[In this image above found in "The Land Is Ours" by S.E.M. Pheko, members of the Apartheid regime on Robben Island Prison have come to check if Sobukwe had changed his views about land repossession by his people and African majority rule.]
Everyone is outdoing themselves trying their hardest to write the legacy of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe off from the pages of our glorious history- the media by not covering him as much as they do their propped up father of the struggle Nelson Mandela and opposition politicians by blatant lies. Or simply relegating him to one month like they have other great stalwarts like Steve Bantu Biko on September the 12th, the day of his assassination. Who's this guy that was once the ANCYL president?, he is infamous for claiming that anti-Pass Laws marches that resulted in the Sharpeville Massacre were organized by the ANC and not the PAC under the leadership of Sobukwe. In March 2012 the Tshwane City Council announced 27 street name changes amongst them Steve Biko, Solomon Mahlangu- no Sobukwe in sight- they even got the DA patting them on the back for extending Nelson Mandela street up to the R21 adding that the street was currently too short for a man of his stature. Nothing about the man who Nelson Mandela mimicked and imitated. Sobukwe was the pace setter for what culminated in the overthrowal of the Apartheid regime. He was the first to come up with concrete, practical steps when the ANC was happy with just asking the white minority government to change their ways, he demanded their total overthrowal. The anti-Pass Laws campaign of 1960 is the most famous but not the only proof of this. After he and several of his comrades were arrested for treason in orchestrating that blow on Apartheid that ushered the era of the black who had finally become not afraid of the guns of the white oppressive government, it is only then that you find the ANC mustering some courage to take the war to the oppressors. Among them is Mandela who famously burns his pass in Alexander township. When he (Mandela) is sentenced in 1963, Sobukwe is serving his final year for treason. Sobukwe was the first to ask not to plead in an Apartheid court citing a conflict of interest in that he was a black man tried in a court of laws made for white men and carried out by white men, essentially that you cannot apply unjust laws justly. Mandela repeats the same notion at his trial some years later. Consequently, the Freedom Charter, that bone of contention between the Pan-Africanists and the ANC is quoted freely in the media while the words of Sobukwe are banned, even after his death. Today you would swear that ban is continuing in a supposedly free media. What Sobukwe achieved dwarfed what any of those who outlived him have achieved for our people. The only in the history of SA law to have a clause enacted especially for him. This is the same man who envisioned the fall of Apartheid in 1963, no easy task facing one of the most brutal if not the most brutal government and police force on earth then. So shaken was the National Party by his vision and drive that they imprisoned him further without trial after he had served out his initial sentence.
The leadership of the Apartheid machine called Sobukwe "a heavyweight compared to the then ANC president, Chief Albert Luthuli." It is dishonest for people like Julius Malema to today act as if the ANC always had a history of militancy. Yes Sobukwe borrowed this from people like Kwame Nkrumah, Anton Lembede and George Padmore but he had no qualms acknowledging that. The same way the time has come for the so called militant and controversial elements in the ruling party today to put aside their petty factional politics and acknowledge that Sobukwe is the father of those who today call for things like the exchange of land ownership without compensation. To go back to the Freedom Charter, the departing point between us and them, the lapdogs of industry forced upon them by white liberals, is found the mad notion that the land belongs to all that live on it, black and white. No, the land was stolen from it's owners. So how can the owners now have to buy it back? They forgot this when they were drunk with independence in 1994 and now again they want to go back to the pace setter- even after his death- now that we are reaching a sobering 20 years since independence. We say better later then never.
To their credit, the ANC declared March Sobukwe month as part of their centenary celebrations. We declare the next years in our struggle for "freedom again" the Sobukwe years. A man who was ahead of his time. A man whose time has finally come.
Malik Mahlangu
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