I found myself thinking often about you and the children during these cold winter mornings, picturing you standing at [illegible] waiting for the bus. [Illegible] and back again in the afternoon. It has been a hard year, Little Woman, don’t you think so? But please remember that “He who goes out weeping to sow his seed comes back joyfully carrying his sheaves.”18 Happiness is achieved through suffering and struggling.
I received a letter from Mlamli.19 He wrote from Cape Town and asked me to send the reply to his home in the Transkei. I have, unfortunately, forgotten his Transkeian address. I know it is P.O. St Mark’s but I cannot recall the shop through which he receives his mail. Please ask Selby to find out from either Dennis or Fazzie. If neither of them knows it then he should try Nomvo Booi, P.O. Box 8, Engcobo. She will know.
How are the children getting on? I can imagine Dedani on a cold morning, reluctantly leaving the house for school. Where do you leave them on Saturdays and Sundays? And by the way, have you been on night duty already this year? I hope your turn does not come next month when the children are at home. Have the Mahlangus next door not yet added to their family after Thabo? What about Hilda?20 She promised to drive up to Johburg in a Belaire or Biscayne21 pretty soon – that was in 1959 when I was down in Durban. What is the news about the Varas? I wrote to Mercy last month. She has not replied yet. I want to write to Charles22 next and ask him to make up his mind once and for all, whether he still wants his wife back or not. Their son is over fourteen years old now.
I am writing to Mam Tshawe23 today. I have not written to her personally since I came to jail. I fear that she might feel hurt at the neglect. Buti hinted that she has a lot to tell me about Cape Town. But that, of course, will be when we meet.
Well, Greetings to Mama and the kids. How is Jabie24 getting on? I enjoyed her book a great deal. Is Shadrach making any progress with the ceiling? Now that I remember, he is not fond of working alone you know. Even when we asked him to fit the doors and the skirting board it was only when Meshach assisted him that the job was completed. If he is slack, it might not be a bad idea to see his wife and first inform her about his negligence. She will undoubtedly get him to finish the job. Is Rosette back with Five Roses25 or is he employed somewhere else?
Cheerio, Kid.
Your loving husband,
Mangi
1Petty crime.
2Military vehicles used by the South African Police.
3From “No Man Is an Island” by John Donne.
4Monday, 21 March 1960, was the day that Sobukwe led the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in its anti-pass demonstrations. The restrictive and oppressive pass system, which required all black South Africans to carry an identity document (also known as the dompas), regulated and controlled movement, specifying whether a person was allowed to be in a particular area. To be found in an area not specified by one’s pass – as, for example, in white residential areas – meant one could be immediately arrested. As Benjamin Pogrund (2015: 2) tells us: “The pass laws were hated as the tangible evidence of black subjugation, and for the ravaging effect on the lives of millions upon millions of people. Sobukwe had called on blacks to end the pass laws by making the system inoperable through mass arrests, thus clogging the courts and prisons by weight of numbers.” This mass action resulted in the Sharpeville massacre – later that same day – in which at least 69 people were killed by the South African Police, who opened fire on a crowd of protesters outside the police station in the township of Sharpeville, near Vereeniging. This event, which drew international attention to the injustices and brutality of apartheid, was a turning point in the history of the country, and indeed, in the history of resistance to white supremacy.
5A reference, no doubt, to the government threats the university would have faced once it became known that Sobukwe was the leader of the PAC.
6Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe (1927–2018) married Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe on 6 June 1954 in a traditional African ceremony where she received the bridal name of Nosango. Veronica – as she is most frequently known in the letters – came later to be referred to variously as Mama Sobukwe and “the mother of Azania”. She was honoured in a poem by Es’kia Mphahlele entitled “Tribute to Zodwa Veronica, a Great Woman”. She worked for much of her life as a midwife and health practitioner. At the time of her husband’s imprisonment, she was a midwife in Soweto.
7Sobukwe often uses “Zodwa” to refer to Veronica in the letters.
8Miliswa was the eldest of Sobukwe’s four children. The letters contain frequent references also to Sobukwe’s other children, Dinilesizwe and the twins, Dalindyebo and Dedanizizwe. Motsoko Pheko (1994) tells us that the name Dinilesizwe means “Sacrifice of the Nation”, Dalindyebo “Create Wealth” and Dedanizizwe “Give Way, Imperialists”.
9Pogrund’s daughter, born in July that year. She would go on to study at the University of Cape Town and then at Columbia University, New York, and gain a master’s in international relations. Besides being a film-maker – between 1991 and 1992 she produced and directed a documentary film on Nelson Mandela entitled The Last Mile – she is today a member of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in Pretoria, where she is on the European Union desk.
10Sobukwe’s joking tone is obvious here. As Pogrund (2015) confirms, Sobukwe is referring here to Astrid’s dropping out of university after her marriage to Pogrund.
11Zephaniah Mothopeng (1913–90), like Sobukwe, had been a member of the Africanist faction of the ANC Youth League which broke from the ANC to form the PAC. Mothopeng was made chairman of the PAC on 6 April 1959, at the same inaugural conference at which Sobukwe was voted president. Like Sobukwe, he was arrested in 1960 for his part in organising the anti-pass campaign. He was subsequently sentenced to serve three years on Robben Island, although, because Sobukwe was kept apart from the rest of the prisoners, they had no contact during this time.
12Jacob Dumdum Nyaose (1920–) became the secretary for labour in the PAC’s national executive committee in April 1959. Later that same year he created the Federation of Free African Trade Unions of South Africa, an all-African non-Communist union.
13Potlako Leballo (1924–86) had been a leader in the ANC Youth League (c.1954), who, like Sobukwe, was critical of the ANC’s leadership, and who broke with the organisation to form the PAC. He was made national secretary at the PAC’s inaugural conference (1959), and was sentenced to two years in prison following the declaration of a state of emergency in March 1960. Although a new banishment order was served on him when he was released in 1962, he escaped and fled to London. He subsequently established the PAC headquarters in Dar es Salaam, and served as leader of the PAC. (For more on Leballo, see Bolnick, 1991.)
14Patrick Duncan (1918–67) had been owner and editor of the liberal magazine Contact, and was described by Pogrund (2015: 64) as “a man of intense sincerity and moral commitment to non-racialism”. He participated in the Defiance Campaign of 1952. He acted as a national organiser for the new Liberal Party, from which he resigned in 1963 on the grounds that he no longer agreed with the party’s policy of non-violence. Banned by the South African government, he escaped to Basutoland. He was accepted as a member of the PAC in 1963 and became