PAC’s Toboti ‘a great son of Africa’

The Pan Africanist Congress president, Mzwanele Nyhontsho, has paid tribute to the party’s stalwart and former Robben Islander, Waters “Bishop” Toboti, who died on Sunday.

Nyhontsho described Toboti as a “great son of Africa”.

Toboti, 81, was a councillor at Amathole district municipality in the Eastern Cape, representing Mnquma and Mbhashe.

He served on the PAC national executive committee in exile as director of publicity and information.

He was highly regarded in the organisation for being articulate in party policy and a reservoir of organisational memory. Many said he was underutilised in the PAC, despite his long service and energy, as he could have helped to unite the divided party.

Toboti was part of the youth generation of the ’50 and ’60s when Pan Africanists dominated the debates in the ANC from which the PAC broke away in 1959.

He was arrested and sentenced to Robben Island in the early ’60s after the Sharpeville Massacre.

Toboti joined PAC underground structures before he went to exile in the ’80s and underwent military training under the Azania People’s Liberation Army (Apla).

At the PAC headquarters in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, he served as director of publicity and information which he used to disseminate PAC ideological positions and documenting its struggle history.

The leadership later deployed him as its chief representative in Zimbabwe in the mid-’80s.

After the PAC was unbanned, Toboti served on every NEC since 1994 and was respected for being an eloquent orator and skilled spokesperson.

Toboti, affectionately known as “Bishop”, was a staunch Methodist church member in his home in Centane in the Eastern Cape, where he will be buried.