This book is the story of a remarkable man. It is also the story of the friendship between Robert Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund whose joint experiences and passionate debates chart the course of a tyrannous regime and the development of concerted black resistance. Thirty years ago, Robert Sobukwe led a mass defiance of the pass laws of South Africa. He persuaded blacks to present themselves at police stations and demand arrest. A determinedly non-violent protest turned to tragedy when police opened fire on a crowd, killing 69. It was 21 March 1960 at Sharpeville and Sobukwe's last day of liberty. After nine years of jail Sobukwe was released into banishment and house arrest in the small town of Kimberley. He died there nine years later, in February 1978.

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.

I am greatly privileged to have known him and to have fallen under his spell. His long imprisonment, restriction and early death were a major tragedy for our land and the world.' - ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU on Sobukwe On 21 March 1960, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe led a mass defiance of South Africa's pass laws. He urged blacks to go to the nearest police station and demand arrest. Police opened fi re on a peaceful crowd in the township of Sharpeville and killed 69 people. This protest changed the course of South Africa's history. Sobukwe, leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress, was jailed for three years for incitement. At the end of his sentence the government rushed the so-called 'Sobukwe Clause' through Parliament, to keep him in prison without a trial. For the next six years Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement on Robben Island. On his release Sobukwe was banished to the town of Kimberley, with very severe restrictions on his freedom, until his death in February 1978. This book is the story of a South African hero, and of the friendship between him and Benjamin Pogrund, whose joint experiences and debates chart the course of a tyrannous regime and the growth of black resistance. This new edition of How Can Man Die Better contains a number of previously unpublished photographs and an updated Epilogue.

A collection of thought-provoking and moving essays on Robert Sobukwe, commissioned and edited by his biographer and friend Benjamin Pogrund. Sobukwe was a lecturer, lawyer, founding member and first president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), and Robben Island prisoner.

On 21 March 1960 several hundred black Africans were injured and 69 killed when South African police opened fire on demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, protesting against the Apartheid regime's racist 'pass' laws. The Sharpeville Massacre, as the event has become known, signalled the start of armed resistance in South Africa, and prompted worldwide condemnation of South Africa's Apartheid policies. The events at Sharpeville deeply affected the attitudes of both black and white in South Africa and provided a major stimulus to the development of an international 'Anti-Apartheid' movement. In Sharpeville, Tom Lodge explains how and why the Massacre occurred, looking at the social and political background to the events of March 1960, as well as the sequence of events that prompted the shootings themselves. He then broadens his focus to explain the long-term consequences of Sharpeville, explaining how it affected South African politics over the following decades, both domestically and also in the country's relationship with the rest of the world.

When Benjamin Pogrund, one of South Africa's most distinguished journalists, first began his career as a young reporter in the 1950s, "There had been little reason at that stage to believe that anything revolutionary was about to start." As the "African affairs reporter," and then deputy editor, it was Pogrund who first brought the words of black leaders like Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela to the pages of South Africa's leading newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail. This was the period of apartheid in South Africa and for most of the next thirty years, the Rand Daily Mail was the country's liberal white voice against the tyranny of the Afrikaner Nationalist government. A riveting memoir and a complex commentary on apartheid and freedom of the press, War of Words offers an insider's perspective on one of the most turbulent, and arguably one of the most significant, periods in modern history.

Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa is an account of the community development programs of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa. It covers the emergence of the movement’s ideas and practices in the context of the late 1960s and early 1970s, then analyzes how activists refined their practices, mobilized resources, and influenced people through their work. The book examines this history primarily through the Black Community Programs organization and its three major projects: the yearbook Black Review, the Zanempilo Community Health Center, and the Njwaxa leatherwork factory. As opposed to better-known studies of antipolitical, macroeconomic initiatives, this book shows that people from the so-called global South led development in innovative ways that promised to increase social and political participation. It particularly explores the power that youth, women, and churches had in leading change in a hostile political environment. With this new perspective on a major liberation movement, Hadfield not only causes us to rethink aspects of African history but also offers lessons from the past for African societies still dealing with developmental challenges similar to those faced during apartheid.