Robert Sobukwe - How can Man Die Better

(New Edition)

Benjamin Pogrund

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781868426829
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Ideologies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

I am greatly privileged to have known him and to have fallen under his spell. His long imprisonment, restriction and early death were a major tragedy for our land and the world.' - ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU on Sobukwe 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 fi re on a peaceful crowd in the township of Sharpeville and killed 69 people. This protest changed the course of South Africa's history. Sobukwe, leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress, was jailed for three years for incitement. At the end of his sentence the government rushed the so-called 'Sobukwe Clause' through Parliament, to keep him in prison without a trial. For the next six years Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement on Robben Island. On his release Sobukwe was banished to the town of Kimberley, with very severe restrictions on his freedom, until his death in February 1978. This book is the story of a South African hero, and of the friendship between him and Benjamin Pogrund, whose joint experiences and debates chart the course of a tyrannous regime and the growth of black resistance. This new edition of How Can Man Die Better contains a number of previously unpublished photographs and an updated Epilogue.

1

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born in Graaff-Reinet, known as The Gem of the Karoo, in the south-east of South Africa. The Karoo is a vast semi-arid stretch in the centre of the country, but Graaff-Reinet, on its eastern edge, has the blessing of water from the Sundays River, so it is green and fertile. The town was founded in 1786, when the Cape was under the control of Holland, and was named after the governor of the time, Cornelius Jakob van de Graaff, and his wife, Reinet.

The early history of the town was associated with dissent. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Dutch frontiersmen rebelled against the colonial government in Cape Town, a long 680 kilometres away, apparently because they wanted a more aggressive military policy against the indigenous Xhosa blacks. This led to a shortlived republic. But, with this in the past, the town settled into a rural tranquillity. As it grew it followed the normal South African pattern of a ‘white’ town with a separate ‘location’ a distance away for the ‘non-whites’, in this case a mixture of blacks and mixed-race coloureds. At the start of the 1920s, the official population count was 10,717: 5,139 whites, 3,677 coloureds, 1,883 blacks, and 18 Asians.

Throughout, the town’s whites have been predominantly Afrikaners. They are fiercely and proudly so, judging from the view of a retired Security policeman: in March 1984, Lieutenant Hendrik Cornelius Jakobus Pitout, testifying in a civil action brought against him and others by a detainee alleging torture told the judge: ‘I come from Graaff-Reinet where even the dogs bark in Afrikaans.’

The ‘white’ town lies in a hollow and has become renowned for its restoration and preservation of old buildings in the attractive Cape Dutch style. Prosperity once came from ostrich feathers but this has been replaced by income from the district’s sheep and fruit.

Driving on the road that leads to Johannesburg the other half of Graaff-Reinet is just outside the town, on a hill on the right-hand side. An effort has been made to prettify it and, from the road, the pinks, blues and yellows of the small houses look charming. Close up, however, the location is as ramshackle, deprived and smelling of bucket latrines as other such places in South Africa, and it has no doubt always been so.

Sobukwe was born in a house near the top of the hill on 5 December 1924. His birth was not registered with the authorities, a common omission among blacks until recent times. His father was Hubert Sobukwe, whose father in turn had come from what was then Basutoland, and is now Lesotho. The family left Basutoland sometime before the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, the war between Britain and the Afrikaners of South Africa. But only after the war did they come south and settle in Graaff-Reinet. Sobukwe’s mother, Angelina, was a Pondo of the Xhosa tribe. She grew up in Graaff-Reinet, where she and Hubert met, married and spent their lives. They had seven children, six boys and a girl, but three of the boys died at early ages.

Sobukwe was the youngest child. As was normal at the time, he was given an ‘English’ name, Robert, as well as a Xhosa name, Mangaliso — meaning ‘It is wonderful’. His brothers who survived were Ernest, born in 1914, and Charles, born in 1922; his sister was Eleanor.

The brick building in which Sobukwe grew up at first had earth floors, but later wooden floors were laid. The windows were small but had glass panes. There was no electricity. A sewerage system was provided by an outhouse and a town-run bucket service. Water had to be brought from the open street furrows in the town about half a mile away; later, a tap was installed outside the house.

In the custom of the time, few blacks bought what was called ‘European’ furniture. Instead, tables, chairs and cupboards were put together by ‘bush carpenters’. An old iron bed served for Hubert and Angelina while, for years, the children slept on the floor on mattresses of jute bags once used for packing wool.

