Honouring memory of a forgotten struggle hero
Robert Sobukwe is overlooked when the tale of SA’s liberation is told. His son wants to redress that, writes
TOMORROW is Human Rights Day. On March 21 we remember the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, when police fired on an anti-pass march south of Joburg organised by Robert Sobukwe, the founder and leader of the PAC, killing 69 people and wounding 180.
Days later, the National Party government banned the ANC and PAC, and the resistance movement went underground.
During the recent university protests, Sobukwe’s name was spray-painted on several campuses, especially that of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he became a lecturer in African studies in 1954 and completed his honours dissertation in 1958 on “A Collection of Xhosa Riddles”.
This week a Facebook post asked people to gather at Sobukwe Square in Langa tomorrow morning to “consolidate, defend and advance Sobukwe’s revolutionary legacy”. “Let us be like Sobukwe” was the call.
But when Sobukwe’s son Dinilesizwe “Dini” Sobukwe returned home in 2008 after 30 years in the US, to be with his elderly mother, Zondeni Veronica, now 88, he found his father’s memory was not being honoured.
“It wasn’t just my father who was not being remembered for sacrificing his life for this
‘TO deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity,” proclaimed Nelson Mandela while rallying the support of the US Congress shortly after his release from prison.
Before 1994, there seemed to be an understanding that the priority of the incoming government would be to begin to redress the mass human rights violations i nstitutionalised during 300 years of colonialism and apartheid. A reading of our constitution reaffirms that the restoration of dignity, equality and freedom to all is the ultimate goal of our young nation.
It is these values we must reflect upon, not only on Human Rights Day tomorrow, but whenever the country faces difficult decisions. This is why I was taken aback when Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan insinuated that ordinary citizens should stop relying on the state for support, during a post-budget panel discussion with Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute director Isobel Frye. country, it is other veterans who were on Robben Island that have not been recognised,” he says.
Dini, 60, now living in his father’s home town of GraaffReinet in the Eastern Cape, founded the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Trust to preserve his father’s legacy and “also tell their [others’] stories”.
He says the foundation, funded by the government, engages in things his father was passionate about, including education and giving young people opportunities.
“Through the trust we offer internship programmes, which are largely successful, and run exhibitions from town to town, teaching people about Robert Sobukwe and his role in the democratic South Africa.”
The trust’s latest exhibition, “Remember Africa — the Life and Time of Robert Sobukwe”, looks at his role in the Sharpeville massacre. It is at the Nelson Mandela Gateway museum at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, from where MEMORY: Dini Sobukwe, son of ’a loving father’, struggle legend and PAC founder Robert Sobukwe visitors leave for Robben Island, where his father was imprisoned in isolation for six years. While on the island he studied for an economics degree from the University of London.
Dini says “Remember Africa” comes from the rallying cry at Fort Hare University, where his father, studying for a BA majoring in English, Xhosa and native administration, was president of the student representative council in 1949.
“‘Remember Africa’ is also in the books that my father bought and read and the speeches that he wrote.”
A museum, the Robert Sobukwe Learning Centre, funded by the National Lotteries Board, is scheduled to open in Graaff-Reinet in May.
“The museum will have archives of letters that Sobukwe wrote and also tell the history of all the liberation struggle heroes that come from this town. To build the community, it will also assist the youth with receiving health support and school work,” says Dini.
Dini remembers his father always saying: “Don’t walk with your head down, have pride. Walk with your head up, because everything in the continent belongs to you.”
He says: “Even when he was arrested, my father never saw himself as less than or felt bad about what he was fighting for. He would say: ‘You might arrest me, but you won’t make a prisoner out of me.’ And the anti-pass campaign showed he was not afraid to fight for what he believed in and get arrested for it.”
Dini’s other memories of his father are isolated moments. “My father was a loving father. One of my memories of Mofolo [in Soweto, where he grew up] is when my father was at Dube station coming from work. I took his briefcase and he went straight to a PAC meeting.
“In Kimberley I remember when he was very sick, and he always spoke of his comrades, how he loved them like his brothers, to the extent that he started speaking like them.
“In Washington, I was hoping that I would come back and spend much time with my father but it never happened [Sobukwe died in 1978]. It is one of the feelings that stayed with me for quite a long time.”
Asked what his father would have said about the state of South Africa today, after 22 years as a democratic society, Dini says he can’t speak for his father but believes that even though the government has made efforts, much more can be done. “There are no prospects for young people to further their studies or employment.
“One of the things I heard him talk about with other comrades was the position of the Freedom Charter — which is one of the things I believe made him break away from the ANC and why his memory is not in the central history of the struggle.
“However, without fail,” he adds, his father would be more disappointed by how the PAC, the party he formed, had been torn apart by “people who are position-driven and not what the party stands for”.
ROBBEN ISLAND: Robert Sobukwe organised the anti-pass march about the limits to resources for human rights. What is lacking in the government is the foresight and will to opt for policies that will aid the development of people, because a developed nation is a strong one, where people have the capacity to engage equally in social dialogue and business opportunities.
I am reminded of an observation by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in The Education of a British-Protected Child: “We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb, Onye ji Onye n’ani ji onwe ya: He who holds another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”
Louw is advocacy officer at the Johannesburg-based Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute. For reports, see www.spii.org.za
Walk with your head up, because everything in the continent belongs to you
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