Pan Africanism and Black Consciousness: Solidarity and Synergies for Liberation

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not". – John 1: 1-5

The Context
Far from being a sermon, this is an attempt at critical discourse to appreciate the areas of convergence and divergence between Pan-Africanism (PA) and Black Consciousness (BC). This inquiry has been occasioned by the never-ending debates among the adherents of both liberation ideologies in search of which one is older and superior between the two. Such counterproductive navel-gazing is often instigated by deep-seated desire for institutional hegemony on the part of the claimers. The urge is doubled for the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which is historically older than the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO). Where the BCM has lost the institutional age battle, solace is found in a hegemonic construct that seeks to suggest that the BCM enjoys better theoretical and philosophical clarity than the PAC. If anything, this misplaced and misdirected competition is one of the factors that accounted for the opening of the chasm between the two organisational manifestations of PA and BC.

In this project I embrace the line that views as an exercise in futility any attempt that seeks to suggest that between BC and PA one is older than the other. I think we could very well be dealing with the chicken and egg riddle best described by John the Baptist in the quotation above. And so it was that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Actually, the Word “was with God in the beginning”. Such is the story of BC and PA in my view. The most unfortunate for the adherents of BC and PA is that “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not”.

The Attrition
Because of its ideological proximity to the PAC, it is not unlikely that the BCM and AZAPO may have benefited from that relationship during its formative stages. The supporters of the PAC and PA who were left homeless by the banning of their organisation in 1960 may have thought the BCM represented the institutional reincarnation of the PAC. Some of them took active participation in the BCM structures. The PAC being banned in South Africa, it was no wonder that a BCM structure called the Soweto Action Committee (SAC) organised and led the funeral of the founder of the PAC, Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, on 26 February 1978. The irony was that the BC organisations had just been banned on 19 October 1977, and their founding father, Steve Biko, murdered in police custody a month earlier on 12 September 1977. The SAC’s Chairperson, Ishmael Mkhabela, spoke remarkably prophetic words at Sobukwe’s funeral when he said “Sobukwe’s death could be a signal of a beginning of a chapter”. Barely two months after Sobukwe’s funeral, AZAPO was formed with the defiance that reflected the brutal oppression and ruthless exploitation of the time.

To buttress the point made above, a leader of the PAC shared his frustration in an interview with the International Viewpoint about how this ideological proximity may have cost the PAC:

''What I’m trying to explain is that the revival of the PAC’s activities, of pan-Africanism, was hindered first by the bannings and the punishments, and secondly by following BCM ideology, thinking that it was a PAC ideology'' (The Fall and Rise of the Pan Africanist Congress: IV No 165, 12 June 1989, p23).

From this interview it is not difficult to detect a tone of defence mechanism and shifting of responsibility for the known troubles of factional infighting that resulted in the PAC neglecting to pay attention to the establishment of grassroots structures inside the country. To claim that the PAC folded their arms in exile hoping that “BCM ideology was PAC ideology” is an absurdity that could not be attributed to the PAC without irreparably damaging its political stature. That notwithstanding, John Nyathi Pokela, with the help of Sabelo Pama, did wonders in transforming the PAC into a well organised machinery in no time since 1981. With regards to the PAC’s intra-organisational strife, Padraig O’malley (1991) has recorded the following:

''The most significant characteristic of the exiled PAC was the devastating conflict between the different factions within the movement. During the sixties and seventies most of the earlier leaders of the organisation were suspended because of their opposition to the dictatorial and enigmatic leadership of Leballo. In 1979 the latter was finally forced to resign, and a group which had broken away from the PAC launched a competitive organisation, the Azanian People's Revolutionary Party. Thereafter a triumvirate took over the leadership of the PAC. The organisation moved its headquarters from Maseru to Lusaka, and from there to Dar es Salaam. During fighting in Dar es Salaam, attacks were launched on the three leaders, after which, Vusumuzi Make took over the leadership. After Apla refused to execute the decisions of the executive committee, the entire military supreme command was suspended in 1979. This discord continued until John Pokela was appointed leader in 1981''.

