Poll banishes PAC to history as popularity replaces ideology

THIS week’s elections seem to have sounded the death knell of the Pan Africanist Congress, which, with the ANC, for decades provided the main black opposition to apartheid.

A party that at one point competed with the ANC for prominence has been buried in the crush of smaller parties. Having endured the ravages of exile, it seems it can’t survive in an open democracy. For a party of its pedigree to get just under 40 000 votes nationally is nothing short of a humiliation. It will be difficult to justify its existence.

But will its eclipse mark the end of what has been one of the main strands of South African politics?

Robert Sobukwe, who led a split from the ANC in 1959 to found the PAC, must be spinning in his grave. Voters may have administered the final rites on the party, but infighting had already splintered and destroyed it in exile.

Its factions were left squabbling over the single seat the party had in the last parliament.

The PAC had never come to terms with the incarceration, banishment and death of its founder.

Sobukwe, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, a Methodist lay preacher, a man known for his great intellect and once described by then-justice minister John Vorster as “a man with a magnetic personality”, is almost the forgotten man of South African politics. But he was responsible for initiating what is considered the first serious challenge to the apartheid state.

A year after its formation, the PAC instructed its supporters to leave their passes at home on March 21 1960, march to police stations and demand to be arrested. In Sharpeville, the police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing 61.

The Sharpeville massacre proved a turning point in South African politics. It changed everything. A state of emergency was declared and the ANC and PAC were banned and their members banished to exile.

Following the crackdown, the country settled down to business as usual. The economy took off, reinforcing the authorities’ belief that they had taken the appropriate action. With black resistance crushed, the government proceeded to implement what it called grand apartheid — the introduction of Bantustans, or black homelands. But Sharpeville had alerted the international community to the brutality of apartheid. Voices were raised for the first time at the UN calling for South Africa’s isolation.

On Sobukwe’s release from Robben Island, he was banished to Kimberley, where he died in February 1978. His funeral service in Graaff-Reinet was to provide the animus between Mangosuthu Buthelezi and then-bishop Desmond Tutu that lingers to this day.

Buthelezi alleged that Tutu, who was presiding at the funeral, tried to justify the actions of some mourners who eventually succeeded in ejecting him from the service.

Infighting characterised the PAC’s time in exile. As a result, it was outshone by the better-organised and -funded ANC.

Much has also been made of the differences between the two parties. But these differences were often more tactical than ideological. The PAC had a more radical posture. It put a lot more emphasis on what it called “the land question”. It’s arguable, however, whether it would have dealt with land restitution any differently than the current ANC government.

Although Sobukwe used to say that there was only one race, the human race, the PAC’s membership was mainly black, Indian and coloured — a line that was later followed by the black consciousness movement. The ANC ’s policy of non- racialism gave it a lot of mileage inside the country, seen as an antidote to apartheid. It had also formed alliances with organisations from other race groups, notably the Communist Party, from as early as the 1950s.

But, in fact, whites, Indians and coloureds could not be members of the ANC until its historic conference in Morogoro, Tanzania, in 1969. It was a partial concession because these groups were still not eligible to be elected to the national executive committee. However, that decision provoked a hostile reaction from the Africanist faction that ultimately led to the expulsion of the so-called Group of Eight from the organisation in 1975.

It was only in Kabwe in 1985, five years before the ANC was unbanned by FW de Klerk, that full membership was granted to all. A conference decision at the time said whites “in the main, play a supporting role . . . They should concentrate their efforts on work in the white community.” It’s a sentiment that’s often expressed by black consciousness adherents.

ANC policies, especially under Thabo Mbeki, have often sounded no different from those of the PAC, at least in tone if not substance. Ideologically, Mbeki seems closer to Sobukwe than to either Nelson Mandela or Oliver Tambo. He made the PAC even more superfluous. Ideological differences are certainly blurred, but that seems to apply to parties across the political spectrum. Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.timeslive.co.za