Hubert first worked for the local municipality, keeping open the furrows that supplied the town’s water. Then he worked in a store sorting wool and labelling the bags. He also had a part-time occupation and income as a woodcutter, buying wood at the market in the town, taking it home and chopping it up to sell as firewood in the location. The children helped take turns at getting up at about 3 a.m. to make coffee and to sort out the logs for Hubert to chop up when he returned at the end of the day from his job at the store. Angelina, as well as looking after the house, worked for a number of years as a cook at the town hospital and then did domestic work for a white family. Together they earned enough to make sure that the family did not go short of food. The children were given new clothes as Christmas gifts, to be used as Sunday best, and the previous Sunday best was brought into everyday school use.

Thus far it is a picture of a hard and simple life which could be repeated ten thousandfold throughout South Africa. An extra ingredient, however, was the emphasis placed in the home on education. Angelina had never been to school and her thumbprint served as her signature. Hubert had completed seven years of schooling. He had wanted to continue, but his mother was dead and a sister who was bringing him up refused to send him to high school: she feared that, if he was educated, he would ignore her and the family. Hubert’s disappointment lived with him, and it drove him to encourage his children. According to his son Ernest he had made a vow: should God give him children, he would educate them all. He determinedly fulfilled that pledge.

When Eleanor passed her eighth year of schooling she did not want to continue and went out to work. But Ernest completed his schooling, qualified as a teacher, went on to train as a minister, and eventually was ordained a bishop in the Anglican Church. Charles also qualified as a teacher. So too did Robert, who in due course went on to complete several university degrees.

The initial stimulus came from books in the house. Angelina brought books given by the young son and daughter of the family for whom she worked, and Hubert brought books discarded by the town’s library. Hubert read the books and passed them on to his children.

In addition to the stress on reading, there was a strong religious spirit in the Sobukwe house. The family was Methodist and Hubert was a highly respected member of the location’s congregation — so much so that, during his lifetime, the street in which he lived was named after him. It is still Sobukwe Street. Regular church attendance on Sunday was obligatory for the children. After the service, each child was required to repeat the text and outline the sermon. ‘If you didn’t know it, Daddy gave it to you,’ according to Ernest — meaning that there was an immediate infliction of Hubert’s sjambok (rawhide whip) on the backside – ‘He was a loving but stern father.’ Angelina, on the other hand, was a quieter person who merely scolded the children; only when they were older did she, if necessary, give them a clout.

Formal schooling was provided by a Methodist mission in the location, at the foot of the hill on the main road — actually the church in which the Sunday services were conducted. The pews were used as desks. About 100 children, divided into four classes, were taught at the same time. Reflecting the location’s racial mix, the children were blacks and coloureds. The Methodist school went only as far as the sixth year of education. By then the odds were that many children would have dropped out because of the poverty of their parents. Those who were still persevering switched, for the next two years, to the Anglican school in the town where there were proper classrooms and desks. Sobukwe, aged 11, was clearly a suitable candidate for the Anglican school even though, as he said many years later, his standard of English was ‘not good’. Sobukwe and his brother Charles went into the same class and were the only ones to pass out of thirteen pupils.

This was the limit of the education provided in Graaff-Reinet for blacks and coloureds. Any further schooling that was wanted had to be sought elsewhere. But the groundwork for a pattern of study had been laid: ‘Daddy’s law was that before you go and play outside, do your homework,’ according to Ernest. ‘The homework had to be done while there was sunlight. In the evening we could read using the light from paraffin lamps.’

Then a serious setback occurred: there wasn’t enough money to enable Sobukwe and his brother to continue at school. Primary schooling was free, but fees were needed for the next stage of high school. So he and Charles remained at home for the next two years. Sobukwe repeated the Standard 6 level.

During his teens he also had to undergo the rite of passage from boyhood into manhood. His father adhered to traditional beliefs in this respect. For the tribal initiation ceremonies, Sobukwe went with other youngsters into the bush for two to three weeks, smearing his body with ochre-coloured clay. He and his companions were kept in a hut isolated from others, and especially from women, and given instruction in the ways of the tribe. An elder of the tribe circumcised them. That ordeal over, Sobukwe changed the clay on his body to white. A feast marked the end of the ceremonies, with cows provided by the parents for slaughter, and much beer to be drunk. The initiation custom was strongly maintained then; over the years it has weakened, and nowadays, although many young men still go into the bush, often they first have the circumcision done by a doctor.

Sobukwe’s chance to continue his schooling, in company with his brother, came in 1940 when he was 15. The mere fact that he was stepping up into the secondary school level put him into the elite: in that year only 5,808 black children — 1.25 per cent of the total enrolment, which was in turn only part of those of schoolgoing age because there was no compulsory education for blacks — were in secondary schools. The figure for white children was 16.4 per cent.

