SUMMARY
PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress) was a black political and military movement active in the fight against South Africa’s apartheid system between the 1950s and the 1990s. The group was founded in 1959, by disenchanted members of the ANC (African National Congress). The founding members that left the ANC were pronounced “Africanists”, rejecting the ANC’s multiracial liberation struggle and specifically denying whites any place in the fight against apartheid. The group instead oftentimes labelled all whites as being “settlers”, usurping black land. Thereby the group differed in its approach from the ANC’s tolerant view of a new South Africa for all of the peoples inhabiting it. Also, the group advocated a socialist democracy for the new South Africa, a state that would come about through armed struggle and not negotiations.
PAC was banned soon after its founding, in 1960, and the group’s leadership went into exile and declared its decision to wage an armed struggle against the government of South Africa. The group did however not take part in armed conflict with the South African government until the mid-1980s, a few years after the ANC launched its armed struggle. The exiled leadership had its base in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from where it reorganised and then put to use its armed wing, APLA (Azanian People’s Liberation Army). APLA was the successor to PAC’s first military wing, named “Poqo”. APLA mainly employed guerrilla warfare against the security forces of the government of South Africa, but also employed violence against civilians, primarily whites.
On the South African liberation scene PAC was part of the loosely defined “black consciousness” movement, as opposed to the ANC’s formal alignment with the more liberal oriented United Democratic Front (UDF). It has also been alleged that the group cooperated and had ties with Qibla, an Islamic movement in the Western Cape which also adhered to the black consciousness ideology. PAC was legalised in 1990 but did not fare well in the 1994 multiparty elections, becoming more or less marginalised in the face of ANC ascendancy to power. Due to PAC’s relatively small size (in comparison with the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party) violent political conflict with other black political movements became no large issue in the transition from apartheid to majority rule.
In terms of links to foreign governments PAC received much support from Tanzania, which provided a platform for both military and political action, and also helped the political arm of the movement to re-establish control over the fractionalised APLA in the early 1980s. The group also had a relatively amicable relationship with the government of Zambia from the 1980s and onwards. Further, PAC guerrillas are known to have received military training in Ethiopia and Yugoslavia, and training and weapons from Libya. Political and moral support came also from many African states and organisations, for example Mugabe’s ZANU movement in Zimbabwe and the Mozambique Revolutionary Committee (COREMO).
PAC was founded by Robert Sobukwe, who died in 1978, still banned from political activity by the South African government. When the armed struggle began in the mid-1980s the group was led by Johnson Mlambo.
PAC has been involved in the one-sided category of UCDP organised violence.
