Robert Sobukwe

Robert Sobukwe founded the Pan Africanist Congress in 1959 and was its president. He was imprisoned on Robben Island from 1960-1969, mostly in solitary confinement, and was considered such a threat by the government that its parliament enacted the ‘Sobukwe clause’, which authorised the arbitrary extension of his imprisonment. After his release in 1969, he lived in Kimberley with family under house arrest. He died in 1978 from lung cancer.