Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe: A Biography

By: Thando Sipuye

Born on the 27th July 1927 to parents Kate and Henry Stini Mathe in Hlobane village in Vryheid,
Kwazulu-Natal, Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe was the second eldest of four Mathe daughters, namely:
Hilda, Gertrude and Florence. Their father, Stini, was a mine worker at Hlobane where he also
acquired an old farmstead; their mother worked as a local teacher, until she was unfairly dismissed by
the then racist authorities.

It is was here, at her home, that Mama Sobukwe first experienced the institution of racism-white
supremacy, the apartheid state and police, as the racist settler regime ordered for the eviction of her
family from their home under the pretext of a safety law. Her family was evicted from their homestead
and they were allocated what was then referred to as ‘Skomplaas’, a small little room, divided with
strings and cloths, in which the whole family was cramped.

Their parents were strict, and taught their little girls to be responsible and self-sufficient from the early
ages of 5 years old. When they left home and went into boarding school at a mission school, their
parents continued to ensure that they could stand for themselves by refusing to buy them casual
clothes, with the exception of school uniform. They had to work part-time jobs in the local community
to get money to buy casual clothes for themselves. This is where the seeds of Mama Sobukwe’s self-
determination, resilience and leadership qualities were planted.

Florence Mathe, the youngest sister to Mama Sobukwe, was married to Dr. Fabian Ribeiro. The
Ribeiros were political activists who used their medical and nursing profession to help ordinary people
in the Black community pro-bono during the darkest days of apartheid. In fact, Mama Sobukwe herself
used her nursing skills and profession to engage in struggle and revolution.

When Mangaliso Sobukwe was incarcerated on Robben Island under the draconian Sobukwe Clause,
the Ribeiros often accompanied Mama Sobukwe to visit him a number of times. For their activism and
support of the Sobukwe family, Florence and Fabian Ribeiro were ruthlessly honeycombed with
bullets and assassinated at their home by the South African Civil Cooperation Bureau military/death
squad on the 01st December 1986.

Mama Sobukwe left boarding school and went to study nursing at the Victoria Hospital in Lovedale
College. Owing to her supreme wit and intelligence, at Lovedale, Mama Sobukwe gracefully excelled
in her studies and became a notable figure amongst her peers.

Disgruntled with the abject conditions Black nurses were subjected to at the training school, she
became one of the leaders that organized and led a nurses’ strike at the Victoria Hospital in 1947.
When one of them was summarily expelled, she took over and brought the nursing college to a
standstill by demanding her unconditional reinstatement. They caught the attention of the world,
exposing the horrid conditions young Afrikan women trainee nurses were being subjected to.

Through her activism in this nursing strike the young Zondeni Veronica met Robert Mangaliso
Sobukwe who was President of the Students Representative Council at Fort Hare University College
at the time. During the strike Sobukwe came to address the striking nurses and romantic sparks flew
between the two; they met as equals in the heat of the struggle for national liberation and he
affectionately called her ‘Zodwa’. When she was asked how she felt when she met Mangaliso she
replied: “I loved him at first sight”.

Mama Sobukwe completed her training and qualified as a nurse, and thereafter went on to work at
Springfield and MicCord Hospitals in Durban respectively. She then moved to Lady Smith, a town
halfway between Durban and Johannesburg.

The young couple got married on the 6th June 1954 at St Paul’s Anglican Church, Jabavu, Soweto. In
line with Afrikan tradition and matrimonial rites of passage, she received the customary nuptial name
of Nosango. As a newly wedded bride Mama Sobukwe did not have much time to meet with her
husband as Mangaliso was a teacher in Standerton, and constantly attending ANC Youth League
meetings in the region.

Mama Sobukwe and Mangaliso both relocated to Johannesburg when he was offered a post as a
Lecturer in Afrikan Studies at Witwatersrand (Wits) University. The couple moved into her mother’s
house at 1526 B White City, Jabavu, Soweto. After nine months they were allocated their own
municipal house at 68 Mofolo in Soweto. Shortly before they moved into their new house their first
child, a daughter named Miliswa was born. Then shortly before they moved into the new house, their
first son Dinilesizwe, and finally twin boys, Dalindyebo and Dedanizizwe, were born. Mama Sobukwe
resumed work in between having the children, doing general district nursing in Soweto.

Around this time her husband Mangaliso and the PAC called for the Positive Action Campaign against
Pass Laws scheduled for the 21st March 1960. The events of that day led to the Sharpeville-Langa
massacres, the banning of political organizations, the arrests of political leaders including Sobukwe,
and also marked the beginning of the armed struggle in Azania.

