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| Robert Sobukwe, founder of the PAC |
A review of "In the Twilight of the Revolution: The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania" by Kwandiwe Merriman Kondlo
The ANC was the leading force in the resistance
against the South African apartheid regime. This book is about a smaller
organization, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). It was relatively well known
during the apartheid years, but failed spectacularly in the first post-apartheid
elections in 1994, only obtaining about 2% of the votes. A friend of mine
encountered several small pro-PAC leftist groups in Sweden during the 1980's,
all of them anarchist or Trotskyist. It seems these people betted on the wrong
horse! If Kondlo's book is to be believed, it's actually even worse…
The history of the PAC turns out to be a long story of factional infighting, embezzlement of funds from foreign donors, assassinations of dissidents, adventurist tactics and strange political gyrations. The leadership was overtly authoritarian, and all leaders of the PAC, regardless of factional affiliation, systematically used agent-baiting against their opponents. Paranoia about infiltrators and provocateurs is a classic method of authoritarian and cultish leaders to keep their supporters in line. In the PAC's case, the paranoia was somewhat ironic, since the real provocateur might have been the organizations top leader himself, P K Leballo. Or so Kondlo implies.
In 1963, Leballo held a press conference in Lesotho, provocatively claiming that he would soon lead an armed invasion of South Africa. The statement was made the same day as the apartheid regime was releasing the PAC's founder Robert Sobukwe from jail. Naturally, the South African authorities reacted by detaining Sobukwe again. They also rounded up 10,000 suspected PAC supporters, many of whom received long jail sentences. Did Leballo intentionally make his adventurist call in order to destroy Sobukwe, a potential factional opponent? Even stranger, in 1964 the apartheid regime permitted a plane carrying Leballo to enter South African airspace on route to Botswana and even stop over on Johannesburg's airport! For several years afterwards, PAC dissidents were mysteriously arrested by the South African police after leaving Leballo's HQ in Lesotho… The ANC accused Leballo of working for a United States agency before becoming a PAC activist, something Kondlo hasn't been able to confirm.
Despite all this, the PAC did manage to get a certain amount of international recognition and support. Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the OAU supported both the ANC and the PAC. The main patron of the PAC was China, probably because the Chinese competed with the Soviet Union (which supported the ANC). The pro-Chinese position created problems for the PAC during the civil war in Angola, where the ANC backed the leftist and pro-Soviet MPLA, while the PAC sided with the pro-Western UNITA, which was also supported by China and the South African apartheid regime! Some PAC patrons weren't particularly radical at all: Uganda, Liberia and Nigeria. PAC even lobbied Spain and Singapore for financial assistance! Another important source of support was Gaddafi's Libya, but relations with the Libyan strongman (who was pretty erratic anyway) soured after the PAC decided to support Iraq in its war against Iran, something the PAC did mostly to obtain funds from Saddam Hussein's regime (Libya backed Iran).
Ideologically, the PAC espoused a blend of Pan Africanist nationalism and “Marxism-Leninism” of a mostly Maoist bent. The PAC opposed both ANC's non-racialism and the strong influence of the South African Communist Party within the ANC. Instead, the PAC emphasized that “Azania” (their name for South Africa) belongs to Black Africans, and that all Africa should be united against imperialism and colonialism, “from Cairo to the Cape, from Morocco to Madagascar”. The Pan Africanist message was strongly associated with Kwame Nkrumah's presidency in Ghana. (This explains the otherwise peculiar fact that the PAC's party flag highlights Ghana rather than South Africa.) Later, the PAC embarked on a more Maoist course, with ideas about “prolonged people's war” and the revolutionary capacity of the peasantry. PAC's guerilla fighters, first known as Poqo and later as APLA, were associated with the slogan “One settler, one bullet”. They indiscriminately attacked both the apartheid military and police, Black collaborators and White civilians. As already noted, defectors from the PAC or dissidents within the movement were also targeted.
Being less politically and organizationally stable than the ANC, it was probably inevitable that the PAC would be decisively sidelined once the anti-apartheid struggle gained momentum. When F W De Klerk was forced to lift the ban on the anti-apartheid movements, the PAC refused to join the peace process. Instead, they opted to continue the armed struggle in a last ditch adventurist attempt to foment a revolution. When the PAC finally did enter negotiations with the apartheid regime, their movement had been thoroughly discredited. Still, some outside observers were probably stunned when the PAC only got 2% of the vote in 1994, compared to 63% for the ANC. I'm pretty sure the “Azanian” solidarity groups in Sweden were, if they even existed for this long…
Kwandiwe Kondlo's book isn't the most graceful read around, and requires a certain amount of patience to sift through. Once done, you will be tempted to agree with the volume's title. Yes, the Pan Africanist Congress really was “the twilight of the revolution”.
