Born 100 years ago, Sobukwe was a titan of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle – now often forgotten, his legacy still shapes the country.
On Monday, March 21, 1960, Robert Sobukwe, the 35-year-old leader of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), woke at 5am. His wife, Veronica, heated a kettle of water on the stove, and he washed in a tub in the kitchen of their one-bedroom house in Soweto, the largest Black township in Johannesburg.
After getting dressed, he ate his usual breakfast of eggs, bread, porridge, and tea. Sometime after 6:30am, six men from the neighbourhood arrived and, favourite pipe in hand, Sobukwe kissed Veronica goodbye.
The men walked in sombre silence as, around them, the people of Soweto hurried to get to work. "Boys, we are making history," said Sobukwe presciently – despite all appearances to the contrary. Imagine their immense relief when, after an hour of walking, they reached Soweto's main Orlando police station to find scores more PAC supporters already there.
The atmosphere outside the police station was jovial. "There were smiles, right hands raised in salute and cheerful shouts of 'Izwe Lethu' ['the land is ours', a PAC slogan] … PAC women from nearby houses brought coffee," writes Benjamin Pogrund, Sobukwe's lifelong friend and the author of How Can Man Die Better – a remarkably moving book that is both a biography of Sobukwe and a chronicle of the enduring friendship between a liberal, white reporter and a Black political leader. ("I have friends, of course, of whom I am very fond," Sobukwe once wrote to Pogrund. "But I have long passed the stage of even thinking of you as a friend.")
At about 8:20am, by which time the crowd had swelled to between 150 and 200 people, Sobukwe and a few others walked through the gates and knocked on the door of Captain JJ de Wet Steyn, the white officer in charge. "We have no passes and we want the police to arrest us," said Sobukwe, referring to the documents all Black people were required to carry in "white" areas. During apartheid, past violations saw hundreds of thousands of Black South Africans arrested every year, for decades.
"I'm busy and you must wait a bit," replied Steyn, annoyed at being interrupted by, in his words, an "adult Bantu man". A while later, Steyn went outside to issue a warning to the crowd that had gathered on the grassy slope opposite the police station: "If there is any interference with the execution of police work, there is going to be trouble."