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 This new edition of How Can Man Die Better contains a number of previously unpublished photographs and an updated Epilogue.

"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 fire on a peaceful crowd in the township of Sharpeville and killed 69 people. The protest changed the course of South Africa's history. Afrikaner rule stiffened and black resistance went underground. International opinion hardened against apartheid. Sobukwe, leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress, was jailed for three years for incitement. At the end of his sentence the government, fearful of his power, 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, the infamous apartheid prison near Cape Town. On his release, Sobukwe was banished to the town of Kimberley with very severe restrictions on his freedom. He died there nine years later in February 1978. This book is the story of this South African hero - the lonely prisoner on Robben Island. It is also the story of the friendship between Robert Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund whose joint experiences and debates chart the course of a tyrannous regime and the growth of black resistance. "

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.

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.

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.

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.

A new account of the social and political background to the notorious Sharpeville Massacre of March 1960, which looks both at the sequence of events that prompted the shootings and also their long-term consequences for South African politics, both domestically and in the country's relationship with the rest of the world.

On 12th September 1977, Steve Biko was murdered in his prison cell. He was only 31, but his vision and charisma - captured in this collection of his work - had already transformed the agenda of South African politics. This book covers the basic philosophy of black consciousness, Bantustans, African culture, the institutional church and Western involvement in apartheid.

Apartheid isn't over—so Malaika Wa Azania boldly argues in Memoirs of a Born Free, her account of growing up black in modern-day South Africa. Malaika was born in late 1991, as the white minority government was on its way out, making her a "Born Free"—the name given to the generation born after the end of apartheid. But Malaika's experience with institutionalized racism offers a view of South Africa that contradicts the implied racial liberation of the so-called Rainbow Nation. Recounting her upbringing in a black township racked by poverty and disease, the death of a beloved uncle at the hands of white police, and her alienation at multiracial schools, she evokes a country still held in thrall by de facto apartheid. She takes us through her anger and disillusionment with the myth of black liberation to the birth and development of her dedication to the black consciousness movement, which continues to be a guiding force in her life. A trenchant, audacious, and ultimately hopeful narrative, Memoirs of a Born Free introduces an important new voice in South African—and, indeed, global—activism.

The culmination of a unique achievement in modern American literature: the six volumes of autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to California to be reunited with her mother and brother. No sooner does she arrive there than she learns that Malcolm X has been assassinated. Devastated, she tries to put her life back together, working on the stage in local theaters and even conducting a door-to-door survey in Watts. Then Watts explodes in violence, a riot she describes firsthand. Subsequently, on a trip to New York, she meets Martin Luther King, Jr., who asks her to become his coordinator in the North, and she visits black churches all over America to help support King’s Poor People’s March. But once again tragedy strikes. King is assassinated, and this time Angelou completely withdraws from the world, unable to deal with this horrible event. Finally, James Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heavenends as Maya Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird.