Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Sobukwe: ‘I am greatly privileged to have known him and to ave fallen under his spell. His long imprisonment, restriction and early death were a major tragedy for our land and for the world.’
On 21 March 1960, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe led a mass defiance of South Africa’s pass laws. He urged blacks to go to the nearest police station and demand arrest. Police opened fire on a peaceful crowd in the township of Sharpeville, and killed 68 people. The protest changed the course of South Africa’s history. Afrikaner rule stiffened and black resistance went underground. International opinion hardened against apartheid. Sobukwe, leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress, was jailed for three years for incitement. At the end of his sentence the government, fearful of his power, rushed through the ‘Sobukwe Clause’ to keep him in prison without trial.
For the next six years, Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement on Robben Island, the infamous
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