Human Rights Day and the Omission of Robert Sobukwe's Name
March 21 has come and gone, with nary a word about ancestor Mangaliso Sobukwe being mentioned by any government comrade with reference to the watershed that was the Sharpeville shootings which would later prompt the armed struggle by liberation forces. It is as if the Prof - as the native of Graaf-Reinet and founding father of the Pan Africanist Congress - Sobukwe was affectionately called by followers and admirers alike, never existed. I searched the Gauteng Legislature's website in vain. The Premier Mbhazima Shilowa's statement on the day in Sharpeville itself is thundering in its silence regarding Sobukwe. Delivering the keynote address at the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Inaugural Lecturer at Fort Hare University organized by the Steve Biko Foundation on March 2003, Professor Es'kia Mphahlele made an allusion to the 'crass political mediocrity, even immaturity', asking rhetorically: 'What nation forgets its political and intellectual ancestors so cruelly?' Prof Mphahlele went on to state: 'What inanity prompts people to even think that they can tear out pages from our historical record and continue to live a lie?' According to Prof Mphahlele, Sobukwe's leadership of the March 21 (1960 exactly 47 years ago), protests against the pass laws focused the world's attention on South Africa like nothing before. 'Yet we continue', argued Prof Mphahlele, 'to commemorate (as Human Rights Day) without any mention of the man. Prof Mphahlele ended his address with a poem in tribute to Mama Veronica Zodwa Sobukwe, in remembrance of 'her beloved husband's life and loved father of her family.' Thirteen years into our democracy and nearly 30 years after the passing of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, no official recognition has yet been accorded to him; in Mofolo, Soweto where he lived; in Kimberley's Galeshewe Township where the apartheid regime had banished him to after his Robben Island extended imprisonment; nor even on the World Heritage Site prison. Neither have I come across a gravel road named in his honour. It is a fat chance to expect Orlando Stadium to be renamed the Robert Sobukwe Stadium; or a chair at the University of the Witwatersrand where he had been strangely employed as a 'language assistant'. Imagine that. At his funeral, one of my mentors, the late legal genius G M Pitje had said in an impassioned tribute: 'No wonder Prime Minister B J Vorster is said to have described him (Sobukwe) as a man with a "strong magnetic personality." It was the "magnetic personality" which led young Blacks to march various police stations to surrender their reference books on 21 March 1960...Therefore 21 March 1960 was the turning point in the Black man's struggle for liberation. To ancestor Pitje, 'on that day Mangaliso ushered in a new era.' Last word from Prof Mphahlele: 'Yet the story of this Man of Africa (Sobukwe) should continue to be retold for the benefit especially of the younger leaders-in-the-making.' I agree. And I am not even a member of the PAC, nor any political party for that matter. Just a writer who happens to be also a publisher with a historical, cultural and heritage bent. Mothobi Mutloatse. -- Sending your posting to [email protected] Unsubscribe by sending an email to [email protected] You can also visit http://groups.google.com/group/payco Visit our website at www.mayihlome.wordpress.com
