Wits Central Block renamed Robert Sobukwe Building

Fees Must Fall activists who demanded that the Wits Central Block be renamed the Solomon Mahlangu Building to decolonise tertiary education may not be entirely unhappy to learn that the institution has decided to honour another struggle stalwart instead.

The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) will today honour the life of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, a former Wits lecturer and anti-apartheid struggle activist, by renaming the central block after him.

Sobukwe, the founder and first president of the Pan Africanist Congress, struggled against the apartheid government. He is celebrated for his role in initiating and leading the anti-pass law protests of March 21, 1960.

The chancellor of the university, Justice Dikgang Moseneke, and Wits vice-principal Professor Tawana Kupe will preside over the ceremony and unveil a plaque. Kupe says the renaming is befitting of Sobukwe, who was a noble individual with an unrelenting spirit.

“Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe is one of the most illustrious Africans ever to be born on our continent. He was an academic, a thinker, a philosopher and a tireless, selfless, dedicated and resilient fighter for freedom of the African people.

“For all the injustices and calculated sustained and cruel assaults on his human dignity, he responded by affirming the humanity of all in everything he did,” Kupe said.

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Sobukwe became a political activist at Fort Hare in the late 1940s, and in the 1950s became one of the foremost intellectuals of pan-Africanism. He was a lecturer in African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he also completed an honours degree.

After his arrest on March 21, 1960, Sobukwe was sentenced to three years in prison. He refused legal help and would not appeal the sentence on the grounds that the court was not one of fair and equal law and justice.

Sobukwe was considered such a threat to the apartheid regime that a special law was passed allowing them to arbitrarily extend his detention. The Sobukwe Clause, as it became known, was only ever applied to him, and kept him in prison on Robben Island, where he was isolated from other political prisoners for a full nine years.

He completed a degree in economics during his time on the island. After his release in 1969, he was banished to Kimberley and kept under house arrest.

During his house arrest, Sobukwe completed a law degree, and was eventually permitted to open a law firm three years before his passing in 1978.

http://https://www.citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/robert-sobukwe-lesser-known-hero/