Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe (1924-1978): Tributes at a special meeting of the Special Committee Against

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Alternative title Notes and Documents - United Nations Centre Against ApartheidNo. 4/78 Author/Creator United Nations Centre against Apartheid Publisher United Nations, New York Date 1978-04-00 Resource type Reports Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) Coverage (temporal) 1978 Source Northwestern University Libraries Description On 3 March 1978 the Special Committee against Apartheid held a special meeting to pay tribute to the late Mr. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, President of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, who died on 26 February 1978 in Kimberley. Format extent 12 page(s) (length/size)

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http://www.aluka.org INOTES AND DOCUMENTS*

INOTES AND DOCUMENTS* 4/78 April 1978 ROBERT 11MIAGALISO SOBUKWE (1924 - 1978) Tributes at a special meeting of the Special Committee against Apartheid E-Note: On 3 March 1978 the Special Committee against Apartheid held a special meeting to pay tribute to the late Mr. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, President of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, who died on 26 February 1978 in Kimberley. Mr. Sobukwe, an outstanding fighter against apartheid, had dedicated his life to the liberation struggle in South Africa. He was President of the Students' Representative Council at Fort Hare University and an active member of the African National Congress Youth League. He subsequently founded in 1959 the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania of which he became President. In 1960 he led the Positive Action Campaign against the hated , which led to the massacre by the apartheid regime and to his own imprisonment for nine years. Since his release from in 1969, Mr. Sobukwe had lived in Kimberley where the regime had placed him under banning orders. This issue of Notes and Documents contains statements made at the meeting of the Special Committee by H.E. Mr. Kurt Waldheim, SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations, H.E. Mr. Leslie 0. Harriman (Nigeria), Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheid, and 1Mr. David Sibeko, The Director of Foreign Affairs of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.] * All material in these notes and documents may be freely reprinted. Acknowledgement, together with a copy of the publication containing the reprint, would be appreciated. 78-08749

MESSAGE BY H.E. MR. KURT WALDHEIM SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS* I am glad that the Special Committee against APartheid has arranged this meeting so that we at the United Nations can honour the memory of Robert Sobukwe and express our deep sense of loss at his untimely passing away. The thought uppermost in my mind at this time is that there is both triumph and tragedy in his life and death. There is tragedy in the fact that he was subjected to great indignities and was silenced by the very society which could have profited most from his great gifts of spirit and intellect, from his deep and enduring humanity. There is tragedy, too, in the loss of his leadership, suffered not only by the Pan Africanist Congress but by the black population of South Africa. Finally there is tragedy in the fact that the rejection of men of peace like Robert Sobukwe brings South Africa further along the path of violence and bloodshed. But a life like Robert Sobukwets is never wasted. Even while we mourn the tragic circumstances of his death, we cannot fail to profit from the inspiring legacy of his life. His leadership of the historic campaign in 1960 against the hated pass laws is a monument to his courage. His opposition to racism of all kinds aad his lack of bitterness towards his oppressors are monuments to his unfailing belief in the common humanity of all men. For our part, we in the United Nations must continue with renewed vigour our efforts on behalf of the many other political prisoners and detainees whose opposltion to apartheid has led to the loss of their freedom. Over the years the United Nations has adopted many resolutions calling for the release of all political prisoners and for the repeal of all repressive legislation directed against the opponents of apartheid. I have had occasion to address personal appeals to the Government of South Africa on this matter, but unfortunately there has not been any positive response. *The message was conveyed to the meeting by Mr. Abdulrahim A. Farah, Assistant Secretary-General for Special Political Questions.

- 2 It is my view that a resolution of the problems of South Africa can best be achieved through peaceful and constructive dialogue at the national level, on the basis of equality, between leaders of all sections of the population. This cannot, of course, be realized if the South African Government continues its policy of banning, detaining and imprisoning political leaders, and excluding the black population from the mainstream of the political, economic and social life of the country. In spite of the constraints that were laid upon him during his lifetime. Robert Sobukwe was still able to make an inspiring contribution to the struggle against apartheid. South Africa is immeasurably poorer because it did not allow him to use his great qualities of mind and heart freely in the service of his country and in the cause of all its people.

