In December 1959 Benjamin Pogrund covered a PAC conference in Orlando for the Rand Daily Mail. Now he reports on the latest PAC conference
SHORTLY after 1am last Monday the Pan Africanist Congress was transformed from a dying no-hoper into an organisation of spirit and potential. The dramatic change came with the announcement at its fifth annual conference that Bishop Mmutlanyane Stanley Mogoba had been elected unopposed as president.
A storm of cheering broke out. Many who had despaired that the PAC was ‘going down the drain’, as one delegate put it, were jubilant. Some even wept, relieved that there was now reason for them to remain in an organisation drifting aimlessly and beset by corruption scandals.
That 433 delegates and observers from 105 branches travelled the distance to Thohoyandou, in the far north, most of them at their own expense, reflected their commitment to the PAC. The conference was held in this out-of-the-way venue at the University of Venda because it was free ‘ crucial for the cash-strapped organisation but hard on members.
Right from the start of the weekend delegates repeatedly said that the leadership issue was critical. One after the other confided that unless this was resolved, the PAC was doomed.
Yet despite the pivotal importance of Mogoba’s election his victory was uncertain until late in the night. Twelve hours earlier he had been one among four runners. Then the field was reduced to him and the president in office, Clarence Makwetu. Pressure on Makwetu to stand down, applied especially by the PAC’s military and youth sections, finally prevailed and a new post as national chairman was created for him.
In accepting the leadership, Mogoba has pushed aside the 36 years of leadership that ranged from inept to crooked and has donned the mantle of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, the PAC founder-president who, after leading the anti-pass demonstrations on March 21, 1960 which resulted in the Sharpeville massacre, spent the last 18 years of his life in prison and then banishment. Like Sobukwe, Mogoba is a thinker who speaks quietly but with strength and passion. Like Sobukwe, he has a self-effacing sense of humour.
Now 63, his record reaches back into the PAC’s early years. Trained as a teacher, he was jailed in 1963 for membership of the underground PAC offshoot, Poqo. While in solitary confinement on Robben Island he was called to the Methodist Church’s ministry and after his release went on to hold high positions in international Christian bodies.
Elected presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa with its nearly 1-million members, he was re-elected three times for a record eight years in office and took the church through the post-apartheid transition years. He resigned earlier this month to be available for the PAC presidency.
He laughed as he told me: ‘In the Methodist Church I had ANC, IFP, CP, NP and PAC members. After that, PAC will be easy.’
As the new president he began briskly by offering a hand of friendship: previous contacts with President Nelson Mandela will be revived and the PAC seems open to joining a government of national unity.
He also stressed the common suffering of the past in the anti-apartheid struggle and spoke of a ‘patriotic front’ with the ANC and the Azanian People’s Organisation (if, that is, much remains of this group after the bust-up at its own conference last weekend).
But the PAC will also go its own way and Mogoba gave notice to the government that he will be focusing on ‘the new South Africa that has been short on delivery’. In his prepared acceptance speech he spoke of ‘the plight of the poor, the desperately poor, who had hoped that change was coming. That change turned out to be a mirage.’
Others, such as parliamentary adviser Bennie Bunsee, were even more pointed in their comments, making clear that they intend mounting a serious challenge to the ANC in the 1999 elections.
Mogoba returned to the Africanist tenets spelt out by Sobukwe to attack what he said was ‘the mother of all myths’ ‘ that the PAC was a racist organisation. There was ‘one human race’ according to the PAC’s original documents. Africa was for Africans ‘ which meant everyone, whatever their colour, ‘who belong here, love their country and love their fellow-men and women’.
His emphatic assertion of nonracialism struck a particular chord for me because the last PAC conference I reported was in December 1959 ‘ a few months, it turned out, before both the PAC and the ANC were banned ‘ and I experienced a good deal of hostility because of my whiteness. Last weekend was totally different: there was no vestige of unfriendliness.
But although the PAC dropped its ‘one settler, one bullet’ slogan nearly three years ago, several delegates were still wearing tee-shirts carrying the controversial message. ‘Why do you have that slogan?’ I asked one of them. Clearly embarrassed, he said: ‘What can I do with this tee-shirt? I can’t throw it away.’
As a reminder that not everyone in the PAC might fully understand the non-racism policy, Mogoba made a gentle reference to some of the ‘younger’ members who ‘may themselves have lapsed into unconscious racism’.
A particular reason for electing Mogoba to the presidency is his irreproachable honesty. Millions of rands are unaccounted for in the PAC’s books and a commission of inquiry which reported to the conference, in what was supposed to be a confidential report but which was leaked to the press, made little headway in tracking down the funds.
Part of the PAC’s self-cleansing was seen in the conference’s decision by an overwhelming majority to refer the issue of the funds to the commercial branch of the police. It is believed that the police will be able to carry out a more thorough investigation than possible for a private inquiry.
The election of a new president, however gifted, will not be enough in itself to give life to a political party which gained only 1% of the votes in the 1994 national elections ‘ a fact which PAC members defensively say was due to poor organisation and leadership, and severe internal divisions about whether to contest the elections or continue armed struggle.
But Mogoba will be assisted by an almost entirely new executive which includes businessman and radio personality Michael Ngila Muendane as secretary general and Philip Kgosana as national organiser.
Kgosana, as a 21-year-old university student, led 30 000 people on a march into Cape Town in 1960: it remains to be seen whether, after his years in exile studying and then working for Unicef, he retains the Pied Piper-like magic he displayed then.
A week ago the PAC was of little account on the national scene. It is still too early to say whether its leaders are correct in believing that there’s a current of Africanist belief in the country waiting to be tapped ‘and even if this is true, whether they will be able to mobilise resources so that the PAC is able to offer effective opposition to the ANC. But what can be said is that the PAC has turned a corner and deserves to be watched.