Clarence Makwetu: PAC boss who led the party into oblivion
CLARENCE Makwetu, who has died in Queenstown at the age of 87, was an uninspiring and ineffectual leader of the PAC, a man whom many in the party blamed for its precipitous decline.
A former member of the ANC Youth League who left the party with Robert Sobukwe to form the PAC in 1959, Makwetu had a proud record of struggle against the apartheid regime, which led to five years of imprisonment on Robben Island and repeated clashes with his blood cousin Kaizer Matanzima, leader of the “independent” homeland of Transkei. Matanzima, who saw him as a threat, had him arrested on several occasions and eventually banished him from his home in Cofimvaba for five years.
Makwetu was elected president of the PAC in 1990 after the death of then-president Zeph Mothopeng. Under his leadership the PAC refused to sign the National Peace Initiative that committed parties to ending the violence which, after the unbanning of the liberation movements, looked like plunging South Africa into allout civil war.
To sign it, he said, would be to collaborate with the apartheid regime, which he believed was using “professional killers” to pursue an agenda of destabilisation. He vowed that the PAC would continue its armed struggle until everyone had the vote.
This led to derisive comments from ANC leaders, not least Nelson Mandela, who believed the PAC had never had much of an armed struggle in the first place. But the war talk went down well with ANC supporters, especially after the assassination of Chris Hani in April 1993.
While Mandela was being jeered by a crowd of 25 000 in Soweto for saying he would continue to strive for peace with the National Party government, Makwetu arrived to tumultuous applause.
This was shortly after the St James Church massacre in Cape Town by the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, the PAC’s armed wing. Makwetu had made no apologies for Apla’s stated policy of killing white civilians and had vowed that the PAC would step up political killings as part of its “year of the great storm”.
When Mandela invited Makwetu to address the crowd at Jabulani Stadium, he limited himself to 12 words that captured the mood perfectly: “We have come to a time when leaders run out of words,” he said. The crowd set off firecrackers in response.
Makwetu’s popularity did not last long. After a shambolic performance in the 1994 elections, which an optimistic Makwetu insisted they contest in spite of a strong boycott movement in the party, the PAC won just five seats in the 400-member National Assembly.
He was roundly blamed by his senior colleagues — and re-elected nonetheless. This led to increasing factionalism and chaos within the party, which was rapidly becoming something of a joke. The leadership hoped that Mandela would come to the rescue by offering Makwetu an ambassadorship. When this did not happen they served a formal letter of expulsion on him for dividing the party and bringing it into disrepute.
He returned the letter without signing it, resumed his seat in parliament and ignored demands that he vacate his office. In 1997, his membership of the party was suspended for three years and he was finally expelled from parliament.
At the time he was facing serious allegations of misappropriation of party funds. This included about R1-million given to the party by the Independent Electoral Commission to fight the 1994 elections, which was moved to a bank account, allegedly on Makwetu’s instructions, and never seen again. There was also a briefcase of US dollars from Nigeria that was handed to Makwetu in 1993 and never accounted for.
A decision was taken at the party congress in 1994 to compile a report on the missing money for the police but, after he was re-elected president, the matter went no further.
Makwetu was replaced by his arch-enemy Bishop Stanley Mogoba. He was bitterly resentful and widely believed to have been behind allegations that surfaced soon after Mogoba’s election that he had collaborated with the apartheid regime against a PAC comrade in 1988. The allegations were rejected by the PAC.
Makwetu was born in Hoyita in Cofimvaba on December 6 1928. He matriculated at Lovedale missionary school and went to work in Cape Town. He became the first branch secretary of the PAC in Langa and built it into one of the strongest PAC branches.
His deputy was Philip Kgosana, who led a 30 000-strong anti-pass march from Langa to Cape Town on March 30 1960. The government declared a state of emergency, the PAC was banned and Makwetu was jailed for the first of many times. Over the next 20 years he was banned, restricted and banished. In 1963, he was sentenced to five years, which he spent on Robben Island in the company of Mandela, whom he impressed as “a balanced, sensible man”.
He spent his retirement on his farm in Queenstown. He died a disillusioned man, questioning the sacrifices he had made.
“There is nothing to celebrate,” he said on the 20th anniversary of democracy in 2014. “We fought for freedom, but what did we gain?”
He is survived by his wife, Mandisa, and two sons. — Chris Barron