Karabo-Maya Sankara Rodwell is an MA candidate in anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. One of her main areas of interest is Pan Africanism, having completed her Honours research on Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and his impact on youth before and after 1994. Her master’s research focuses on the experiences of Black women in South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement. As a Mellon Mays alumna and a Canon Collins Scholar, she intends to stay in the academic space and make the world of academia more accessible and more reflective of the society in which we live.

Abstract
Pan Africanism is experiencing a resurgence amongst young people in post-1994 South Africa. I am interested in contemporary engagements with this philosophy, especially how the history of Pan Africanism has shaped my generation’s approach to justice. In this research essay I highlight a figure in South African history, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, so as to explore how people interpret Sobukwe’s legacy across generations. The participants in this research and I represent a small glimpse into the changing interpretations of Sobukwe’s legacy post-1994 in South Africa.

I have chosen an epistolary form as my key organising framework to share my ethnographic research, mirroring Sobukwe’s own prolific letter-writing practice throughout his life. This piece begins with a letter written by a participant in my research to Sobukwe, followed by a response letter from me. This dialogical process of call and response letters crafts a conversation between me, the researcher, the participants in my research and Robert Sobukwe. The research essay contains elements of auto-ethnography, allowing me to engage closely with how Sobukwe has impacted my own thinking about justice in South Africa. This research essay is significant in that it demonstrates how an ideal, Pan Africanism, travels between two generations.