-3- STATEMENT BY H.E. MR. LESLIE 0. HARRIMAN (Nigeria), Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheid (Extract) We meet here today to join with the people of South Africa and indeed the people of the whole continent of Africa - who are mourning the death of Mr. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and seething with a ger at the apartheid regime which, by its vengeful persecution and callousness, cut short the life of this great African patriot and leader. We must turn our grief into strength In the course of its struggle to recover its honour and dignity, Africa has lost many of its best sons and daughters - some in the hands of colonialist and racist assassins and torturers, and some through slower and more sophisticated methods of persecution. We have had to mourn again and again the loss of our beloved leaders, but as Mr. Sobukwe declared after the death of last year: "They -'im to finish us off one after the other. We must turn our grief into strength." We have no doubt that the oppressed people of South Africa and their true friends will turn their grief at the death of Mr. Sobukwe into strength and destroy the hateful and criminal system of apartheid. only a few weeks ago, the United Nations decided unanimously to launch the International Anti-Apartheid Year on 21 March- a day which will live in history not so much as a day of mourning for the victims of the , but as the annivrsary of the day of "positive action" by the opiressed people under the dynamic leadership of Sobukwe, as the day which marked the turning point in the struggle of humanity against apartheid and racism. Historic role of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe I will not try to trace the life of this remarkable African a brilliant student and r acher, an uncomproir.-i.g fighter agai st racism and a courageous and far-sighted leader of the people - who remained, throughout the last eighteen years of his life when he was imprisoned and restricted, a symbol of defiance against racist oppression. I would like to refer, however, to the historic role he played - after many years of activity as a militant in the liberation movement - when he rose to national leadership in the late 1950's as the leader of the Africanists.

-4 - He studied deeply the events in his country where cruel repression by the apartheid regime - with the connivance of foreign vested interests, for whom South Africa meant little more than uranium and gold, military bases and fabulous profits, and game parks and cheap labour - had required the liberation movement to consider a new direction in its resistance. He had also followed the developments in West Africa where the independence of Ghana, under the leadership of the late , had begun the process of the elimination of colonial rule and the establishment of independent African Governmeits. He also watched the colonialist and racist -.r o~uvres in East and Central Africa - especially in Kenya where the alien rulers had imprisoned Mzee and attempted to foist a neo-colonial and racist set-up under the slogan of "multi-racialism." He gave the clarion call for continental African unity, for the rejection of multi- racialism as distorted by the colonialists, and for a non-racial struggle toward a non-racial society. No compromise with racism Today, when some forces, in the guise of peacemakers, are mano-uv: ig in Rhodesia to foist a system under which a white man's vote would have more than a tenfold weight over a black man's vote, with the preservation of the ill-gained wealth of white settlers and immigrants endowed greater sanctity than the basic rights of Africans, and when plots are being hatched to turn a national liberation struggle into a fight of blacks against blacks, we must repeat the call of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe that there can be no compromise with racism - indeed no intrusion of so-called racial classifications into politics, because there is only one race, the human race. "In our vocabulary", he said, "the word 'race' as applied to man has no plural form." I have often quoted the declaration of Mr. Sobukwe at the inaugural congress of the Pan Africanist Congress in April 1959, when he said: "We aim, politically, at government of the Africans by the Africans, for the Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Africa and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being regarded as an African..." That is the testament of Mr. Sobukwe to Africa - a continent which is generous but which will never more tolerate appendages of other continents on its soil, or any enclaves of racist drmination.

-5- He declared in his memorable statement at his trial on 4 May 1960: "We believe in one race only - the human race to which we belong. The history of that race is a long history of struggle against all restrictions, physical, mental and spiritual. We would have betrayed the human race if we had not done our share..." That was the spirit that moved Dr. Sobukwe who saw the struggle of his people not only in the context of African emancipation and continental unity, but in the broader framework of the struggle of humanity as a whole, against the injustices of the past. That is the spirit in which the peoples of the world will .... observe the International Anti-Apartheid Year beginning on 21 March .... We again extend our expression of militant solidarity to the national liberation movement of South Africa - a mighty stream of many tributaries to which Robert Sobukwe contributed so greatly, and which will surely sweep away the dirt of racism from the soil of his beloved country....

