Senior Pan Africanist Congress members, disillusioned with the organisation’s president, Motsoko Pheko, have called an All Africanist Conference in Cape Town. The meeting is a likely prelude to their breaking away from the PAC and forming a new party.
The list of delegates expected at the conference includes outspoken PAC stalwart Costa Gazi, the organisation’s former president Clarence Makwetu, and its former secretary general Thami ka Plaatjie. The PAC student wing, the Pan Africanist Student Movement, also gave the conference its support this week.
All African Conference spokesperson Thabo Manamela, a former executive member of the PAC in the North West, insists that it is not given that a new political party will be formed. “The conference will decide what happens,” says Manamela.
But a reading of the conference agenda suggests that the formation of a new party is the most likely outcome. The meeting will include discussion of a constitution, principles and policies, finance, economics and relations with civil society.
PAC spokesperson Walter Toboti said he was aware that the conference organisers were recruiting his party’s members, but dismissed this as insignificant. “We are not worried … These people have always been a cause of destabilisation and division in the PAC. This is a testing time for the PAC, but we will emerge stronger,” Toboti said.
The current crises for the PAC are a culmination of problems that started when its congress was aborted in Umtata last December after then deputy president Pheko was accused of busing in youngsters to vote for him.
Another congress was held in Soweto in June, but Ka Plaatjie disappeared minutes before he was expected to contest the presidency with Pheko. Ka Plaatjie had again questioned the credentials of some of the delegates.
After this meeting, disaffected members called for a third congress, which was rejected. They then called for the All Africanist Conference, which organisers expect 5 000 people to attend.