Pan Africanist Congress

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The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) (later the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania ) was a South African liberation movement and is now an insignificant political party.

history

The PAC was founded in 1959 as a spin-off from the African National Congress (ANC) by some former members who no longer agreed with the mostly peaceful policy of the ANC, which aimed at the inclusion of all population groups, and who sought a more radical, purely black African organization. Among them were Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo . The establishment was partly a reaction to the adoption of the Freedom Charter by the ANC and other organizations four years earlier. At the founding conference in Johannesburg in April 1959 , Sobukwe was elected the organization's first chairman.

The name " Azania " is used by many black South African political activists in addition to the PAC and is another name for South Africa . One of several etymological interpretations is the derivation from the Arabic Adzan ("East Africa").

The ANC decided to start a campaign on March 31, 1960 against passport laws that required black South Africans to carry ID documents outside of the homelands . The PAC decided to forestall the ANC and organize its own campaign. The PAC's campaign started ten days before that of the ANC on March 21. Robert Sobukwe urged the population to leave their “passports” at home, to demonstrate peacefully and not to resist arrests by the police. The protest ended in tragedy when police officers bloodied a demonstration with 10,000 participants in Sharpeville . 69 people were killed and over 200 injured.

Black outrage across the country was so great that strikes and riots broke out. The government of the National Party then declared a state of emergency and banned both the PAC and the ANC on April 8, 1960 on the basis of the Unlawful Organizations Act (Act No. 34/1960 ).

Robert Sobukwe was arrested and not released until 1969. Many members fled into exile, for example to Tanzania . As an armed underground movement, Poqo ( isiXhosa ; German “pure, alone”) was founded, which was responsible for several armed attacks on police officers and alleged henchmen of the apartheid regime in the 1960s. The movement was later called the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA for short, German roughly: "Liberation Army of the Azanian People"). The journalist David Sibeko became a "permanent observer" of the PAC at the United Nations in 1975, where he campaigned for the fight against apartheid. When Sobukwe died in 1978, he left a power vacuum in the PAC that could not be replenished. The chairman in the Tanzanian exile was Potlako Leballo from 1978, who was overthrown a year later, including by Sibeko. As a result of the power struggles that broke out, in which Sibeko was killed, the PAC activists were driven out of Tanzania.

On February 2, 1990, the ANC and PAC were re-approved as political organizations by President Frederik Willem de Klerk , and the political prisoners were also released. However, internal power struggles continued within the party. In the 1994 elections it received only 1.25% of the vote and five of the 400 seats, and in the elections five years later even less. After another failed party congress in 2003, Patricia de Lille , one of its most popular members, left the PAC to form her own party, the Independent Democrats . In the 2014 elections , the PAC only received 0.21% of the vote, but retained its only mandate in the National Assembly . In the elections in South Africa 2019 , the PAC was able to defend its seat with 0.19% of the vote.

The party's headquarters are in the Marshalltown district of Johannesburg .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anthony S. Mathews: Law, order and liberty in South Africa . Cape Town (Juta) 1971, p. 69.
  2. ↑ History of the Poqo at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on May 25, 2019
  3. ↑ sahistory.org.za about the Poqo , accessed on January 3, 2012
  4. ^ Party's website , accessed on August 16, 2016.