”The race for the much contested presidency of the Pan Africanist Congress seems unending and has taken another twist. So far, four candidates have refused to back down to pressure to step down and limit the candidates to two.”
I wrote these words not this week, but three years ago ahead of another, similarly divided PAC congress. As the party heads for its congress in QwaQwa, Free State, this weekend, nothing has changed.
At almost every PAC congress in the past 16 years, the agenda has been the same — the unification of the African people. So has the outcome — a failure to deliver.
The only visible developments have been a brain drain, reducing the party to a shell, and steadily declining voter interest.
It’s time to accept that the Pan-African movement is dead. The PAC would do itself and South Africa a favour by shutting up shop and halting further erosion of the legacy of Robert Sobukwe and Zeph Mothopeng.
There is no reason to believe, as PAC diehards want us to, that things will come right, that the endless rifts will be healed and that the party will rediscover the vision and strength that enabled it to lead anti-pass-law protests and inject new militancy into the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.
Granted, it was banned in 1960, a year after its formation, throwing it into disarray and stunting its growth.
Since its unbanning in 1990, it has survived on a wing and a prayer. Its major mistake was its refusal to join the settlement negotiations of the early Nineties, which left it unprepared for the 1994 elections. It has never recovered, failing to win more than 1% of the vote in all national elections since then.
At this weekend’s congress, four candidates will again vie for the presidency. Only their names are different — Thami ka Plaatjie, secretary Likotsi Mofihli, deputy president Themba Godi and former military commander Letlapa Mphahlele.
The twist this time around is that Godi has been in court trying to reverse his suspension by president Motsoko Pheko. Pheko suspended Godi after the latter panned him in City Press as archaic, backward and lacking intellect.
Godi argues in court papers that his continued suspension will eliminate him from the leadership race and from voting.
In 2003, it was Maxwell Nemadzivhanani who was contesting his suspension, which was lifted on the first day of the congress. And, as in the past, the winner of this presidential race will inevitably face accusations of vote-rigging.
Plaatjie has drawn up a four-year resurrection plan that envisages the party gaining at least 10% of the vote in the 2009 elections, when it celebrates its 50th anniversary. Which of the failed presidents — Clarence Makwetu, Stanley Mogoba, Pheko — did not have a revivalist vision when they took over?
Plaatjie is asking for time to rebuild. As Martin Luther King once said, such a plea stems from the irrational notion that the very flow of time inevitably cures all ills. ”Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability,” King wrote. ”It comes through the tireless efforts of men.”
The PAC has had so much time to redeem itself, yet has failed so often, because its leaders cannot rise above their petty differences.
The PAC’s political space has been usurped by the ANC and its president, Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki has not only given voice to the Pan Africanist perspective, he has worked doggedly to give it substance; criss-crossing the continent, resolving conflicts and taking up cudgels for Africa in international forums. In contrast, Pheko has made headlines by condemning gays.
Land first, the heart of PAC’s electoral campaigns, has been taken up by the SACP, while government has embraced the principle of expropriation.
PAC types lament these days that the party is a weak agent for strong ideas. It is a weak agent all right — the trouble is that its strong ideas are being advanced under other banners. Claiming to stand for African solidarity, its leaders offer only the sad and undignified spectacle of bickering and backstabbing.