Mandela foundation, Sobukwe trust team up
THE Nelson Mandela Foundation has initiated discussion sessions to coincide with the launch of the Remember Africa: Robert Sobukwe (1924-1978) exhibition
The fund is launching the discussions in partnership with the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Trust and the South African History Archive.
The exhibition was launched last month, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA).
The exhibition will be hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation for three months in Houghton and will then travel to other centres in Johannesburg.
"Shame arrives from the way the apartheid narrative is told," said e-News journalist and social commentator Nikiwe Bikitsha as she told participants at the Nelson Mandela Foundation's inaugural dialogues reflecting on the secrets, taboos, and disavowed voices in local history.
"To reveal what is secret will allow us to reveal ghosts of the past," Bikitsha said at the first dialogue session last month at the foundation's premises in Houghton.
Sobukwe founded the PAC in 1959 after breaking away from the ANC.
He was arrested in 1960 and spent the rest of his life in prison on Robben Island and in house arrest in Kimberley. He was kept in solitary confinement and had no contact with other prisoners on Robben Island.
He died of lung cancer in 1978.
Avusa Media editor-in-chief Mondli Makhanya said Sobukwe has become a subject that is not discussed at all, and by so doing "the country is writing off a very important aspect of history".
Author, healer and rural development practitioner Mmatshilo Motsei recollected how, on a visit to Robben Island, she was unable to enter the house where Sobukwe had been imprisoned.
She said it almost felt as if part of the tour was "treated as if Sobukwe were an addendum to history".