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Pan Africanist Congress
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) (later the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania), was a South African liberation movement, that is now a minor political party. It was founded in 1959 after a number of members broke away from the African National Congress (ANC) because they objected to the ANC's non-racial policies and wished to take a bolder approach based more on mass action. Robert Sobukwe was elected as the first president, at the founding conference held in April 1959 in Johannesburg.
The ANC decided to launch a campaign against the pass laws to begin on March 31, 1960. The PAC decided to pre-empt the ANC by launching their own campaign ten days earlier, on March 21, 1960. Sobukwe urged people to leave their passes at home and to non-violently hand themselves over for arrest at the nearest police station. The protest erupted in tragedy when police opened fire on a group of protestors in Sharpeville, killing 69 people and injuring 186, many being shot from behind.
Shortly after the Sharpeville massacre, the National Party government imposed a state of emergency, and banned both the PAC and ANC. Sobukwe was arrested and imprisoned at Robben Island for many years and was thought to be so "dangerous" and charismatic by the apartheid government that he was kept not only in solitary confinement, but in a one man jail. His guard was forbidden to talk to him and his only human contact was when his wife was permitted to visit him once or twice a year[citation needed]. He was released in 1969.
After Sharpeville, many members fled into exile. When Sobukwe died in 1978, he was succeeded by Potlako Leballo. The PAC then split into two following a partially successful coup by David Sibeko to head the Presidential Leadership Council in 1979. The assassination of Sibeko in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania on 12 June 1979 and the death of Leballo in January 1986 inaugurated the demise of the PAC.
Although founded by ANC members who were in profound opposition to the policies of the South African Communist Party, in the 1960s a prominent section of the PAC's leadership adopted a Maoist position. The ANC consistently regarded the PAC as reactionary and backward due to the PAC's stance that South Africa was above all an African country. The military wing of the PAC was launched in 1962 as Poqo and later renamed as the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). APLA became famous for its wildly popular slogan "One Settler, One Bullet", but was never able to launch a particularly effective guerilla campaign. Despite its organisational weaknesses, the PAC's Africanism did much to inform the student uprisings of the late 1970s and inspired the formation of the Black Consciousness Movement under the leadership of Steve Biko.
The PAC was unbanned in 1990, along with the ANC, but was plagued by infighting. The supporters of Maoist Leballo refused to join the peace process and a splinter section of the PAC only gained a small percentage of votes in the 1994 election, which shrank even further in the 1999 election. In 2003, after yet another failed congress, one of the party's more prominent and popular members, Patricia de Lille left to form her own party, the Independent Democrats. This did not affect the PAC's continued poor performance in the 2004 election, although ID fared better.
- Official Website of the Pan Africanist Congress in Gauteng Province
- Pan Africanist Congress Publications Collection 1958-1995
- PAC Speeches and Pamphlets
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