Original Message-----
From: Dr. Motsoko Pheko <drmotsokoph...@drmotsokopheko.com>
To:
Sent: Thu, Dec 4, 2014 9:05 am
Subject: CELEBRATING SOBUKWE'S 90TH BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY
*CELEBRATING 90TH BIRTHDAY OF A PRINCIPLED PAN AFRICANIST LEADER
*
- Sobukwe Led The Road To Robben Island
* DR.MOTSOKO PHEKO*
*Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe (in the middle) visited in Robben Island Prison
by the apartheid colonialist regime’s members of parliament. They had come
to check if they could make him compromise the genuine liberation of the
African people. After this visit, one of them told the apartheid parliament
in Cape Town, “I asked Sobukwe, have you considered changing your ideology?
He replied, ‘Not until the day of the resurrection.’” *
********************************************************
This piece of writing is dedicated to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe that shining
star of the African liberation struggle of this country and the African
continent. That brutally persecuted and severely tested leader who passed
the revolutionary test with unparalleled distinction. This is a Pan
Africanist that walked the political talk to the finish with astounding
patriotism.
This principled Pan Africanist leader was born on the 5th of December 1924.
This 5th of December 2014 is Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe’s 90th Birthday
anniversary. Great nations do not forget their heroes nor do they adopt a
sectarian attitude towards them. This piece of writing is to remind of
Sobukwe’s legacy and to pass it on to this generation and to generations of
Africa to come.
*Sobukwe, President of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) dying in Kimberly
where the apartheid regime had banished him and declared him a banned
person to have no gathering with more than three persons without the
regime’s permission. This was after his imprisonment on Robben Island where
pieces of glass were often found in his food, according to his wife’s
statement Mrs Zodwa Veronica Sobukwe before the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC). *
Sobukwe’s liberation credentials speak for themselves. They do not need
any explanation. This is the only leader in the entire history of the
liberation struggle in South Africa who was imprisoned on Robben Island
without even a mock trial. He was kept in solitary confinement and then
banned and banished to Kimberly to die there.
In Robben Island Prison, the apartheid colonialist regime ordered that he
should be guarded by five guards with two fierce Alsatian dogs. Of him, the
apartheid Minister of Justice Johannes Balthazar Vorster said, “If…Robert
Sobukwe were released, we would have a fine [penalty] to pay in this
country.”
This Defier of the Undefiable, as he was affectionately called by
revolutionaries of his day; exposed the “struggle” of fighting both “white
domination” and “black domination” as a myth. The authors of the Trans
Atlantic Slave Trade sold black people like animals. They were not black.
European countries through the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 grabbed the
African Continent at gunpoint. They sliced it like a wedding cake and
partitioned it among themselves, into “British Africa,” “French Africa,”
“Portuguese Africa,” “Spanish Africa,” “German Africa;” leaving nothing for
Africans until millions of Africans died for their freedom to regain
Africa.
Somalia, on the horn of Africa had the misfortune of becoming “Italian
Somaliland,” “French Somaliland” and “British Somaliland.”
These colonialists were not black. There has been no “black domination” in
the world.
It is therefore a grave political delusion for any African leader to claim
to have fought an evil that never existed. Apartheid was itself a product
of racism that came not from black people. It was not a product of “black
domination.” It was a creation of “white domination” stemming from the
superstition and unscientific theories of unschooled authors of the
idolatry of “white supremacy.”
Sobukwe is a leader who spoke the language of true African liberation. He
never called a spade a big teaspoon. The land dispossessors of the African
people recognised this fact. To stop him from achieving genuine liberation
for his people, the apartheid regime made a special law to govern him. They
called it *“Sobukwe clause.” *Much more is said and revealed in the book
titled SOBUKWE LED THE ROAD TO ROBBEN ISLAND.
Freedom is not free. The price of freedom is selfless service, suffering
and sacrifice. Sobukwe was prepared to go to Robben Island Prison so that
the people of this country that are robbed of their land and its riches
could repossess them and control the economy of their country equitably.
Indeed, “liberation” of a land dispossessed people without repossessing its
wealth is a gigantic colonial fraud.
*Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe a Pan Africanist revolutionary that the
apartheid regime could not break and entice to compromise the genuine
liberation of his people at any price. He was not for sale. He walked the
political talk to the finish with unparalleled and unquestionable
distinction and eminence. *
******************************************************************
On leadership Sobukwe declared, “True leadership demands complete subjugation
of self, absolute honesty, integrity and uprightness of character, courage
and fearlessness, above all a consuming love for one’s people.”
Sobukwe is not a leader who spoke with two tongues. He never compromised
truth and justice on the polluted altar of appeasement and personal glory.
“We reject the economic exploitation of the many for the benefit of the
few. We accept as the policy the equitable distribution of wealth as the
only basis on which the slogan of ‘equal opportunities’ can be founded,” he
proclaimed.
He respected and honoured African Kings who were the first Freedom Fighters
in this country to resist European colonisation of the African people.
Sobukwe linked the African liberation struggle that was led by African
Kings to the present land dispossession of the African people whose wealth
is still owned and controlled by the minority who accessed it through
colonialism.
In July 1959 when speaking on Heroes Day/Lembede Day, the Defier of the
Undefiable said: “We are met here Sons and Daughters of the beloved land to
drink from the fountain….We are here to draw inspiration from the heroes of
Thababosiu, Isandlwana, Sandile’s Kop and numerous other battle fields
where our forefathers fell before the bullets of the foreign invader.”
Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe was the pace setter in the politics of South
Africa. When he went to prison, even his opponents followed him there. To
armed struggle, they followed him.
In very uncompromising terms because it is true, he told colonial powers
and their agents, “I wish to make it clear that we are anti-nobody. We are
pro-Africa. We breathe Africa. We dream Africa. We live Africa: because
Africa and humanity are inseparable....
History has taught us that a group in power has never voluntarily
relinquished its position. It has always been forced to do so. And we do
not expect miracles to happen in Africa. It is necessary for human progress
that Africa be fully developed and only the African can do so….”
In the political history of this country, Sobukwe has the revolutionary
distinction of orchestrating “a crisis…that nearly brought about the kind
of political situation which too often makes the transfer of power
overnight,” as that prominent African journalist, Lewis Nkosi put it.
Sobukwe loved his people and Africa. On his grave in Graaf-Reinet, the
place of his birth; are written these words: “THAT GLORY MAY DWELL IN OUR
LAND.”
**This is an introduction to Dr. Motsoko Pheko’s latest book SOBUKWE LED
THE ROAD TO ROBBEN ISLAND.*
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