The history of the PAC turns out to be a long story of factional infighting, embezzlement of funds from foreign donors, assassinations of dissidents, adventurist tactics and strange political gyrations. The leadership was overtly authoritarian, and all leaders of the PAC, regardless of factional affiliation, systematically used agent-baiting against their opponents. Paranoia about infiltrators and provocateurs is a classic method of authoritarian and cultish leaders to keep their supporters in line. In the PAC's case, the paranoia was somewhat ironic, since the real provocateur might have been the organizations top leader himself, P K Leballo. Or so Kondlo implies.
In 1963, Leballo held a press conference in Lesotho, provocatively claiming that he would soon lead an armed invasion of South Africa. The statement was made the same day as the apartheid regime was releasing the PAC's founder Robert Sobukwe from jail. Naturally, the South African authorities reacted by detaining Sobukwe again. They also rounded up 10,000 suspected PAC supporters, many of whom received long jail sentences. Did Leballo intentionally make his adventurist call in order to destroy Sobukwe, a potential factional opponent? Even stranger, in 1964 the apartheid regime permitted a plane carrying Leballo to enter South African airspace on route to Botswana and even stop over on Johannesburg's airport! For several years afterwards, PAC dissidents were mysteriously arrested by the South African police after leaving Leballo's HQ in Lesotho… The ANC accused Leballo of working for a United States agency before becoming a PAC activist, something Kondlo hasn't been able to confirm.
Despite all this, the PAC did manage to get a certain amount of international recognition and support. Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the OAU supported both the ANC and the PAC. The main patron of the PAC was China, probably because the Chinese competed with the Soviet Union (which supported the ANC). The pro-Chinese position created problems for the PAC during the civil war in Angola, where the ANC backed the leftist and pro-Soviet MPLA, while the PAC sided with the pro-Western UNITA, which was also supported by China and the South African apartheid regime! Some PAC patrons weren't particularly radical at all: Uganda, Liberia and Nigeria. PAC even lobbied Spain and Singapore for financial assistance! Another important source of support was Gaddafi's Libya, but relations with the Libyan strongman (who was pretty erratic anyway) soured after the PAC decided to support Iraq in its war against Iran, something the PAC did mostly to obtain funds from Saddam Hussein's regime (Libya backed Iran).
Ideologically, the PAC espoused a blend of Pan Africanist nationalism and “Marxism-Leninism” of a mostly Maoist bent. The PAC opposed both ANC's non-racialism and the strong influence of the South African Communist Party within the ANC. Instead, the PAC emphasized that “Azania” (their name for South Africa) belongs to Black Africans, and that all Africa should be united against imperialism and colonialism, “from Cairo to the Cape, from Morocco to Madagascar”. The Pan Africanist message was strongly associated with Kwame Nkrumah's presidency in Ghana. (This explains the otherwise peculiar fact that the PAC's party flag highlights Ghana rather than South Africa.) Later, the PAC embarked on a more Maoist course, with ideas about “prolonged people's war” and the revolutionary capacity of the peasantry. PAC's guerilla fighters, first known as Poqo and later as APLA, were associated with the slogan “One settler, one bullet”. They indiscriminately attacked both the apartheid military and police, Black collaborators and White civilians. As already noted, defectors from the PAC or dissidents within the movement were also targeted.
Being less politically and organizationally stable than the ANC, it was probably inevitable that the PAC would be decisively sidelined once the anti-apartheid struggle gained momentum. When F W De Klerk was forced to lift the ban on the anti-apartheid movements, the PAC refused to join the peace process. Instead, they opted to continue the armed struggle in a last ditch adventurist attempt to foment a revolution. When the PAC finally did enter negotiations with the apartheid regime, their movement had been thoroughly discredited. Still, some outside observers were probably stunned when the PAC only got 2% of the vote in 1994, compared to 63% for the ANC. I'm pretty sure the “Azanian” solidarity groups in Sweden were, if they even existed for this long…
Kwandiwe Kondlo's book isn't the most graceful read around, and requires a certain amount of patience to sift through. Once done, you will be tempted to agree with the volume's title. Yes, the Pan Africanist Congress really was “the twilight of the revolution”.
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