoretical positions were not fixed and they adapted their stances during their political lives. Members of the ANC Youth League in the early years included Joe Matthews, Duma Nokwe, Nthato Motlana, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Herbert Chitepo from Zimbabwe.

The league itself described its position as “African nationalism”.

So Pheko is wrong to argue that “Sobukwe, Anton Lembede and AP Mda” belonged to one group, different to Mandela’s. There is no such historical evidence. It is wrong to ascribe the 1949 programme of action to individuals, or to claim it for the PAC, which was formed 10 years later. This was an ANC Youth League programme.

Pheko writes that Mandela felt intimidated by the intellectual vigour of Sobukwe and Lembede. Really? In No Easy Walk to Freedom (1965), Mandela writes: “I also possessed a certain insecurity, feeling politically backward compared to Walter, Lembede and Mda, they were men who knew their minds and I was, as yet, unformed” (page 94). No Sobukwe here.

Pheko claims Sobukwe, Lemdebe and Mda galvanised the Defiance Campaign in 1952. But Lembede died in 1947. Pitje and Sobukwe, by then national secretary of the league, were part of setting the campaign process in motion. But soon after his election, Sobukwe was employed as a teacher in Standerton, and though (according to Motlana) Sobukwe did a lot of work politicising the people in the area, its remoteness meant he could not play a national role in the Defiance Campaign.

We should celebrate Sobukwe for being an uncompromising antiapartheid hero, but we need not distort history to do so. —