-6- STATEHENT BY MR. DAVID M. SIBEKO, Director of Foreign Affairs, Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (Extract) Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, our beloved President and the great national leader of the Azanian people, has left us. His passing away on 26 February has throvr. the Azanian nation into deep mourning... President Sobukwe's legacy lives President Sobukwe's life is gone but in the tradition of all great revolutionaries his spirit and his profound ideas remain to inspire us and lead us to complete the struggle he so brilliantly led. To say lfangaliso Sobukwe was a great man seems to be an understatement. He was a living superman, a man who became a legend during his own lifetime. Sobukwe did not play to the gallery, he acted out of deep convictions. His actions brought him untold suffering but he never gave up fighting nor would he ever plead for mercy from his lifelong tormentors - the fascist white minority regime in South Africa. Sobukwe's brilliance, total devotion and selfless sacrifices won him the love and undying respect of his people and unquestioning loyalty of his comrades-in-arms. These same fine qualities drew him admiration from freedom fighters and statesmen all over Africa as well as from people around the world who believe in the justness of the cause of the Azanian people.... Ever since last Sunday ... cables and telephone messages have been pouring into the offices of the Pan Africanist Congress around the world, and we are deeply touched by the solidarity of our many friends and comrades-in-arms. To them we want to repeat what President Sobukwe said from his sickbed, as he was attempting to recover from an operation performed on him the same day Steve Biko died, on 12 S ptember '077: "They aim to finish us off one after the other" - and he continued - "WTe must turn our grief into strength". We want to assure all our supporters that the leadership and cadres of the Pan Africanist Congress are firmly resolved to follow the courageous example of President Sobukwe and to wage a determined struggle until apartheid- colonialism is totally crushed and a nonracial, democratic and socialist Azania is born.

-7- Lifelong fighter for freedom Our President's strengh as a freedom fighter came from his deepseated love for his people and the motherland. In his 53 years he underwent many experiences that left lasting and indelible impressions on his mind. From his humble origins as the last born in a family of six boys, he had firsthand2 experience of poverty in a land of plenty. ... His brilliance won him the scholarships that made it possible for him to attend boarding school at the Healdtown Institute and the Fort Hare University. At University his colleagues, amongst them respected leaders of a number of independent African States today, quickly recognized his leadership qualities and elected him not only the Secretary of the dynamic African National Congress Youth League branch at Fort Hare but President of the Students' Representative Council. Holding firmly to the Pan Africanist teachings of that other great Azanian genius'. M'ziwakhe Lembede, the outstanding African lawyer and scholar who was the founding President of the AN" Youth League, Hangaliso Sobukwe played a prominent role in the fashioning and the adoption of the 1949 Programme of Action. In that same year, in his capacity as President of the Students, Representative Council, Mangaliso Sobukwe delivered an address on behalf of the graduating class at Fort Hare in which he showed some of his political philosophy, a philosophy that was to produce earthshaking events in later years. A quote from that speech reads: "We are seeing within our own day the second rape of Africa, a determined effort by imperialist Powers to dig their claws still deeper into the flesh of the squirming victim...At the same time we see the rise of uncompromising nationalism in India, Malaya, Indonesia, Burma and Africa! The old order is changing ushering in a new order. The great revolution has started and Africa is the field of operation ... The cowards are still standing aside and the brave have made their choice". Mangaliso Sobukwe's view of the struggle was always continentwide; hence to the very last days Sobukwe's hero was the Great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the Republic of Ghana. To the many journalists and visitors from overseas who visited him in his place of in Kimberley Sobukwe frequently quoted from the writings of Kwame Nkrumah and pointed out how the Osagyefo's vision of a union of African States under a socialist order tied up with his own views.... He was unanimously elected President of the Pan Africanist Congress at the inaugural conference on 6 April 1959. Delivering his State of the Nation address in August 1959, Mangaliso Sobukwe said:

