The Breakfast Team Team
The South African Communist Party’s second deputy general-secretary, Solly Mapaila, spoke to David O’Sullivan on Breakfast With David to explain what he meant when he said Pan Africanist Congress founder, Robert Sobukwe, received preferential treatment from the apartheid government on Robben Island.
[WATCH] SACP’s Solly Mapaila explains how Robert Sobukwe had ‘special privileges’ on Robben Island. ‘He had a full house to himself @davidosullie #BreakfastwithDavid pic.twitter.com/x0eeS1ALpS
— Kaya 959 Talk (@KayaFMTalk) February 14, 2019
Mapaila received backlash on various social media platforms for his comments, with some even saying that he is desecrating Sobukwe’s legacy. The only two black struggle legacies they have not destroyed and couldn’t, is Steve Bikos and Sobukwes.

Watch the Space, Rupert start with biko, now its Solly mapaila(SACP) saying Sobukwe was favored by the apartheid regime and lived better than all prisoners in Robin Island.
WMC4U
— Thabiso Nxumalo (@thabisonx) February 14, 2019
The SACP’s Solly Mapaila says Robert Sobukwe enjoyed preferential treatment from prison authorities while held in solitary confinement on Robben Island and that he “cannot be forgiven for that”. This from a man who hasn’t spent a day in a prison. The twerp.
— Richard Spoor (@Richard_Spoor) February 13, 2019
Mapaila says Sobukwe had special treatment compared to other prisoners on the Island. Adding that while other prisoners lived in small cells, Sobukwe, who was kept in solitary confinement under the “Sobukwe Clause” of the General Law Amendment Act, which empowered the Minister of Justice to prolong the detention of any political prisoner indefinitely. Sobukwe spend six years on Robben Island.



