Towards a Future Without White People: Robert Sobukwe and the Category of the African

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using material both from Sobukwe’s well-known public addresses and from his lesser known private letters to his friend the liberal journalist Benjamin Pogrund, this article argues that Sobukwe is best regarded as a radical non-racialist who regarded race in anti-essentialist terms and sought to unmake the material, social and political conditions that give rise to it. It also explores the unmaking of race at the ordinary and everyday level.