Letter to the editor
Image: Graphic
Nyameko Sinandile, Khayelitsha
On April 6, 1959, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania was formed and elected an executive committee of professors, philosophers, academics, great thinkers, comrades, icons, veteran freedom fighters.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was elected president; Potlako Kitchener Leballo, secretary; Abednego Ngcobo, treasurer; Elliot Mfaxa, national organiser; Peter Molotsi, secretary for PanAfrican affairs; Selby Ngendane, secretary for foreign affairs; ZB Molete, secretary for publicity and information; Peter Raboroko, secretary for education; Nana Mahomo, secretary for culture; Hughes Hlatshwayo, secretary for finance and economic development; Additional members were: Zephania Mothopeng, Howard S Ngcobo, CJ Fazzie and MG Maboza.
Dr Peter Ntsele, who contested for the presidency of the PAC and lost the election to Sobukwe broke away to form his own party, the Pan African Freedom Movement (PAFM).
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania was formed between 4 and 6 April 1959 at Orlando East Communal Hall, as the true vanguard of the African liberation and the custodian of the genuine aspirations of the indigenous African people.
The PAC defined the nature of our struggle as that of national liberation and national self-determination of the African people.
It has identified the targets of our struggle as settler colonialism, bureaucratic capitalism, semi-feudalism in the farming areas, land repossession, neo-colonialism, imperialism and all their manifestations.
PAC sees the land question as central to our struggle and inseparable to the social question of how many shall live with his fellow man. The party’s policy flows from the logic of African situation and from the fundamental long-term interest of the vast African majority.
The PAC is fighting for the repossession of and restoration of the land that was taken by force through barrels of guns by the colonial settlers, establishment of an Africanist socialist democracy and envisages a Socialist United States of Africa with all power vested in a central government freely elected by the whole continent on the basis of universal adult suffrage.
The PAC’s aims and objectives are clear: to rally and unite African people into one national front on the basis of African nationalism; to fight for the overthrow of foreign domination, and for the establishment and maintenance of the self-determination of the African people; to work and strive for the establishment and maintenance of African socialist democracy; recognising primacy of the material and spiritual interest of the human personality; to promote the educational, cultural and economic advancement of an African; to strive for the unification of Africa from Cape to Cairo, Morocco to Madagascar.
The PAC first identified the immediate issues affecting the African people as pass laws. There were several Acts which consolidated the exploitation, oppression, dispossession and degradation of the African people. These included the legislations such as Land Act, Pass Law Act, Mines Act, Labour Recruitment Act, Civilised Labour Policy Act, Factory Act, Wage Act and others. These Acts rendered Africans landless and enslaved them on farms, in the factories, mines, on reserves, hostels and compounds. In responding to these conditions, PAC formulated the campaigns which were known as “positive action” and “status campaign” on 21 March 1960. The main focus of this campaign was to liberate the mind of the African people of Azania, to take away the fear of imprisonment as was injected to our blood through pass laws by the settler minority regime. In the execution of this program, the PAC called up all African males to leave their passes a their homes and to hand themselves to the nearest police stations, to tell the police that they have not carried their passes as demanded by the so-called settlers laws and demand to be arrested.
The call was also that all women should remain at their homes and no one must report at work on that day. The response from African people was highly positive and we all know what was the response from the settlers regime that day as 69 defenseless and unarmed African people were brutally and cold bloodedly shot to death, and many were injured in Sharpeville, and 14 defenseless African people were brutally and cold bloodedly shot to death and many injured in Langa. It was the shooting that made March 21st a Red Letter Day.
The shots echoed around the globe, caused a panic in ruling circles, sent the share market rocketing downwards, unleashed a storm of criticism of racial policies, produced the state of emergency, precipitated the banning of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and African National Congress (ANC) and change life for many people. As news of the Langa-Sharpeville massacre spread within South Africa, several riots broke out in towns throughout the country. The regime declared a state of emergency and detained over 50 000 people.
In mid 1960 the PAC and ANC were banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, a new reign of repossession was unleashed.
Mr Sobukwe and other Pan Africanist Congress of Azania PAC leaders were to be imprisoned. The PAC was the first liberation movement in South African to wage the armed struggle against apartheid colonialism. The military wing of the PAC was POQO-APLA.
PAC members were among the first people in South Africa in the 20th century to be imprisoned on Robben Island. Some of them were Jafta Masemola, Samuel Chibane, Philemon Tefo, Isaac Mthimunye, John Nkosi and Dimake Malepe.
Mr Sobukwe, was detained on Robben Island without trial under a draconian law called “Sobukwe Clause”. White colonial settlers said Sobukwe was the most dangerous politician in South African politics. This PAC president died under house arrest in Kimberly after he was allegedly poisoned on Robben Island.
Throughout colonial and apartheid history the colonial settlers regime hatched many oppressive and exploitative and degrading programmes against the African people, including the conceptualisation and formation of the Volkstates, Bantu Education, Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Group Areas Act and many pieces of legislation that have made sure until to-date the white people are separated from black people.
The African people are determined to liberate themselves and in that they need the PAC to lead them. Africans are ready to establish and maintain an Africanist socialist democracy, which will recognize the primacy of the material and spiritual interests of the individual, and which will be, according to the Africanist manifesto, “original in conception, Africanist in orientation, socialist in content, democratic in form, and creative in purpose, a democracy in which man shall at long last find his true self and in which the human personality shall blossom to the full”.
Our appeal is for the return of the bones of the PAC-Azanian People’s Liberation Army and ANC-Mkhonto Wesizwe cadres still planted in exile to be brought back and be buried in dignity at home.