Lie on your wounds

Selection of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe’s letters from prison in opposition to South African apartheid

This book collates nearly 300 prison letters to and from Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, inspirational political leader and first President of the Pan-Africanist Congress. These letters are testimony to the desolate conditions of his imprisonment and to his unbending commitment to the cause of African liberation.

The memory of Sobukwe has been sadly neglected in post- apartheid South Africa. With the changing political climate, the decline of the African National Congress’s power, the re- emergence of Black Consciousness, and the growth of student protests, Sobukwe is being looked to once again.