The Sobukwe family’s Methodist adherence made it natural for him to be sent to Healdtown, even though it was some 225 kilometres from home. Healdtown was then a major institution in black education, one of several schools in the Eastern Cape established by British missionaries in the nineteenth century. They provided a Christian and a liberal arts education founded on English grammar and literature which profoundly influenced generations of students. ‘In general, native secondary education tends to be very bookish and academic in nature largely because of financial considerations,’ an educationist, P.A.W. Cook, wrote in 1949. Afrikaner Nationalists applied the derisory and angry tag of ‘black Englishmen’ to the products of this education. After coming to power in 1948, the Afrikaner government rapidly enforced its own views of what black education should be about and set out to destroy all that had gone before.

But that was still to come when, in January 1940, Sobukwe arrived at Healdtown for the start of the new academic year. It was still in the ‘great days’ of black education, as the Reverend Stanley Pitts, who was Principal from 1950, puts it.

Healdtown was a co-educational academic institution sited on a hill looking out over a large and fertile valley. It embraced a wide range of schooling, starting with the beginners in lower primary and extending to the end-of-schooling matriculation. It also provided teacher training, specialist physical education training and courses in domestic science. It was, in its time, the biggest Methodist educational centre in South Africa, with 1,400 students, most of whom — like Sobukwe — were boarders. The majority of the staff came from Britain and were not ministers but trained teachers. Traditionally, teaching staff were whites, but, by the 1940s, Healdtown was beginning to employ blacks. Already in 1936 a black Methodist minister, the Reverend Seth Mokitimi, had been appointed housemaster and chaplain. By the 1950s a 50-50 racial proportion was reached among the staff. Pupils, however, were always blacks only.

The Sobukwe family’s shortage of money, apart from the two-year delay it had caused, meant also that career aspirations were limited: Sobukwe enrolled for the NPL, the ‘Native Primary Lower’, a three-year course which would enable him to qualify as a primary schoolteacher. ‘Native’ was then the word used for blacks and, as the name indicates, the course was designed to prepare blacks to teach in black schools.

As a newcomer, Sobukwe went into a wooden-floored dormitory of forty beds, twenty lined up along each side and with a small locker in between each one. He kept his clothes in a suitcase stored in a nearby boxroom. He could have access every morning, but he kept his jacket on a hanger on the wall. Greater privacy came with succeeding years: a ten-bed dormitory in the second year, and sharing with four or five others in the third year, until he finally attained the status of a single room. Like other students he was provided with a bed frame and a brightly coloured mattress cover which he filled with straw. He brought his own sheets and blankets from home.

It was at the start of Sobukwe’s second year that one of the enduring friendships of his life began — with Dennis Siwisa, who also trained as a teacher, later becoming a journalist. Siwisa recalls many of the details to do with black schooling and Sobukwe’s existence in Healdtown ...

First bell in the morning was at 6 a.m. But Sobukwe usually slept through it, waking for the second bell at 6.30 a.m. He would wash his face and, at the third bell at 6.40, go to the dining hall for breakfast, to sit on a wooden bench without a back at a long wooden table. On the wood-panelled walls were photographs of past Healdtown teachers and of George VI, the then reigning King of England, and of South Africa.

It could hardly have been a plainer meal: a mug of hot to lukewarm water and sugar, plus a big dry piece of bread called umgqenya in Xhosa. Anyone who wanted butter and who had money could buy it and store it. After breakfast Sobukwe went back to the dormitory to wash properly. There was no hot water, except for the occasional bucket he was able to wheedle from the ‘aunts’ who worked in the kitchen. Otherwise in the cold of winter, showers were usually confined to one or two a week after playing sport. ‘It was a tough life, but we enjoyed it,’ Siwisa remembers.

The spartan routine was at least partly attributable to the poverty stricken nature of missionary education. The church was responsible for erecting the buildings, with occasional government help. A government capitation grant enabled schooling to be free, but pupils paid for their boarding. Sobukwe had a bursary from Healdtown — whether for his entire studies or only part of it is uncertain — and he was also helped by Ernest.

School began at 8.30 a.m. but was preceded by ‘observation’ — the custom for the boys to stand outside and watch the girls come from their separated dormitories. Classes ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Epilogue
• Sources
• Photo Section
• About the Book
• About the Author
• Also by Benjamin Pogrund
• Imprint Page