REMEMBERING ROBERT MANGALISO SOBUKWE:
THE REVOLUTIONARY THINKER
By Jaki Seroke
Ma Veronica Sobukwe captured the essence of her
late husband’s core mission in life when she chose the apt inscription for his
gravestone: “True leadership demands complete subjugation of self, absolute
honesty, integrity and uprightness of character, courage and fearlessness, and
above all, a consuming love for one’s people.”
Using a political lens, the kernel of Robert
Mangaliso Sobukwe’s contribution to public discourse in South Africa may best
be understood as revolutionary thought leadership.
He noted early on, that in African history some
chiefs and traditional leaders had, of their own free will, participated in the
sale of their subjects to slave traders. They had showed no care for the
well-being of their own people, and gleefully focused on self-enrichment. They collaborated
with foreign invaders to entrap African people and turn them into beasts of
burden. They were invariably used as pacifiers to help get little or no
resistance. This anomaly could replicate itself in the modern age if trusting
Africans were not consciously aware of their history.
In the Americas, for instance, the indigenous
people fought vigorously against the white man’s slavery system. Once captured,
they preferred to commit suicide rather than live as slaves. The slave traders
then went across the Atlantic sea to fetch cowed products. Sobukwe extolled the
revolutionary deeds of Toussaint L’Overture, who led the San Domingo (Haiti)
slave rebellion to victory.
A SCHOLAR AND A
FREEDOM FIGHTER
Sobukwe developed into a formidable intellectual
and acquired academic honours in the languages, economics, law and political
science.
His outstanding leadership of the liberation
movement was infused with revolutionary ideas which marked a radical departure
from conformity, compromise and careless submission to the whims of the powers
that be. He acknowledged the influence of intellectuals from the All Africa
Convention (AAC) in his initial development. The AAC was marginalised from the
mainstream of public discussions due to their non-conformist approach. Sobukwe
took the popular platform in the schools, tertiary institutions and the press
and tamed it.
His Completers’ Speech at the University of Fort
Hare was a game changer in student politics – influencing southern Africa’s
burgeoning intellectuals. The historical impact of his speech can only be
regarded as a forerunner to Onkgopotse Abram Tiro’s graduation address at
Turfloop University in 1972.
Mainstream thought leaders like ZK Matthews,
Chief Albert Luthuli and their protégés, Nelson Mandela and OR Tambo,
subscribed to the concept of “exceptional-ism” for South Africa. In their
prognosis, the country’s colonialism was complex and of a special kind – after
the Act of Union of 1909 – and could not be easily likened to the rest of the
African continent. They believed that a national convention by all the race
groups was best placed to chart a peaceful settlement suitable to all.
The old guard leadership were influenced by
Booker T Washington’s Up from Slavery, which advocated moderation and gradualism
in winning changes from the authorities. They vouched for steady reforms, the
buildup of an African bourgeoisie and cooperation of the racial groups under
multi-racialism.
Sobukwe on the other hand read the works of WEB
Du Bois, George Padmore and other militant revolutionaries in the worldwide Pan
African movement. He stated that national politics in South Africa could only
be understood from an international perspective.
REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT
LEADER
As a thought leader, Sobukwe interpreted
abstract concepts of political theory into concrete ideas which could be
understood by ordinary folk. His entire writings do not carry a single
exclamation mark. There is no anger and rancour in the way in which he
expresses strongly-held ideas against land dispossession, exploitation and
racial bigotry. He consciously exercised intellectual rigour and discipline.
Under his watch, the PAC’s eco-system blended
various intellectual disciplines – including those who were seemingly in
opposition and contradiction to each other – to work seamlessly together in a
united front, under the banner of African Nationalism. The church, business,
youth, students, rural farmers and traditional communities, the proletariat,
and professionals found space to air their views and be heard. He linked the
PAC with the 1949 Programme of Action – which he drafted. The PAC was also part
of the continent-wide winds of change.
The national executive committee of the Pan
Africanist Congress was referred to in the newspapers as Sobukwe’s cabinet
ministry, acting as a shadow government to the ruling settler regime. It had
luminaries like Nkutsuoe Peter Raboroko, a premier political theorist; Lekoane
Zephania Mothopeng, a leading educationist who campaigned against the Bantu
Education bills; PK Leballo, a second world war veteran; Jacob Nyaose, labour
federation unionist; and a host of other rising revolutionary intellectuals.
Founder of the congress youth league, AP Mda, served in the backroom as a
spiritual leader.
