Robert Sobukwe

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe ( born December 5, 1924 in Graaff -Reinet, † February 27, 1978 in Kimberley ) was a South African nationalist leader and first president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).

Biography

After education at mission schools he studied at Fort Hare College, where he was elected in 1949 as President of the Student Council ( Students' Representative Council ). In the same year he became a member of the company founded by Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo in 1944 the youth organization of the African National Congress (ANC). He then worked as a teacher.

In 1952, he was succeeded by his office as teacher accused of involvement in the Defiance Campaign ( about: disregard campaign ) of the ANC dismissed against the apartheid government under Prime Minister Daniel François Malan. He then worked as a lecturer at Fort Hare College until 1959, which was at that time the only higher educational institution for black Africans in South Africa.

In April 1959, he was co-founder of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC ), which broke away from the ANC. At the inaugural meeting, he was also elected the first president of the PAC. A year later he was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act and thereafter sentenced to three years imprisonment, which ended in 1963, according to the judge's decision. However, he remained until 1969, being held in custody because. Based on the General Laws Amendment Act, Act No. 37/1963 the South African Minister of Justice, this law then authorizes separately after the one-year validity period by the Parliament, the option was granted to extend a Elapsed imprisonment by Ministerial Decision for a further year. This particular legal practice has gone down in history as the so-called apartheid Sobukwe clause, and only once, applied in this case. With the end of his prison, a five-year ban was pronounced with twelve hours of house arrest and this renewed again in 1975. After his release from prison, Robert Sobukwe, however, was no longer a leader politically active and lived in the town of Graaff -Reinet in the east of the former Cape Province. 1977 then, however, his stay was limited to the town of Kimberley in the northern Cape Province, where he died a short time under the constraints of Bannungsverfügung later.