“True leadership demands complete subjugation of self, absolute integrity, honesty and uprightness of character, courage and fearlessness and above a consuming love for one’s people” – Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe.
INTRODUCTION
The quote above is one of my favourites by Prof because it encapsulates the kind of person he was, metaphorically and philosophically. However, in this piece, I want to focus on the life of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe as an Pan Africanist leader whose voice has been silenced beyond the grave. I want to argue that the memory of Sobukwe can be read as an antennae of the history of this country, even though there might be any other reasons why one would want to read more about Sobukwe the icon. For me, his story is part of the history of this country. I want to argue, just as others have said before, that the history of the anti-apartheid struggle would be incomplete not only without the history of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). At the same time, the history of the struggle against apartheid would be incomplete without the history of Bantu Biko, the Black Consciousness Movement and AZAPO.
Over the years it has been argued that no one has ever managed to accurately introduce Sobukwe as a subject-matter, and I am not going to attempt to do that in any shape or form. What I will do however, is to reinvigorate the memory of his legacy, particularly the written form. In other words, I aim to reinvigorate the memory of Sobukwe through the literature that has been written about his life and his legacy. There are several books that focus on the life and times of Sobukwe that have been published in recent history. But I am only going to review three recent books, even though I am aware that there are about four other books that were published before. As one of these four, How man can die better is the most popular book written by his friend and journalist, Benjamin Pogrund.
The recent books include: The making of a Pan Africanist Leader by Thami ka Plaatjie; Lie on your wounds: The prison correspondence of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe by Derek Hook and Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe: New Reflections a book written Benjamin Pogrund as an editor. In the latter, Benji invites a diverse range of contributors to speak on the lessons they have learnt and can be drawn from Prof (if you do not know, Sobukwe was called ‘Prof’ because many people revered his calibre as a thinker). Generally, the book invites contributors to reflect on the life, ideas and legacy of Robert Sobukwe through essays.
I mention these three books simply because they form part of the new scholarship and interest in the life and times of Mangaliso Sobukwe – which is something unprecedented. This is unprecedented given that the memory of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe had been silenced intentionally by the apartheid regime and the continues to be silenced by the current administration that we are told is solely responsible for the democracy and freedom we enjoy today.
However, it must be noted that the eminent resurgence of public interest in the life of Sobukwe as a teacher, thinker, Pan Africanist leader and a global icon comes after numerous social movements like the Rhodes Must Fall which specifically insisted on the decolonisation of South African universities and advocated for the dismantling of the entire historical, social, political, and economic setup of this country.
And one of the things that the Rhodes Must Fall Movement were able to achieve was to conscientise the masses in many campuses – including UCT itself – where the action unfolded. It was through the miasmic atmosphere of protest, acts of rebellion, the vigorous debates and discussions that occurred during the occupation of the Bremner Building (which students deliberately referred to as Azania House – to echo the language of Africanists). These acts of rebellion enabled students to be politically aware of the fallacies of our country – with the Marikana massacre that happened in 2012, three years earlier, as the backdrop – to point out the way our government became antithetical to the legacy of the liberation struggle that freedom fighters like Sobukwe served, suffered and sacrificed his life for.
Desirably or undesirably, many students whom were initially unaware of the myths and fallacies of rainbow(ism), democracy and the delusion of 1994, were able to interrogate, complicate and problematise the notion of ‘freedom’ in occupied Azania.
I also want to believe that it was through the presence of the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA) among other factors at UCT that enabled many students to get to know about the life of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, what he stood for and what the organisation he was part of wanted to achieve.
Perhaps, the call to decolonise the university’s institutional symbols, cultures, names of buildings and the curriculum was not too far from the call for the decolonisation of the history of this country. It was indeed not surprising that, at times, the students at UCT, UWC, Wits and elsewhere found inspiration in Sobukwe, Biko and Fanon because invariably these thinkers were in a conversation, in various ways, with one another concerning the struggle of Africans from across the globe in the fight against European imperialism and colonisation. Their work provided a theoretical framework that students used as modus operandi for their actions during both the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall protests.
It is therefore in this context, that I attempt to reinvigorate the memory of Sobukwe, so that future generations may also find inspiration from reading these books featured in this piece.