The policies of the PAC were Africanist in
orientation, original in conception, creative in purpose, socialist in content,
democratic in form, and non-racial in approach. They recognized the primacy of
the material, spiritual and intellectual interests of the individual. They
guaranteed human rights and basic freedoms to the individual – not minority
group rights, which would transport apartheid into a free world.
His comrades fondly referred to Sobukwe as ‘the
Prof’ – a term of endearment for his charismatic leadership and recognition of
his intellectual prowess. They were however all required to return to the
source – the masses – and show the light, in biblical simplicity. They formed
unity between workers, poor peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals. Robert
Sobukwe’s team went on to set the pace for the national liberation struggle
from 1960 onwards by putting South Africa (Azania) as a troubled spot on the
world map.
Sobukwe’s abiding concern has been that Africa
as a unified whole could participate as an equal in world affairs. The
patchwork of colonial borders drafted at the 1884 Berlin Conference had to be
ultimately done away with. A united Africa, under a single government, could
spread its humanising influence to resolve conflicts among nations – after the
League of Nations had dismally failed to contain and control Nazi Germany’s
aggression – and to having its civilisation appreciated and understood.
Sobukwe’s own lifestyle was an expression of his
ideas on mass-based leadership. He adopted the political standpoint of ordinary
folks in the rural areas and in the urban cities. He led a humble life, and
could relate to the poor and ‘the unwashed’, engaging them in genuine dialogue
on matters of national importance, even though he had held a ‘prestigious
position’ as a senior tutor of languages at Witwatersrand University. He knew
that positions like his, shorn of the frills and trappings, were dominated by
right-wingers, liberals and leftists from minority groupings “who arrogantly
appropriate to themselves the right to plan and think for the Africans.” If he
conformed to the status quo, he would be domesticated with a dog-collar mark as
in the fable of the Jackal and the Dog.
Sobukwe loved and glorified God. He believed in
the power of prayer and called his family and comrades to do likewise. He
became a lay preacher in the Methodist church. The PAC followed his path –
initiated by the slogan first coined by AP Mda – of making Christianity and
other religious beliefs relevant to the continent by stating that “African is
for Africans, Africans for Humanity, and Humanity for God.”
POLITICAL OPPONENTS
AND RIVALS
After the Sharpeville and Langa massacres,
Sobukwe was singled out for severe punishment by the National Party
administration. He was imprisoned for three years in hard labour. The
whites-only parliament extended his imprisonment by enacting the Sobukwe Clause
to keep him in solitary confinement without trial for six more years. They fed
him pieces of broken glass in his food, poisoned him in secret, and when he
developed traces of lung cancer they banished him to Galeshewe township in
Kimberley. He died a banned person in February 1978.
He served the African people selflessly. He
suffered under the yoke of oppressive laws like the majority of the people.
More than anything else, Mangaliso Sobukwe sacrificed himself and his family
for the national liberation of African people.
His detractors who supported the Bantustan
system paired him with Stephen Bantu Biko and said as ‘commoners’ they were
without a traditional mandate to lead the collective of black people.
The Accra Conference of liberation movement
leaders in Africa resolved to target 1963 for complete independence of the
entire continent. The PAC mobilised its supporters into an unfolding programme
of mass action until freedom is attained – by 1963. Critics oblivious of this
background information said Sobukwe’s target date was naive and unrealistic.
They claimed the masses were not ready for mass action.
For Sobukwe, the masses needed to assert their
African personality and overcome their fear of prison, then overcome their fear
of death, in order to overthrow white domination.
In the acclaimed autobiography, Long Walk to
Freedom, the author condescendingly remarks that Sobukwe was a clever man. He
then juxtaposes Sobukwe’s frustrations in handling difficult leadership merit
questions from an awkward personality at the Pretoria Central Prison when he
served three years for the consequences of the Positive Action Campaign. This
literary device is disingenuous and silly, because the parties treated with
disdain are not alive to corroborate the anecdotes or to tell their side of the
story. It is a cheap propaganda tactic.
HIS WIFE’S CONSUMING
LOVE
They met in the heat of a nurse’s strike in the
Eastern Cape and sparks of love ignited. When they became soul-mates in
matrimony, they also understood that their union was an everlasting bond. Ma
Sobukwe grew up partly in rural Kwa-Zulu and partly in the dark city of
Alexandra township. She has endured hardships – but was prepared beforehand for
the long road ahead of them. When she drafted the inscription on the gravestone
as a quote from his Completers Speech in 1949 she was transmitting the message
on true leadership as a consuming gift to the Azanian masses.
The writer is a
strategic management consultant. He is a member of the National Executive
Committee of SANMVA, the newly established statutory umbrella body of military
veteran’s organisations. He is the chairperson of the Pan Africanist Research
Institute (PARI).
