<
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/11/30/robert-sobukwe-the-south-african-leader-once-as-revered-as-mandela>
"On Monday, March 21, 1960, Robert Sobukwe, the 35-year-old leader of the Pan
Africanist Congress (PAC), woke at 5am. His wife, Veronica, heated a kettle of
water on the stove, and he washed in a tub in the kitchen of their one-bedroom
house in Soweto, the largest Black township in Johannesburg.
After getting dressed, he ate his usual breakfast of eggs, bread, porridge, and
tea. Sometime after 6:30am, six men from the neighbourhood arrived and,
favourite pipe in hand, Sobukwe kissed Veronica goodbye.
The men walked in sombre silence as, around them, the people of Soweto hurried
to get to work. “Boys, we are making history,” said Sobukwe presciently –
despite all appearances to the contrary. Imagine their immense relief when,
after an hour of walking, they reached Soweto’s main Orlando police station to
find scores more PAC supporters already there.
The atmosphere outside the police station was jovial. “There were smiles, right
hands raised in salute and cheerful shouts of ‘Izwe Lethu’ [‘the land is ours’,
a PAC slogan] … PAC women from nearby houses brought coffee,” writes Benjamin
Pogrund, Sobukwe’s lifelong friend and the author of
How Can Man Die Better –
a remarkably moving book that is both a biography of Sobukwe and a chronicle of
the enduring friendship between a liberal, white reporter and a Black political
leader. (“I have friends, of course, of whom I am very fond,” Sobukwe once
wrote to Pogrund. “But I have long passed the stage of even thinking of you as
a friend.”)
At about 8:20am, by which time the crowd had swelled to between 150 and 200
people, Sobukwe and a few others walked through the gates and knocked on the
door of Captain JJ de Wet Steyn, the white officer in charge. “We have no
passes and we want the police to arrest us,” said Sobukwe, referring to the
documents all Black people were required to carry in “white” areas. During
apartheid, past violations saw hundreds of thousands of Black South Africans
arrested every year, for decades.
“I’m busy and you must wait a bit,” replied Steyn, annoyed at being interrupted
by, in his words, an “adult Bantu man”. A while later, Steyn went outside to
issue a warning to the crowd that had gathered on the grassy slope opposite the
police station: “If there is any interference with the execution of police
work, there is going to be trouble.”"
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
