Veronica has had a major operation as you probably read in the papers. She should have had this operation last year, but did not and the condition got worse.
She has made a remarkable recovery, thanks to my very efficient and tender nursing, and has now gone back to Joh’burg for a check up. From there she will be in Durban to spend a week or so with her sister before proceeding to Swaziland to see the children.
These understated lines could only have masked Sobukwe’s sadness and frustration at not being able to accompany his wife in this time of need, at being apart from his children, and at being alone again after his ordeal of six years of near-complete solitary confinement (May 1963 – May 1969) on Robben Island.
These circumstances had their origins in a momentous historical event organised by Sobukwe himself. On 21 March 1960, Sobukwe had led the PAC in what he called a “positive action” campaign, protesting against the oppressive pass laws that governed the movements – and indeed the lives – of black South Africans. This mass action resulted in the Sharpeville massacre, later that same day, in which at least 69 people were killed when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. This event, which drew international attention to the injustices and brutality of apartheid, was a watershed moment in the history of South Africa, and it led to a three-year jail sentence for Sobukwe for inciting people to protest against the laws of the country.
Sobukwe, inside the grounds of Orlando Police Station, awaiting arrest, on the morning of 21 March 1960.
Not content that by 3 May 1963 Sobukwe would have served the three years of his sentence, the South African government intervened by passing an amendment to the General Law Amendment Act, the notorious “Sobukwe Clause”, which enabled Parliament to prolong the detention of any political prisoner year after year. Sobukwe was then relocated to Robben Island, and kept apart from other prisoners – technically, he was no longer a prisoner as he had served his sentence – where he remained for six years. The clause – never used to detain anyone else – was renewed annually by the Minister of Justice.
Sobukwe, in a very significant sense, was never a free man again after his 1960 arrest and imprisonment. The apartheid government unleashed a series of bureaucratic cruelties upon Sobukwe after his May 1969 release from Robben Island. They forced him to live in the geographically remote town of Kimberley – far removed from any friends, family or associates; they insisted he take on a low-ranking job that would have made him complicit in the apartheid policies that he went to jail protesting (Sobukwe, needless to say, refused); they repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the country to take up offers of employment he had received from the United States; and they obstructed his attempts to access the medical treatments that he needed, and that could have extended his life (he died on 27 February 1978).
This then is the background to the consolations that Sobukwe sought to offer Nell Marquard in his 1974 letter. It is only on the last page of that letter that Sobukwe seemed finally to find the words that suited both his emotions and the note of commiseration that he wished to convey to Nell:
The Xhosa have standard words of condolence. They say
Akuhlanga lungehlanga hala ngenxeba
(There has not occurred what has not occurred before … LIE ON YOUR WOUND).
God bless you.
Affectionately
Robert.
Whether he realised it or not, Sobukwe had used the same phrase in a letter to Nell written six years earlier (on 26 June 1968) on Robben Island:
We have a saying in Xhosa, used for purposes of condolence. It is a little stoic: akuhlanga lungehlanga – lala ngenxeba: (Daar het nie gebeur wat nie al gebeur het nie: slaap op jou wond).
This resonant phrase – which also appears in Sobukwe’s letters to his friend Benjamin Pogrund – applies equally, if not more so, to Sobukwe himself. “Lie on your wound(s)” is a call to bide one’s time, to heal, and to reconstitute one’s self despite evident suffering. It is a call to have courage, to bear the moral burden of pain, and it provides an apt title for what was the most difficult period of Sobukwe’s life, namely his time on Robben Island, which the selection of letters collected in this book represents.
* * *
In a personal note, written in 1986, eight years after his death, Nell Marquard (1986: 8) provided an insightful characterisation of Sobukwe’s letters:
A letter from Robert was always an event. His “mundane” included talk of books and articles, happenings in the outside world, education, gardening in the arid soil of Kimberley, and much more. His comments were always interesting and thought-provoking. But what gave his letters their chief interest was the quality of the man himself. The tacit assumption of standards was not infrequently underlined by gentle irony. Humane, compassionate, humorous, his letters were a constant pleasure.
Robert Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund, Kimberley.
This is true. Despite the conditions of censorship – all of Sobukwe’s correspondence was carefully monitored by the Security Police and the island's warders – his erudition, his unwavering interest in global events, and his love of literature are all clearly evident in the letters. As is his sense of humour. Responding, on 26 June 1968, to a card that Marquard had incorrectly dated before sending to him, Sobukwe remarked:
Thank you for both your card of the 1st June 1868 and your letter of 8th June, a century later. I have been long on this island, haven’t I?
Sobukwe possessed not only a political, but also a wonderfully literary mind. He taught African languages at the University of the Witwatersrand (hence the nickname of “Prof”); he dreamed of translating Shakespeare into Zulu; he planned to study Arabic while on Robben Island; and he could cite Afrikaans poetry – particularly that of Jan Celliers – by heart. The letters are as engaging as they are eclectic. It is not unusual in a Sobukwe letter for a biblical reference to follow after a recalled snippet of Russian poetry, for a citation from Tennyson or Wordsworth to accompany a memory of his formative years in Graaff-Reinet, or for a Xhosa proverb to be interlaced with thoughts on the characters of Lyndon Johnson or Robert Kennedy. Sobukwe the letter-writer moves seamlessly from discussion of the history of the Xhosa people to the new boxing world heavyweight champion, from the relative merits of Christianity and Judaism to Kwame Nkrumah’s notion of the African Personality.
Thanks to the efforts of the Rand Daily Mail journalist, Benjamin Pogrund, – by far Sobukwe’s most regular correspondent in the collected letters that follow – Sobukwe received a great many books, as well as newspapers and journals (when permitted, that is) during his time on Robben Island. Sobukwe clearly had great flair in analysing global political events – such as the 1968 protest movements sweeping across Europe, the state of China–US relations, the 1966 coup d’etat in Nigeria – events which, as he tells Pogrund, formed the historical context necessary for understanding the South African situation (“There is a verligte-verkrampte [progressive-conservative] battle royal raging all over the world,” he laments to Marquard in his letter of 27 March 1968). Many of the letters are surprisingly topical, even today – see, for example, Sobukwe’s comments on mass immigration into Britain in his 5 June 1968 letter to Marquard – just as his political views are not always easy to predict – he was not, as one might expect, a supporter of Robert Kennedy, and he admired Lyndon Johnson