Letters reveal Robert Sobukwe’s moral courage and pain

11 March 2019 - 05:03The founder of the Pan Africanist Congress, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe. Picture: MIKE MZILENI

Sobukwe, who clearly knew about suffering, loneliness and the impossibility of ever fully communicating one’s pain to another, was writing just after the death of Marquard’s husband, the noted Cape liberal, author and historian Leo Marquard. Touching as this acknowledgement of his contribution would have been for Marquard, the real poignancy of Sobukwe’s letter comes a little further on, when he starts speaking of the myriad difficulties he faced after leaving Robben Island, where most of SA’s liberation struggle leaders were jailed.It has not been a good year for me. I had planned to leave [from Kimberley] … by car on the 31st May and make straight for Cape Town. But these boys [apartheid security police] beat me to it.

Sobukwe continues: “Veronica [Sobukwe’s wife] has had a major operation as you probably read in the papers. She should have had this operation last year, but did not and the condition got worse. She has made a remarkable recovery, thanks to my very efficient and tender nursing, and has now gone back to Joburg for a checkup. From there she will be in Durban to spend a week or so with her sister before proceeding to Swaziland to see the children.

Not content that by May 3 1963 Sobukwe would have served his sentence, the apartheid government passed an amendment to the General Law Amendment Act, the notorious “Sobukwe clause”, which enabled the minister of justice to prolong the detention of any political prisoner year after year. They repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the country to take up job offers he had received from the US; and they obstructed his attempts to get the medical treatments that he needed, and that would have extended his life .

One of the highly respected leaders of the people who suffered a lot because of his unswerving beliefs in Africans as PEOPLE who should not be subjected to racial domination in their own land. Whoever undermines that contribution is WORTHLESS ! This is a hero.

Whilst Solly Mapaila and SACP1921 had the audacity to tell that Prof Sobukwe received preferential treatment from apartheid government.

This will hurt Solly and his pseudo communist

Son of the soil.

Tell that to Solly Mapaila and SACP1921.

'Sobukwe clause'

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