With that in mind, I want to alert readers that the following reviews are nothing but snippets of the three recent books that have been written about Prof. This piece seeks to encourage readers to read more material on the life and times of Sobukwe who later became a renowned lawyer and community builder in Galeshewe, a township in Kimberly that Prof embraced as his ‘last home’ in Azania as he was subjected to a stringent house arrest by the apartheid regime.
- Brief thought’s on Thami ka Plaatjie’s book:
I think in this book, Thami was able to achieve what he wanted to achieve in writing this book. As one of his desires, the insistence of filling the ‘historical gaps’ that he believed Pogrund’s biography of Sobukwe were guilty of was what propelled him to write this book in the way he did. Thami ka Plaatjie felt that Sobukwe’s story “had not been fully told” and as a result he took the writing of this book as his “life’s mission to accomplish” by telling this story and sharing it with the world. He wanted to tell “the true story of a political colossus, an intellectual giant and a formidable fighter of his people” (see the Preface in Sobukwe: The making of a Pan Africanist Leader, p. XV). I think Thami ka Plaatjie achieved what he wanted to achieve, more especially when he insisted on the idea for Africans to have the courage to tell their own stories from their own perspective(s).
This critique obviously comes from the knowledge that a lot of biography in this country have been written by many white writers, journalists and historians. Thami’s aim was to subvert that.
Thus, when one reads this book, one is able to notice from the very beginning that the life of Sobukwe was a personal matter to Thami and perhaps this could be regarded as his limitation in as far as maintaining objectivity in telling the story of Robert Sobukwe. Whether the limitation holds water or not is something worth interrogating. But as a case in point, in the preface Thami writes: “[t]o write a book of this nature you need to be engrossed in your subject’s life and be preoccupied by it deeply enough to sustain a state of intense fascination”. For me, his admission of his genuine appreciation of a political tower whose life and voice had been neglected for the longest time in South African history is something commendable.
During the launch of this book at the University of Johannesburg last year – when life was still ‘normal’, Thami ka Plaatjie explains that he wanted to tell this story about the times and life of Sobukwe, since 2007. Fortunately, Thami has already accomplished his desire to write this book, but has now promised that three more volumes that are yet to come, to complete the ‘Sobukwe Encyclopaedia’ (as explained in this video).
Now, what this book does differently from Benjamin Pogrund’s biography of Sobukwe is that, it is told from an African perspective by an African. Thami’s main interest is to reveal the deeply entrenched African knowledge and belief systems (including cultural, traditional customs and heritage) that shaped and influenced Sobukwe’s life. This was Thami’s way of interpreting the legacy of Sobukwe. He does this by drawing a lot from Sobukwe’s ancestral lineage by not only tracing his origins – which we learn from the book – were rooted in Qhuting, in Lesotho, but also focusing on the relationship that Africans have with their clan names. He also unpacked the distinctions between Nguni and the Sotho clan names, a very interesting topic on its own, especially for Africans. He did this in the latter part of the first chapter and the beginning of the second chapter which is entitled: Childhood and the influence of traditional symbols. In the second chapter he critiqued the way European historians and biographers often fail “to locate, the essential role African belief system as exemplified by their veneration of certain totems”, a critique that I have come to appreciate having read a number of biographies written by European biographers including Pogrund.
This kind of African perspective on the biography of Mangaliso Sobukwe is what, in my view, makes this book different from the others, more especially in comparison to How man can die better. Perhaps, a comparative study and reading of the two books can be done in another piece as a means to critically further advance the distinctions that can be drawn between the two seminal books.
With that said, I think through this book Thami ka Plaatjie was able to capture the African personality by insisting that “[a]n African biography should be approached with a different set of sensitivities and sensibilities, as Africans are shaped and moulded by both material and spiritual influences”. In my view Thami was able to do what he decried here as he managed to capture the African personality of Mangaliso Sobukwe. He explained how culture as a tenet of the African belief systems shaped and influenced Sobukwe. What I mean by that, is that Thami firstly explained the origins of Sobukwe, his clan names and how these shaped his character and being, and interestingly he compared and contrasted Nguni and Sotho clan names as way to demonstrate the orientation that informs different cultures within these two language groups come to understand clan names.
