None of this is to imply that either Sobukwe or his correspondents could speak freely in the letters. Nor is it to suggest that communication between parties was uninterrupted or without restriction. Sobukwe was allowed to receive and write only a limited number of letters. Length of letter was also controlled. As Benjamin Pogrund explained to me, all letters were subject to capricious censorship: if some faceless security warder did not like a sentence or perhaps a word, the entire letter was withheld, without telling Sobukwe or the author of the letter. It could take months to realise that a letter had been seized. As Pogrund (2015: 194) recalls:
the official hold-up of letters was maddening. It was made even worse by the arbitrariness of the censorship. I never once received a letter from him with any part blacked out; what the authorities did was to seize letters and not tell either of us that they had done so. It might have been that a single sentence – or a single word? – offended some faceless security official. Whatever it might be, the entire letter disappeared … it could take several months before it dawned on me that I was not getting Sobukwe’s reply on an issue I had raised because the letter hadn’t got through to him, or a letter from him had been blocked.
Even more seriously, the contents of the letters were scrutinised for any signals as to whether Sobukwe might have changed his political views. The implications of a stray phrase or unintended implication could have very serious consequences. As Pogrund (2015: 207) recalls:
I was … more conscious than ever that some or other comment or bit of information … might actually help prolong his imprisonment. I spent hours writing and re-writing letters, trying to convey as much as possible but frightened of saying the wrong thing, without a clear idea as to what the wrong thing might be. Blandness and banality was the safe way out, as was discussion about his needs and reports about my young daughter.
Robert Sobukwe’s four children, Dini and Miliswa (back row) and the twins Dali and Dedani (in matching jerseys) with Pogrund’s daughter Jenny and another friend (looking into the camera).
These are important comments to bear in mind when reading the letters that follow. This selection of letters is, importantly, incomplete. Perhaps this is obvious, for only a portion of the letters received or sent by Sobukwe during his years of imprisonment survive. Some of the surviving letters, furthermore, are not particularly clear or even legible. Where I have been unable to decipher words or passages, these have been indicated in the text by [illegible]. Where I have omitted passages that have personal references to people still alive, I have indicated this by […]. I have supplied, with each letter, the reference number corresponding to the cataloguing system used by the Historical Papers Research Archive at the University of the Witwatersrand for ordering the Robert Sobukwe Papers. (See: http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/index.php?inventory/U/collections&c=A2618/R/6325). Providing this reference number – just after the date of each letter (for example: Ba3.41) - allows readers to refer back to the original (often handwritten) letters, many of which are available online.
We have, then, a collection of letters that is both necessarily incomplete (we do not have access to Nell Marquard’s letters to Sobukwe, for instance) and that includes many instances of correspondence not directly written to or by Sobukwe (such as the letters by Veronica Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund). The latter are included because they play an invaluable part in grounding the personal and historical context of Sobukwe’s letters. Particularly noteworthy here are the letters that Veronica Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund wrote to B.J. Vorster, then Minister of Justice (on 4 March and 3 February 1966, respectively), and Pogrund’s exchange of letters with Helen Suzman in April and May 1969.
I have tried to let the letters speak for themselves in the sense of adding only minimal annotations. Unnecessary commentary on my part would only have distracted from the content of the letters themselves. I have, however, added footnotes on significant historical figures or events that help contextualise what is being spoken about. This too remains an incomplete process. Despite many online searches and the generous help of both Benjamin Pogrund and Miliswa Sobukwe, I have not been able to identify everyone – or every event – mentioned in the letters. At first this struck me as a limitation. It then occurred to me that my task as editor was less to explain the letters than to arrange and present them. As such, my hope is that the letters can be read not only as a historical document, but as an epistolary novel which calls us to become imaginatively involved in the life of an at once inspiring and humbling figure whom South Africa has for too long neglected: Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe.
Letters
A letter from Sobukwe to his wife Veronica with Robben Island postmark.
1960–1962
After Sobukwe’s arrest on 21 March 1960, he was taken to the clinic where his wife worked, for a police search. The photograph shows Veronica and Robert Sobukwe, along with a security policeman, entering the clinic.
Robert Sobukwe
to Major-General C.I. Rademeyer,
Commissioner of Police,
Cape Town, 16 March 1960
Sir,
My organization, the Pan Africanist Congress, will be starting a sustained, disciplined, non-violent campaign against the Pass Laws on Monday the 21st March 1960. I have given strict instructions, not only to members of my organization but also to African people in general, that they should not allow themselves to be provoked into violent action by anyone. In a Press Statement I am releasing soon, I repeat that appeal and make one to the police too.
I am now writing to you to instruct the Police to refrain from actions that may lead to violence. It is unfortunately true that many white policemen, brought up in the racist hothouse of South Africa, regard themselves as champions of white supremacy and not as law officers. In the African they see an enemy, a threat, not to “law and order” but to their privileges as whites.
I therefore, appeal to you to instruct your men not to give impossible commands to my people. The usual mumbling by a police of an order requiring people to disperse within three minutes, and almost immediately ordering a baton charge, deceives nobody and shows the police up as sadistic bullies. I sincerely hope that such actions will not occur this time. If the police are interested in maintaining “law and order,” they will have no difficulty at all. We will surrender ourselves to the police for arrest. If told to disperse, we will. But we cannot be expected to run helter-skelter because a trigger-happy, African-hating young white police officer has given hundreds of thousands of people three minutes within which to remove their bodies from [the] immediate environment.
Hoping you will cooperate to try and make this a most peaceful and disciplined campaign.
I remain
Yours faithfully,
Mangaliso R. Sobukwe
President
Pan Africanist Congress
PAC press release announcing
anti-pass campaign,
18 March 1960
CALL FOR POSITIVE ACTION
In accordance with a resolution adopted at our National Conference, held in Orlando on the 19th and 20th December, 1959, I have called on the African people to go with us into Positive Action against the Pass Laws. We launch our campaign on Monday, the 21st of March 1960, and circulars to that effect are already in the streets.
Meaning of campaign: I need not list the