One of South Africa’s greatest heroes of the struggle for freedom, Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, said in his Inaugural convention Speech in April 1959, that Africanists should not at all subscribe to the doctrine of South African exceptionalism. He emphasised that South Africa was an integral part of the whole that is Afrika, warning that South Africa could not solve her problems in isolation from and with disregard of the rest of the continent. He also rejected both apartheid and so-called multi-racialism as solutions to the country’s socio-economic problems.
Sobukwe was one of the first to propose a "non-racial" rather than "multiracial" future for South Africa. But Robert Sobukwe was also so feared by the apartheid government, that he would spend the rest of his life in either solitary confinement or internal exile, under house arrest. Sobukwe died of cancer on 27 February 1978 after decades of abuse of apartheid officials.
Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe with a group of Africanists like Potlako Leballo, Zeph Mothopeng broke away from the ANC in 1958 and in April 1959 formed the Pan Africanist Congress. He became the Founding President of the PAC.