Unreserved apology to the PAC, Sobukwe Family and Sobukwe’s legacy
14 February 2019
On Tuesday, 12 February 2019, during my address on “The National Question: Race, Class and Gender”, at the Liliesleaf Farm in Johannesburg, I made comments regarding the unforgivable segregatory approach that was followed by the apartheid regime with regard to the treatment of prisoners, specifically Robben Island prisoners. In emphasising the point, I included the name of Professor Robert Sobukwe as an example.
I hereby furnish an unreserved apology to the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), the Sobukwe family and to his legacy. I fully respect the Prof’s contribution to the liberation struggle.
Sobukwe’s incarceration was imposed by an illegitimate racist apartheid regime and the Prof had no control of their actions. He accordingly suffered greatly, isolated from other prisoners as another form of torture. That the apartheid regime even went to the extent of inserting the “Sobukwe Clause” in the General Law Amendment Act of 1963 – which empowered the Minister of Justice to prolong the detention of any political prisoner indefinitely – to empower itself to continue his illegal incarceration is indeed an unforgivable act by the disgraced apartheid regime.
Notwithstanding the apartheid regime’s deliberate segregation, our movement indeed regarded all the apartheid prisoners as political prisoners. I remain respectful of all political prisoners from different persuasions and ideologies, including Professor Robert Sobukwe. My late younger brother, Jomo Walter, belonged to PASO, to the PAC and its military wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). We never denied his affiliation and activism in the PAC. At my brother’s funeral, the political programme was handed over to the PAC and APLA, and also to the South African National Defence Force.