And as I have explained earlier that Sobukwe’s roots were located in Lesotho and this is confirmed by an account given Mercy Sobukwe (as one of Thami’s sources who is a close family member). It was this discovery that Thami found as an interesting aspect of Sobukwe’s life that was neglected, and by implication this discovery complicates the history of this man. Reason being, Mercy Sobukwe’s account is not recorded anywhere else, except being a fact known orally by close family members and relatives. I suppose this is another important thing the book seeks to address – that Africans must be courageous enough to record their stories (hear more about this in the video above). I want to believe that this was something that Prof would have accepted given that, as it is explained in Pogrund’s book, Prof wanted to write literature in Sesotho and IsiZulu and we cannot dismiss the fact that he was a linguist having taught IsiZulu at Wits, even though that was not his mother-tongue language, but I digress.
Needless to say, another way how Thami’s discovery about Sobukwe’s origins further complicates the history of Sobukwe is the fact we get to also learn the way Sobukwe’s clan names were ‘translated’ because even his surname was ‘translated’. In this book we learn that Sobukwe’s surname was initially Rabogoe, but because the locals in Queenstown where his grandfather migrated to could not pronounce it and so it was mutated to ‘Sobukwe’, which to a certain extent has a similar tonal sound, if you ask me.
Fortunately or unfortunately, for Sobukwe when his clan name was ‘translated’ into IsiXhosa, one of the prominent Nguni languages, still carried the same meaning because uHlathi is also uMfene (meaning baboon). Both words, Mfene and tshweni, mean the same thing (i.e. the baboon – which is the animal that Sobukwe’s clan venerate, at least in the Basotho culture). Interestingly though, in the Xhosa culture his clan venerates ihlathi which is the forest. Hence, in the IsiXhosa culture, Sobukwe’s clans names are u-Hlathi, uLisa, uJambase, uCanzi ozangemva elilweni (which translates to something along the lines “I am of the forest / Descendent of Lisa, Jambase and Canzi / Who climb[s] the cliff from the back).
We get to learn all of this through the explanation that Sobukwe’s grandfather’s decision to migrate to what is now called the Eastern Cape is what led to the family to adopt the Xhosa culture as their means to adapt in the new environment. Whether this information is important or not is subject for one’s opinion. I only mention this because it was Thami’s way to unearth the history of Sobukwe.
Thami ka Plaatjie further went on to explain the history of Sobukwe by linking it to the history of his hometown, Graaff-Reinet where he was born and bred, by referring to its linkage to colonial conquest and resistance as he mentioned some (known or unknown) historical records about the Voortrekker and how Masizakhe township in Graaf-Reinet came to be. And the pages that followed went to reveal how Sobukwe was a linguist, a lover of literature particularly the classics of both poetry and prose including the writing of S.E.K Mqhayi, a great poet who wrote in IsiXhosa. Other aspects that become apparent in the book are the influences in Sobukwe’s include his rural and township upbringing, his African belief systems and admiration of customs such as ulwaluko (rite of passage from boyhood to manhood) with the combination of the Anglophone influences of his Christian belief and orientation – to show the complexity of his identity as a Africanist leader – we get to see the co-existence of his traditional identity and his Christian identity.
This approach of writing of biography is similar to the way Prof. Xolela Mangcu wrote Bantu Biko’s biography as he also touched on the history of King William’s town where Biko was born, commenting on Biko’s christian upbringing and his missionary education and how at times these realities were entangled with one another. The same contradictions can be traced in Sobukwe’s life as well, but in my view it was Pogrund’s book that was able to reveal in great deal how Sobukwe dealt with the quagmire of religion more especially when Bob (that’s the name Pogrund used to refer to Sobukwe) was incarcerated in solitary confinement in Robben Island.
In the main, the shortfall of Thami’s account in this book is his failure to appreciate the differing views about the split of the Africanists from the African National Congress. So even though he was able to indicate that the differences between the Africanists and the Charterists were ideological in nature, ka Plaatjie was also able to demonstrate the influence of white liberals, the communists that is, in the way they exacerbated the split between the two groups. However, others argue that there are differing views on this particular matter, perhaps had ka Plaatjie been able to cover counter narratives in his book, his account would have been more effective and nuanced.