Mama Sobukwe was well prepared of the consequences of the PAC’s Positive Action Campaign
against Pass Laws – with stern dignity and her head raised high she was willing to suffer in humility
and sacrifice her life for the restoration of Afrikan dignity, the return of the land to the dispossessed
indigenous people and the vision of a liberated Azania.

Following her husband’s arrest on 21 March 1960, Mama Sobukwe’s woes continued as she now had
to struggle with his 3 years’ incarceration at Pretoria Central Prison (now Kgosi Mampuru); even after
the completion of his sentence Sobukwe never saw freedom as he was secretly flown to Robben
Island prison under the ‘Sobukwe Clause’ passed by parliament in 1963 by then Minister of Justice, B.
J. Voster. Under this draconian law, Mangaliso was incarcerated indefinitely in solitary confinement
and kept alone on Robben Island.

Undeterred and as a health practitioner and an activist in her own right, she singlehandedly and
repeatedly brought his deteriorating health to the fore, and demanding his release. When all her
efforts failed, she appealed to Vorster to allow Sobukwe to leave South Africa permanently on an exit
permit together with his family. Vorster refused this too, and Mama Sobukwe then asked that she be
allowed to stay on Robben Island with Sobukwe, to oversee his health herself. The racist Vorster
refused. Not one of her multiple requests for meetings with the authorities were ever granted. Instead,
Vorster referred Mama Sobukwe to the then Minister of Justice, Petrus Cornelius Pelser, who in turn
maintained the status quo, rejecting all her appeals.

Through great difficulties and so much humiliation, she became both mother and father to her
children, and held her family name on her shoulders, never compromising her ideals, her values and
political outlook for a piece of bread.

Following her husband’s release from Robben Island in 1969, Mama Sobukwe moved to Galeshewe
township in Kimberley where Mangaliso was serving a banning order. The Sobukwe house was under
constant surveillance by the racist Police.

In 1974, Andrew Young, the United States of America Ambassador to the United Nations offered to
take Mama Sobukwe’s two eldest children, Miliswa and Dinilesizwe to his home in Atlanta, Georgia, to
ensure they were given the schooling they deserved.

After Sobukwe died in 1978 Mama Sobukwe’s struggles and battles with the authorities continued.
Just a few days after her husband’s funeral, the racist government threw her out of the house at
number 6 Naledi Street in Galeshewe, Kimberley, where her husband was banished. She moved to
Swaziland but was denied a permission to buy land as she was a foreigner. She moved into an
unfinished house in the town of Alice. After Sobukwe’s funeral in March 1978 she moved to Graaff-
Reinet, where she continued her activism as a community worker.
In 2018 Mama Sobukwe was nominated by young activists of the Blackhouse Kollective in Soweto to
receive the highest honour in the land in recognition of her contributions to the liberation struggle. It is
these young activists that christened her as ‘Mother of Azania’. In April 2018 the South African
Government conferred the Order of Luthuli in Silver on Mama Sobukwe for her tenacious fight for
freedom and her steadfast support of incarcerated freedom fighters.

On the 15th August 2018 Mama Sobukwe transitioned peacefully in her family home in Graaf Reinet.
She is survived by her three children, Miliswa, Dinilesizwe and Dedanizizwe, as well as her great-
grandchildren.

Mama Sobukwe was a steady and resilient revolutionary grounded in the ethos of Afrikanism and
Afrikanist discourse. She became an activist at an early age since her days at Victoria Hospital where
she led the nurse’s strike, and later became one of the founding members of the Pan-Africanist
Congress (PAC) of Azania.

She epitomized the collective experiences of many Afrikan women throughout the continent, whose
roles and contributions in the liberation struggle remain unacknowledged, written out of popular
historical narratives, biographical memory and national consciousness.

Mama Sobukwe experienced systematic violence under apartheid; and she experienced
institutionalised epistemic violence in the neo-colonialist dispensation called democracy. Democracy
was not so democratic on her memory, her legacy and contributions. Under democracy she remained
on the margins and side-lines of society, ostracised and obliterated from national memory and
collective consciousness of the nation. She was an outcast, a stranger in the land she lived and
fought for.

She was a practical philosopher whose life is a testimony to her philosophy of selfless struggle,
service to the people and sacrifice for the nation; a sage who did not become part of the struggle for
selfish benefits and personal gains, but for the genuine cause of freedom. She outstood the test of
time, outshone all her adversaries and outlived many of her contemporaries.

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe once said: “Africa never forgets…These martyrs of freedom, these young
and budding women will be remembered and honoured when Africa comes into her own.”

Indeed, we will always remember and honour the resilient and indomitable ‘Mother of Azania’!