The book Darkest Before Dawn, edited by Derek Hook and Leswin Laubscher, presents readers with a portrait of a formidable and principled figure in the struggle against colonialism and apartheid who has, so far, received less attention than he merits: Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe.
In bringing together public and private documents, the book bridges the divide between the personal and the political to produce a rich and complex representation of Sobukwe in his own words.
The book is a collection of letters, speeches, articles, interviews and court testimonies, some previously unpublished, by Sobukwe. He was the founding president of South Africa’s Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which broke from the African National Congress (ANC) in 1959. Sobukwe was a proponent of pan-Africanism and advocated for the return to African hands of land stolen during colonial conquest.