Needless to say, one of the chapters that I personally found resounding was Chapter 10 titled: A teaching post at Standerton. In this chapter, Thami dealt with the influence that Sobukwe had as a teacher to his learners and the community of Standerton at large. This chapter resonated with me the most because I am also a teacher by profession. It left me with a lasting effect because there were times when the learners and community of Standerton defended Prof even when it was unfashionable to do so – as the apartheid regime wanted to purge Mr. Sobukwe (pun intended) by dismissing him. In this chapter, Thami described how Prof insisted in teaching his learners the ‘correct’ history of South Africa, a history of conquest by European colonialists and imperialists, and not the distorted history they were expected to learn. His history lessons were political in nature as he encouraged his learners to “engage their parents so as to gain a better understanding of their dispossession, and to play a great role in the affairs of their country”. I suspect that this is the same problem that the today’s curriculum of history education in Basic Education still suffers from, perhaps in university too – but I welcome debate on this particular view of mine.
Thami ka Plaatjie’s chapter was able to illustrate the Prof’s famous quote which reads as follows: “[y]ou have seen by now what education means to us: the identification of ourselves with the masses. Education to us means service to Africa. In whatever branch of learning you are there for Africa. You have a mission; we all have a mission. A nation to build…” was not just a slogan but something that he lived up to and embraced with so much passion.
2. Sobukwe’s voice is found in letters
In Derek Hook’s book, Lie on your wounds: The political correspondence of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, we get to meet Sobukwe the “letter-writer” as Hook puts it. In this great collection of Prof’s letters that he wrote to his wife and mother of his children, to his friends and colleagues while he was in prison, we get to meet the forever humane, polite, courageous, resilient and compassionate persona that Mangaliso Sobukwe embodied fearlessly.
Among the people Sobukwe would write to was Nell Marquard and her husband, Leo Marquard who described Sobukwe’s character as follows: “humane, compassionate [and] humourous”. I think Nell Marquard only got to know Sobukwe’s character through his correspondence to her and her husband, but I stand to be corrected. From Nell’s views about Sobukwe’s character we get to realise the same thread in as far as many people have shared the same sentiments about his humility, kindness and fecundity of thought yet possessing the sense of kind greatness and presence he exuded. Another common thread that becomes apparent in the letters he wrote was his love for books, literature in particular and his views about geopolitics.
Thus, the same accounts provided in How can man die better, Sobukwe’s ability to explain the world is also reverberated in the correspondences he wrote to his colleagues and associates as indicated in the letters which are featured in this book. This particular book adds greater value in the remembrance of the life of Sobukwe because unlike the other books, we get to really hear him through his own voice, his letters speak for themselves. It is not a matter of providing excerpts of his speeches (which is what Pogrund did in his biography of Bob) or including Sobukwe’s speeches as appendices (which is what Thami ka Plaatjie did in his book). Derek Hook’s book does the opposite by allowing Prof to speak for himself. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that both Benjamin and ka Plaatjie’s biographies about the life of Sobukwe make reference to his famous speeches, but for a change and at great length through Hook’s book, we get to hear the sincere voice of Mangaliso Sobukwe despite the censorship and surveillance of his written work, Prof was still able to exude in his vulnerability, loneliness and courageous nature through the letters he wrote to the people he wrote to.
The book is quite thick yet Derek Hook, who is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, in United States of America and an Extraordinary Professor of Psychology at the University of Pretoria, acknowledges that his selections of these letters included in the book are “incomplete” because of obvious reasons. He mentions that “only a portion of the letters received or sent by Sobukwe during his years of imprisonment survived” and that “some of the surviving letters… are not particularly clear or even eligible”. However, the book provides clarity where and when it is needed in terms of indicating an omission by using this […] to signify the references “to people still alive” and when unable to decipher certain words due to difficulties with legibility of Prof’s handwriting (yes during those days computers did not exist in South Africa), Hook indicates this as [illegible]. Moreover, Hook further declares that in this book he wanted the letters to speak for themselves, and by so doing, allowing the voice of Sobukwe to silence the noise similar to the silence that he was subjected during his solitary confinement imprisonment in Robben Island and the subsequent house arrest he was subjected to years later after his release from the “university of life”.
What is also helpful at this juncture is to simultaneously read and use the notes provided in the book for each letter – where they are made available – so that one is able to make sense of the whole story portrayed by each letter. Hence, the information provided by the Historical Papers Archive from Wits William Cullen library become very useful (see: http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/collections&c=A2618/R/6325). The voice of the dead (Sobukwe in this case) is not dead but is silenced by the erasure in historical textbooks and the mainstream narrative of the history of this country, and it can only be exhumed if it is dug out of the archive which is what Hook’s book has done in my view.
