10Canon John Collins (1905–82) of St Paul’s Cathedral played a crucial role in the International Defence and Aid Fund, thereby ensuring that those families who had been most detrimentally affected because of the anti-apartheid political activities of one or more members would be financially cared for.
11Wife of Robert’s brother Charles.
12Nellie Joan Marquard, born van der Merwe (1897–1981) was a liberal intellectual and a member of the Black Sash and of the Liberal Party, who taught English literature at the University of Stellenbosch for many years. In 1927 she married Leo Marquard. She was involved in many forms of public service. On her death her friend Moira Henderson wrote of her: “Her knowledge and wisdom ad her gift of interpreting the historical significance of current trends and policies were qualities which were of immense value to the [Black] Sash. But more than that, she was a shining example of gentleness and courage, of humility and forcefulness, of courtesy and conviction” (Sash, May 1981).
13Small towns in the northern Cape Province.
14Nell’s mother was Jane Georgiana Murray and her father Petrus van der Merwe.
15Perhaps Chronicle of the Murray Family by May Murray et al. (1913–20).
16Louis Armand (1905–71), a French engineer who devised a means of preventing the calcification of railway engine boilers in steam locomotives.
17Eugene Marais (1871–1936) was a South African lawyer, naturalist and writer. He qualified as an advocate in London, and was one of the leaders of the Second Afrikaans Language Movement, hence his preference for writing in Afrikaans. He is considered the father of ethology, the scientific study of animal behaviour. The book referred to here is probably Die Siel van die Mier (The Soul of the White Ant), the book for which Marais is best known.
18Dr Cyril Adler, who founded the Adler Museum of Medicine in 1962, now housed at the Wits University Medical School Campus.
19Presumably a record player.
20At a boarding school.
21Father Reginald Webber was a Catholic chaplain at Pretoria Local Prison, who remained in contact with Sobukwe after he was moved from Pretoria by the prison authorities.
22Charles Sobukwe was one of Sobukwe’s two older brothers.
23Sobukwe’s mother.
24Joseph Leabua Jonathan (1914–87) of Basutoland, great-grandson of King Moshoeshoe I, was a minor chief who converted to Catholicism in 1959 and founded the Canadian missionary-supported Basutoland National Party. His party won the pre-independence elections of 1965 and in 1966, as prime minister, he led Basutoland to independence as Lesotho. He faced opposition from the strongly Pan Africanist Basutoland Congress Party founded by Ntsu Mokhehle (1918–99).
25The Mary Balmer Nurses Home at Victoria Hospital, Alice, where Veronica trained and worked. Alice was also home to Lovedale College and Fort Hare University.
26Central News Agency.
27Eulalie Stott (1923–2010) was a founding member of the South African Liberal Party in 1953, and also a founding member of the Black Sash in 1955. The Black Sash was a group of white women who opposed apartheid laws and sought to provide assistance to African women in particular. Stott was president of the Black Sash when the organisation associated with the Pan Africanist Congress in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She was first elected as a councillor to the Cape Town City Council in 1961.
28This letter is undated, and the recipient is not named, although it is presumably addressed to the magistrate mentioned in Eulalie Stott’s letter of 11 August 1963.
29Wolsey Hall, Oxford is one of the longest-established distance education institutions in the world. Between the 1930s and 1980s Wolsey Hall offered degree courses through the University of London external degrees programme.
30The custom of bridewealth.
31Neighbours and family friends of the Sobukwes.
32Dennis Siwisa’s wife.
33The University of the Witwatersrand.
34I’m going.
35Husband of Hilda, Veronica’s older sister.
36Hospital in Soweto.
37In Soweto.
38A possible reference to the Dental School at the University of the Witwatersrand.
39The name by which Florence Ribeiro was affectionately known.
40Sobukwe was a prisoner at Stofberg, a farm prison, prior to being transferred to Robben Island. This period of Sobukwe’s imprisonment had the advantages of him sharing a communal cell, and being among many other PAC men, but it also meant that all prisoners had to endure hard physical labour.
41Lauretta Ngcobo, who later became well known as a novelist, was married to Abednego Ngcobo, a founding member of the PAC, who was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in 1961. Fearing arrest, Lauretta fled South Africa for Swaziland in 1963 and later moved to London.
42George Bernard Shaw.
43The Ugly American, a political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer depicting the failures of US diplomatic intervention in Southeast Asia, was published in 1958 and was made into a film in 1963 with Marlon Brando.
44Given the volume of their subsequent correspondence, and the obvious closeness of their relationship, it is notable that there were not more letters exchanged between Sobukwe and Pogrund between 1960 and late 1963. This might be accounted for by the fact that Sobukwe was moved from one prison to another during the initial years of his sentence, and several letters may have been lost as a result. Pogrund (2015: 173–4) notes also, though, that there was a break in their contact after Sobukwe’s arrest. “I cannot explain it, but remain ashamed of my behavior. I was badly shaken by my near-death after the shooting at Sharpeville and, looking back, perhaps unconsciously I linked Sobukwe personally with the episode.”
45Ellen Hellmann (1908–82) was an anthropologist who studied at the University of the Witwatersrand – she was the first woman to obtain a DPhil from the university – where she subsequently worked at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work. She was a vocal critic of the apartheid government, and a founding member of the Progressive Party, serving on the party’s executive between 1959 and 1971. She served as the chairperson of the multiracial Joint Council of Europeans and Bantu, and was a prominent figure in the South African Institute of Race Relations, whose annual Race Relations Survey she edited for many years.
46Ernie Wentzel (1933–86) was a founding member of the South African Liberal Party and an advocate who served as the chairman of the Johannesburg Bar Council. He was twice detained by the South African security police, in 1960 and 1964.
47A weekly literary magazine, which ended in the 1950s but was revived for a short while in the early 1960s.
48It is unclear which of Pogrund’s articles Sobukwe may have taken exception to. It is worthwhile flagging a prospective ideological tension that may have been at play here. White South African liberals