Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) is a political party that represents the interests of Black South Africans. It aims to redistribute South Africa’s land and wealth to disadvantaged citizens who suffered under a system of enforced racial segregation known as apartheid. One of the PAC’s goals was the formation of a union of all the countries of Africa, under the leadership of Black Africans. It takes its name from Azania, an ancient name for Africa.
The PAC was formed in 1959 as a breakaway group from the African National Congress (ANC). Led by Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe (1924-1978), a university lecturer, the PAC’s founders objected to the nonracial philosophy of the Freedom Charter, which the ANC had adopted in 1955. In 1960, the PAC and ANC organized demonstrations against the pass laws, which regulated the movements of people classified as Black under apartheid. In March 1960, one demonstration led to the massacre of 69 demonstrators by police at Sharpeville (now part of Vereeniging). The government then banned both the PAC and the ANC.
Sobukwe was imprisoned for six years in 1963. Other PAC leaders escaped into exile and set up an armed wing, Poqo, in African countries outside South Africa. A new military wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), was formed in 1968.
South African president F. W. de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and the PAC in 1990. Under the leadership of Clarence Makwetu, who became PAC president in 1990, the PAC refused to enter negotiations with the South African government. During the early 1990’s, both the PAC and APLA earned a reputation as extremist organizations, with APLA claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks on the police and on white people. In South Africa’s first democratic general election, held in April 1994, the PAC received 1.2 percent of the vote, winning five seats in the National Assembly.