Another important aspect to mention about Hook’s book is its title, which emanates from an explanation that Sobukwe would often provide to his correspondents as a way to console them when they shared with him the sad news of losing a loved-one. Prof in these instances, would pour out his heart and try to find the grammar and language to communicate his heartfelt condolences by using an IsiXhosa proverb “Akuhlanga lungehlanga – lala ngenxeba” which Sobukwe would translate as follows “[t]here has not occurred what has not occurred before… LIE ON YOUR WOUND”. This phrase in my view is a phrase imbued with the wisdom of African philosophy and ethic when showing remorse towards those who are mourning the loss of loved ones.
For example, the saying could go on further to say “Akuhlanga lungehlanga – kunjalo kuzo zonke iintlanga” – which metaphorically connotes the same meaning but further extending the idea that death occurs to every nation. In explaining the significance of the metaphor of this phrase, Prof. Derek Hook argues that “this resonant phrase… applies to Sobukwe himself” in that it calls for him to bid his time to heal and reconstitute himself despite the evidence of suffering. This particularly applied in response to Sobukwe’s letter to Nell Marquard after she lost her husband which Sobukwe wrote in 1974, but Hook’s explanation is applicable to other contexts when Sobukwe was pouring his heart out to other correspondents he wrote to as his way to console them to whilst consoling himself too, unwittingly so. Hook also opines that this “phrase calls for one to also have courage, to be the moral burden of pain [and that] it provides an apt titled for what was the most difficult period of Sobukwe’s life” which was essentially the time he spent while he was incarcerated in Robben Island, thus the book by and large embodies exactly that.
What could be highly appreciated about this book is that through his letters, Sobukwe revealed himself as an incisive fellow to be around with and one gets to demystify the myth that he was a racist or anything along those lines. When he maintained his view that the philosophy of his Pan Africanism was anti-nobody Sobukwe meant exactly that, and this is exposed succinctly in the book.
Personally, I mostly appreciated and admired the letters that Prof exchanged with Mama Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe (née Mathe, a political veteran in her own right) because those letters revealed the kind of ‘hopeless romantic’ that Ntate Sobukwe was. I suspect that Mama just had this ability to lull the gravity of Sobukwe’s political magnitude and prowess to a point where Sobukwe suddenly became an ordinary lover and father to his children. To her, Sobukwe just remained an equal, nothing glamorous whatsoever, despite him being this ‘famous leader’ that he was to the public – which is often the case with romantic lovers who destined for greatness. Love has that ability to make it a possibility for opposites to attract. This is not to say that the two heroic figures were opposites per se, but to rather point out my reading of love and romance in general, and I welcome differing views on this matter too. That’s the kind of deep love and appreciation that readers get to appreciate about their love and marriage.
For example, in one of the letters to Mama Zondeni dated December 1963 (see Hook, 2019, p. 51), Prof opens the letter with the words “Hello Darling,” (this is not Sobukwe the Pan Africanist, but the lover and father to their children) and then he says:
“I didnt think I should wait until I hear from you. I just had to “talk” to you! I don’t need to tell you that I miss you and the kids terribly and that all day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I was following you in my mind from one station to another”
The letter continues and closes with the lines “Your loving husband / Mangi” – almost every time when he wrote to his wife that is the grammar and language he used which is proof that Prof was fully committed to the one and only woman in his life. A union between two great friends, parents and lovers that even jail, distance and sadly death could not easily break apart, and most certainly, Mama Zondeni knew that her man was fully committed into their companionship. Unfortunately being an African child I am not even supposed to be commenting about the union of two elderly people like Ntate and Mme Sobukwe the way I have but I cannot help but justify that the reason I did this is because I wish I could have this level of commitment towards the woman I will marry one day and get to emulate the same kind of devotion towards her as my wife.
3. New reflections about the life of Sobukwe
As the third and the last book recent book I am reviewing, the book Robert Sobukwe: New reflections is a very liberal text, if you ask me, as it seems to be diluting the legacy of the Pan Africanist leader and global icon but I guess those are my reservations about this particular book. One cannot help but wonder what Pogrund was really attempting to do here with this book.
Perhaps, it was his way to nullify the notions of ‘authority’ of voice when it comes to the issue of who can speak, think and reflect about the life and times of Mangaliso Sobukwe. The reason I say that is because I was suspicious about the views and ideas of some of the contributors that were featured in this book just as many Africanists would be. But at the same time, I have come to accept the possibility that my suspicion is limited if it even has room to exist.
