A threatening personification of freedom or: Sobukwe and repression

Abstract

What is it that underlies the growing public interest in the figure of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe? Sobukwe has been the subject of a form of historical amnesia – indeed, of a consensus of forgetting – in South Africa for at least the last 20 years. One way of appreciating both the force and importance of the retrieval of this historical legacy is by treating Sobukwe not merely as a biographical narrative or historical persona, but as a signifier. Sobukwe, I argue, functions precisely as a signifier for a cluster of ideas and aspirations routinely excluded – indeed, repressed – from the post-apartheid public sphere. I begin by exploring the various ways in which the signifier Sobukwe has been marginalized, disavowed, reduced (often to a crude form of anti-whiteism), and overwritten by rival political interests. Sobukwe, I suggest, haunts the post-apartheid historical situation; his memory is a reminder of those dimensions of political freedom that remain unattained.Ultimately, however, Sobukwe is not merely a repressed signifier; his name functions as a master signifier for an alternative political future. Sobukwe operates today as one prospective name for a more encompassing project of decolonization that expands beyond the given political and institutional structures of the post-apartheid condition.