Robert SOBUKWE, founder and leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, died in South Africa on 27 February at the age of 55. He had been receiving medical treatment for lung cancer for some time, and the banning order continuously in force since his release from Robben Island in 1969 had been relaxed to allow him to go to hospital in Cape Town.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born in 1924, the son of a Methodist preacher in the Cape, and became a teacher. In 1959 he was elected president of PAC and the following year was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for his part in 'inciting' the passlaw protesters who were massacred at Sharpeville. After completing his sentence he was held on Robben Island for a further six years under legislation specially enacted; in 1969 he was eventually released and served with a banning order confining him to Kimberley where he qualified and practised as a lawyer. In 1971 he applied unsuccessfully for permission to leave Kimberley in order to go into exile on an exit permit. In 1977 the banning order was relaxed to enable him to receive medical treatment in Cape Town. When he revisited the hospital in January several conditions were attached to the permit allowing him to travel.
In February Sobukwe was admitted to hospital in Kimberley where he died.
Canon L. John Collins, President of IDAF, issued a statement which detailed the persecution suffered by Sobukwe and paid tribute to his leadership, saying that Sobukwe "gave the best years of his life to fight racialist oppression in South Africa and no amount of persecution could break his dedication to the cause of equal rights for all in the land of their birth".
