The PAC has asked the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for an inquest into the death of the party’s founding president, Robert Sobukwe.
“We have never accepted the narrative that Sobukwe died of natural causes, as we are convinced there is strong prima facie evidence that he died as a result of cumulative complications,” said PAC leader and land reform and rural development minister Mzwanele Nyhontso.
According to the party, these complications were caused by the systematic mental and physical torture, illegal incarceration and illegal medical procedures performed on Sobukwe. The party said Sobukwe suffered from poisoning and other forms of physical brutality from 1960 to 1978.
Sobukwe, who died at age 53, was a struggle stalwart and political prisoner who fought against the oppressive apartheid regime.
Nyhontso said the motivation for raising the matter was that it was in the public interest.
“The Criminal Procedure Act contains provisions relevant to subsequent criminal investigations and prosecutions that may follow the findings of an inquest. Many in our country still want to know what really happened to Sobukwe, since when he died he was in one way or another a prisoner of the apartheid regime and its operatives. We are also doing this to preserve his legacy, to bring justice to him as a human being and to bring closure to his long-suffering family.”
Silencing [Sobukwe] formed part of the torture that was inflicted upon him and the regime’s determination to deny him access to the people he led and to erase his memory and legacy
— Mzwanele Nyhontso, PAC leader and land reform & rural development minister
Sobukwe was detained on Robben Island from 1963 until 1969 after he had finished serving the three-year sentence imposed on him for his role in leading the positive action campaign against the pass laws in 1960.
“He was detained under a so-called special law called ‘the Sobukwe Clause’, which was a draconian instrument designed to decapitate his connection with the people he led and to blunt the cutting edge of the struggle for liberation that was gaining momentum at the time under his leadership,” the PAC said.
After six years in prison, Sobukwe is said to have been separated from other prisoners and kept in solitary confinement and subjected to brutal mental and physical torture.
The party detailed how when his health deteriorated, he told his wife, Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, a qualified nurse, that he had been served food containing fine particles of glass.
“He was also operated upon secretly without his wife being told. Mrs Sobukwe died on August 15 2018, still holding tightly to the belief that her husband was released to avoid him dying at the hands of his captors. As he became increasingly sick while under banishment in Kimberley, Sobukwe supposedly received medical attention at Kimberley Hospital and at other medical centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town, still under a veil of secrecy and close monitoring by the apartheid regime’s security police.”
According to the party, there were a few good doctors who attended to him, but knowing what they now know about nefarious activities at the time, there is more than enough justification for their suspicion that the cancer he allegedly died from was deliberately injected into him by operatives of the apartheid state who were deployed to medical facilities.
“We are also highly suspicious of the reasons behind the decision by the regime to deny Sobukwe the opportunity to go abroad to the US to receive medical attention, when a number of institutions in that country had offered him such assistance.”
Nyhontso said he would start with briefing lawyers and seeking a court order to authorise the inquest.
“I also want this inquiry to include the provision to the public of all recordings of Sobukwe’s voice, in the form of court records and tape recordings and film footage, because silencing him formed part of the torture that was inflicted upon him and the regime’s determination to deny him access to the people he led and to erase his memory and legacy.
“Where any documents are not presently within my knowledge, possession or control, I will request the court in terms of the Inquest Act to order their provision by the relevant state departments.”
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