-8- "The decks are cleared. The battle must be joined ... There is plenty of suffering ahead. The oppressor will not take this lying down. But we are ready. We will not go back. Come what may ... "We are about to witness momentous events. We are blazing a new trail and we invite you to be, with us, creators of history. Join us in the march of freedom. March with us to independence. To independence now. Tomorrow the United States of Africa. IZIE LETHUJ" Positive Action Campaign The first and only national conference PAC ever held in Azania, on 19 and 20 December 1959, gave President Sobukwre the mandate to launch the unfolding campaign for national liberation. The following month, January 1960, he resigned from his position as a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand so that he could devote himself fully to the task of leading the struggle. He had toured the country addressing massive crowds in a number of towns, villages and cities. On his return to headquarters in he declared that he knew the weak link in the chain of apartheid-colonialism. Sobukwe said the target of the first phase of the unfolding campaign would be to attack that weak link. The campaign would depend heavily on the widest support of the broad masses of the Azanian people.... As it stands out in his writings and utterances, Mangaliso Sobukwe stressed that the African must do things for himself. "Te want to make the African people conscious of the fact that they have to win their own liberation," he wrote in 1959. Our leader despised paternalism and the tendency to use others as political crutches. Armed with this fierce determination, on 18 March 1960 he announced to the nation and the world that the Pan Africanist Congress would launch a Positive Action Campaign against the hated pass laws on 21 March 1960. The Positive Action Campaign would be the first phase of an "n folding campaign for nrtional liberation. President Sobukwe ordered the leaders and members of PAC to be in the forefront in the Campaign whose tactic would be to leave passes at home and demand to be arrested at police stations across the country. "The aim of our campaign is to get ourselves arrested", said Sobukwe on 18 March 1960. "This means nobody will be going to work. Industry will come to a standstill and the Government will be forced to accept our terms".

- 9- The impact and consequences of the PAC Positive Action Campaign of 21 March 1960 are too well-known for me to go into at length on this occasion. Suffice it to say that it was an epoch-making event of unprecedented dimensions. Sobukwe had firmly established himself as the national leader of the Azanian people and, onsequently, as apartheid South Africa's public enemy Number One. His imprisonment from 1960 up to his death is evidence of the fear he drove into the cowardly fascists in . The Council of Ministers of the Organizationo f African Unity, in a resolution adopted at its recent session in Tripoli, resolutely condermi the South African apartheid regime "for its callous imprisonmet, detention and hounding of Mangaliso Sobukwe". Fighter to the end President Sobukwe became gravely ill last June. All efforts, including appeals from world leaders, to bring him out of South Africa so that he could receive proper medical care were rejected by the -State. ... As my colleague, Vusumzi Make, said before the OAU Foreign Ministers in Libya, the death certificate for Sobukwe may state that he died of cancer, but we lay the blame for his death on the apartheid regime of South Africa.. Our President has been the personification of our motto: service, suffering and sacrifice. His example will be emulated by his followers because we aim for the same goals as Sobukwe did. And these are well stated in his address to the Inaugural Conference of the Pan Africanist Congress in 1959: "We aim, politically, at government of the Africans by the Africans for the Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Africa and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being regarded as an African. We guarantee no minority rights, because we think in terms of individuals, not groups. "Economically ... we stand committed to a policy guaranteeing the most equitable distribution of wealth. "Socially we aim at the full development of the human personality and a ruthless uprooting and outlawing of all forms or manifestations of the racial myth. To sum it up, we stand for an Africanist Socialist Democracy" ... Putting in perspective the era we have reached in our struggle President Sobukwe said, in one of the last interviews he gave, to Les Payne of Long Islandys Newsday: "At Sharpeville we conquered fear of imprisonment. Kwame Nkrumah gave respectability to going to jail.., by calling imprisoned freedom fighters 'prison graduates'. At we conquered fear of the gun, the white man's last weapon of oppression. ... And now that we too can get the gun, confrontation is inevitable."

- 10 Many will be interested to know that President Sobukwe died as an implicated man - actually the Number One co-conspirator in the biggest political trial currently going on in South Africa. In the Terrorism Act trial in Bethal 18 men are facing the possibility of a death sentrnce for allegedly being involved - along with President Sobukwe, Acting President and 84 others - in plans of the Pan Africanist Congress to bring down the apartheid regime through violent revolution. Sobukwe died as he lived - fighting! In conclusion I would like to paraphrase a favourite quotation of Mangaliso Sobukwels; it comes from the writings of a Russian patriot in the last century: Man's greatest possession is life. It is given to him to live but once. Ian must live his life in such a way that when dying he may say, all my life and all my strength have been given to the greatest cause of all - the liberation of mankind.