Robert Sobukwe

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe (1924 – 1978) was a prominent South African political dissident, intellectual, and founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). An exceptionally brilliant linguist and lecturer in African studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Sobukwe advocated an Africanist philosophy asserting that Africans should lead their own liberation without paternalistic intervention.

In March 1960, Sobukwe launched a nationwide nonviolent campaign against the hated pass laws, instructing Africans to leave their passbooks at home and surrender themselves for arrest. At Sharpeville, apartheid police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, massacring 69 unarmed people. Arrested immediately, Sobukwe was subjected to unique solitary confinement on Robben Island under a specially passed parliamentary statute—the 'Sobukwe Clause'—which allowed the government to arbitrarily renew his detention annually without trial for six years.