I suspect what the book really tried to do here was to bring a new voice into the conversation in as far as reflecting and thinking through about the life of Mangaliso Sobukwe, and so the diversity of the contributors that were involved in this project become an interesting feature in as far as the objective of this book is concerned. The contributors with interesting essays on Sobukwe included the likes of Barney Pityana, Derek Hook (for obvious reasons), Hon Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Anele Nzimande (a fellow Witsie I’ve always admired from afar) and Otua Sobukwe.
Anele Nzimande in her essay asks the question Why is freedom such a bitter fruit? which was the title of her essay as well. Her answer to the questions appear to be unsettling because she insists that as black people “[a]t some point, we must be willing to draw a line in the sand” so that we can be able to dismantle the dependency we suffer from as a collective. This follows after she acknowledges that indeed colonialism and apartheid have had undying repercussions and damage to the future of black people, but at some point we as blacks should be able to take fully responsibility of our future, more especially those who have been able to equip themselves with progressive teachings of black consciousness and Pan Africanism – which I believe are two schools of thought Anele is aware of, and that she possibly embraces in one way or the other. As short as her essay is, Anele is able to conclude that in order for us to know if ever there was a time those who lead us (politicians that is) ever loved us, we would be able to assess their true intentions by observing their ability or inability to display “integrity and uprightness of character” which basically echoes the opening quote I used in this piece.
Another interesting essay in this collection definitely has to be Otua’s essay. An interesting fact about Otua is that is the daughter of Miliswa Sobukwe which makes her the granddaughter of Mangaliso Sobukwe. I think her essay was the most striking essay in that it painstakingly and poignantly left me tormented because she put it to bear that her own life was mirrored by the legacy of her grandfather that she could not live up to, that whenever she had to say her name in the US where she is studying and living, people would want to hear more about her grandfather. Meaning that people were more interested in hearing about her grandfather that she never had the chance to meet in person, yet she was expected to explain what she knows about him and what he stood for. As she laments in the book, people wanted to hear less about her personality and individuality.
Her essay is titled: Sharing my grandfather’s pains and hopes, in this essay Otua reflects about the quagmire of having not known or met her grandfather yet always hearing about him from her mother. She also reflects about the crisis of identity she experienced having lived in different countries – from Uganda, South Africa and the United States of America and problematises the paradox of having fond memories of her childhood living in Robben Island, even though that place is an ugly reminder of the pain, humiliation and dehumanisation that her late grandfather, uHlathi had endured because of the apartheid regime.
It seems to me that Otua faces the same challenges that many in her age group face as a ‘born-frees’, a label and concept that does not actually exist at all, because as we know today, the legacies of apartheid continues to live with us just like this global pandemic we are forced to live with at the moment. This ‘born-free’ label is only used to tame the so-called younger generation of millenniums who did not get to experience the apartheid regime as their parents did.
In closing, the life and teachings of Sobukwe consistently remind us what it means to be waged in a struggle for liberation from colonial conquest and bondage, that it is only through political commitment, the unreservedly love for one’s people and the uprightness of character that would enable us to bring about meaningful change in society. Prof embodied the slogan of the Pan Africanist Congress: Serve, Suffer and Sacrifice, he paid the ultimate price.
It is this body of work that has emerged in the country that continues unravel and reveal a common thread about Sobukwe’s character and calibre of a leader he was. He was indeed an embodiment of Bantu Biko’s famous resolve: “It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.” These three books discussed here were able to illustrate uniquely how Sobukwe’s life and times echoed the exact words, literally and otherwise as far as his legacy is concerned.
Remember Africa!
Remember Sobukwe!
“Let me plead with you, to carry with you into the world the vision of a new Africa, an Africa re-born, an Africa rejuvenated, an Africa recreated, young Africa. We are glimmers of a new dawn. And if we are persecuted for our views, we should remember, as the African saying goes, that it is darkest before dawn, and that they dying beast kicks most violently when it is giving up the ghost, so-to-speak” – M.R. Sobukwe, 21 Oct 1949 Address at the University of Fort Hare.
More books about Sobukwe:
- The Land is Ours by Dr. Motsoko Pheko;
- ‘Here is a tree: Political biography of Sobukwe’ by Elias Ntloedibe
- Serve, Suffer, Sacrifice – The Story of Robert Mangaliso by Zamikhaya Gxabe.
Khayelethu Reading Club 