The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)

·         The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)

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·         The methods of protest, petitions, delegations and representations used by the ANC between 1912 and 1946 brought no great success for the ANC among people.

·         The trend towards strike action, after the mine workers refused to improve the pay and conditions of mine workers as recommended by a 1944 government commission (the mining companies had made a record profit of 15.6 million pounds in the previous year)

·         Black miners were made rebellious by cuts in their food rations, and the AMWU began to demand 60 shillings or 3 pounds a week.

·         in August 1946 the Union called the workers out to strike as 75.000 men responded, of whom 9 were killed when the police evidently crushed the strike by driving strikers down the mines.

·         The Native Representative Council that included whites and blacks discussed the suppression of the miners' strike, and adopted Paul Mosaka's motion of condemning 'fascism' which was the anti- thesis and negation of the spirit of the United Nations Charter.

·         When the government refused to respond, the council suspended itself in protest, after Paul Mosaka had described it as contemptuously as a toy telephone.

·         In 1950's complaints about lack of organization, lack of information and misdirected alliance heightened in the ANC, which led to the formation of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959 by Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and other radical nationalists in South Africa.

·         The main difference between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) countered on the attitude towards the future government of South Africa. The Pan African Congress (PAC) was more Africanist and claimed ‘South Africa for the Africans’.

·         The ANC on the other hand had always a formation of a multi-racial society in south Africa.

·         The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had been critical of the African National Congress's failure to provide a nationwide organization but they themselves were no more successful.

·         PAC remained a radical socialist political organization since 1959.

·         Its leaders and supporters believed that other racial groups couldn't be associated with the black struggle against Apartheid.

·         It emulated and founded the Black Conscious Movement (BCM) important in the 1970s by Steve Biko.

·         Resistance to the South African white government under the Pan Africanist Congress was only limited to local or native out bursts and demonstrations against education policies in the Eastern Cape and against prevailing political policies in the same Bantu Homelands like Transkei and Ciskei.

·         The two major organizations (ANC and PAC) were never able to coordinate their activities to the point where they became more than a temporary embarrassment to the white government.

·         They both chose an Anti- Pass Campaign for Mareh 1960 at Sharpeville. The response was good from its supporters and the campaign was carried out by Africans in a disciplined, sensible way, and with no violence.

·         The stage was set for a massive confrontation with the white government and the result was the indiscriminate shooting of the Africans at Sharpeville and Langa.

·         The government was more worried than it had been before and immediately banned both the Pan- Africanist Congress and the African National Congress.

·         After the banning the Pan- African Congress and ANC, African leaders chose acts of sabotage and violence. Poqo (ourselves) became its armed wing.

·         By 1963 its armed wing (poqo) had been crushed, but it was gradually rejuvenated.

·         By 1978 John Mlambo organized PACs structures as he headed its military wing (the Azania Peoples Liberation Army).

·         Until 1985 PAC under John Mlambo remained a force against Apartheid. In 1986 Mothopeng Zephaniah became its leader (President General). He died prematurely in 1990.

·         PAC continued to oppose ANC's dialogue with the Apartheid regime.

·         The changing attitude of nationalism in South Africa can be seen through these important personalities, among others Robert Sobukwe, Albert Luthuli and Nelson Mandela.