GRAAFF-REINET NEWS - People from all over South Africa, including various media institutions, attended the memorial service held for the late Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, the wife of founding PAC president Professor Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, on Wednesday afternoon, 22 August in Graaff-Reinet.
Graaff-Reinet was home to Sobukwe and the town mourns the passing of one of the country's liberation icons.
The memorial service was held by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) at her residence in Stockenstroom Street. The funeral will be held this coming Saturday morning, 25 August, at the Botanics Sports Grounds.
After being hospitalised at the Midland Hospital for three weeks, Sobukwe died at her home surrounded by her loved ones at the age of 91 during the early hours of Wednesday morning, 15 August.
The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) said in a statement that 15 August was a sad day for South Africa.
"It is with great sadness that we wake up to the news that we have lost an icon of the liberation, Mme Zondeni Sobukwe."
She was honoured at Wednesday's memorial service by various speakers for her pivotal role played against the segregation of people in the former Apartheid regime.
She was a health practitioner who will be remembered for leading black nurses in a strike at the Victoria Hospital in Alice in 1947. Disgruntled with the abject conditions black nurses were subjected to at the training school, she became one of the leaders that organized and led the strike.
Her leadership of this protest march resulted in her later meeting her future husband Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe‚ the then Students' Representative Council (SRC) president at the University of Fort Hare.
"The Sobukwe family is deeply grateful for the gift of her life and the innumerable lessons she leaves behind‚ and even as we mourn her passing‚ we celebrate her humility and the simplicity with which she approached and viewed life. Indeed‚ a great tree has fallen‚" the family said in a statement.
Shortly after her death last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared that a Special Official Funeral Category 2 will be held for Sobukwe.
A Special Official Funeral Category 2 is reserved for distinguished persons specifically designated by the President of South Africa on request by the Premier of a province.
"The President has instructed that the national flag flies at half-mast at every station in the country for the late Sobukwe from the day of the announcement until the evening of the funeral service as a mark of respect to her," said the Presidency in a statement on Thursday.
"Sobukwe's death - in Women's Month - is a sad loss to the Sobukwe family, Foundation and our nation at large. We have lost a heroine of resistance and a fighter for the freedom of all South Africans, who continued her activism into our democratic dispensation. We will always remember and honour her extraordinary contribution," said Ramaphosa.
Sobukwe was affectionately known as the "Mother of Azania" and, as a struggle activist, was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Silver in April this year for her tenacious call for the people's freedom and her steadfast support of the incarcerated freedom fighters.
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