Robert Sobukwe Interview.Questions and Answers WHEN DID YOU FIRST BECOME INTERESTED IN POLITICS? My first awareness of politics was in 1948 at Fort Hare when I took a course in Native Administration.This course was taught by Ntloko, and there was a text by Hanley(?). I had always known most of the facts as such, for example that Africans had three representatives in Parliament, but up to then I had merely accepted these as facts which one had to learn, to memorize, without thinking of their implications. During this course I began to realize what the reality was, for example that these white MPs had no effect on policy, in spite of the fact that they were eloquent speakers. Ntloko was an AAC [All African Convention] man, and the AAC was very influential at Fort Hare in those days. Most of us agreed with what the AAC stood for, except wewdidnt like the fact that they were not African nationalists. The [Afrikaner] Nationalists victory in 1948 helped politicize me. G. M. Pitje and I started the Youth League at Fort Hare. Pitje was the one who had had a connection with the early Youth League in the Transvaal. He was our link. He had known [Anton] Lembede. DID PITJE GIVE YOU DOCUMENTS DRAWN UP BY THE EARLY YOUTH LEAGUE, OR STATEMENTS OF LEMBEDE? No, we never saw these. We drew up our own documents. It was all conveyed to us through conversation and discussion. DID YOU FAVOR THE EFFORTS IN THE LATE 1940s TO REUNITE THE AAC WITH ANC? Yes, very strongly. We wanted total unity, though; not a federation. We always felt that federations were inherently weak. This was also the case with the Africanists later when [Josias] Madzunya’s group wanted to federate with us. We wanted unity, not a federation. The ideas of the AAC were good, but we knew they could never be counted upon to act. They believed that no action could be launched until the people had been properly educated. Only they could say when this had been achieved. We felt this would take forever, and anyway that it was only through action itself that the people would come to understand fully the nature of the struggle. WHAT WAS YOUR ROLE AT THE TIME OF THE 1949 PROGRAM OF ACTION? The Program of Action was drawn up at Fort Hare by Pitje and myself. Of course Z. K. Matthews was also there and was consulted. Our draft was then taken to the Cape ANC provincial annual conference in Queenstown in June 1949 where it was approved by the conference. The province was then under the leadership of [Rev. James] Calata and Matthews. Both at Queenstown and at Bloemfontein I spoke in favor of the program as we had drafted it.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 07:25:22 +0000
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