Imraan Moosa takes the point and brings it closer to the two organisations in dealing with the evolution of the relationship between the two:

''I think the evolution has been somewhat disturbed by hegemony, by power struggles… But what we are talking about is the development of an ideology and the synthesis of Pan Africanism and black consciousness, and that was best symbolized in what literally became the event that resulted in the launch of AZAPO, which was Sobukwe's [March 1978] funeral, organized completely by the Soweto Action Committee… The PAC grouping in the country then, were completely within AZAPO... But there seem to come a stage in the last two years when it seems, because of external pressure, PAC had to make a difference with the black consciousness movement known, in order to show that it had its own independent organization in the country. Because AZAPO had refused to align itself with any particular organization... And the PAC was really not happy with that situation. But this also on the ground created a lot of problems, because when you are popularizing black consciousness and you are popularizing Pan Africanism, the lines are absolutely indistinguishable on the ground. In fact, a logical process of the synthesis of these ideologies has been disturbed completely'' (Moosa interviewed by Gail Gerhart in 1989 in Durban).

However, if in the beginning the BCM may have benefited through its ideological proximity to the PAC, this was later to prove to be a source of confusion to the public and AZAPO supporters with the organisational re-emergence of the PAC through structures like the Azanian National Youth Unity (AZANYU) formed in 1983, and the Pan Africanist Movement (PAM) in 1989. The BCM had a strongly youth texture and appeal. It would be careless to exclude the possibility that the PAC decided to configure its re-emergence through a youth organisational outfit that carried the word “Azanian” with a view to harvest from the confusion that would ensue in AZAPO ranks. At that stage AZAPO did not have a youth formation. It only had the Azanian Students Movement (AZASM) that was formed in 1983. As was to be expected, the formation of AZANYU stirred a lot of interest and admiration from the BCM cadres who associated anything with “Azanian” with AZAPO. Indeed, AZAPO had to do extra work informing and cautioning its members that AZANYU was not its formation. This external pressure aided AZAPO to expedite the formation of its youth wing in 1986 – the Azanian Youth Organisation (AZAYO). In the international front, the exiled Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA) had its own share of added responsibility to clear the air to the effect that AZAPO was its sister organisation as opposed to being the internal wing of the PAC as was widely assumed.

Though they were initially dismissive, the ANC continues to claim the June 16 uprising as its brainchild despite the historical fact that all available historical evidence has it that the uprising transpired under the overwhelming ideological influence of BC, the leadership direction and organisational instrumentation of the BCM. In his book The ANC Underground in South Africa, Raymond Suttner tries very hard to depict the ANC/BCM relationship as a parent/child one. ANC leaders like Joe Gqabi and Albertina Sisulu are credited as architects of the ‘BC absorption into the ANC’. Apparently, Gqabi’s superhuman powers position him to “influence some developments during the 1976 uprising”. Gqabi pulls a political stunt by manipulating one spineless Nat Serache to go and “present[ed] Gqabi’s arguments to his BC comrades as his own” in order to change a national position of the BCM. Gqabi’s ventriloquism induces the whole BCM to “accept[ed] that their position was counterproductive”. How absurd! The question is not to ask what this says about the leadership integrity of Steve Biko and his comrades, but what does it suggest about Suttner’s intellectual integrity.

Lybon Mabasa makes this observation:
''But I think everything should be based on the ANC statement on June 17, 1976. They called June 16 "a flash in the pan". And they could not have called June 16 a flash in the pan with full knowledge of the amount of underground work they have done. It really went on for two and a half years. And suddenly they realized that this had a much bigger basis'' (Mabasa interviewed by Gail Gerhart in New York City on 7 April 1991).

Probably jealous that its political rival claims the contribution of a Movement closer to it, the PAC has claimed the uprising as the result of its influence and direct planning. They desperately point to the 1978 Bethal Trial where Zephania Mothopeng was charged alongside BC cadres like the AZAPO late Political Commissar, Molatlhegi Tlhale. As was the norm those days, the white settler-colonial regime manufactured evidence to charge the accused of having fermented the June 16 Uprising. Those who know better will tell you that evidence is not proof; and nor is it truth necessarily. To be sure, a non-sectarian movement like the BCM did provide political home to some people that had affinity to the older sections of the liberation movement. Mabasa explains:

''Throughout the existence of the BPC, people understood that there were people who come from the ANC tradition, who understood that there were people who came from the PAC tradition. The black consciousness movement became the melting pot of activities and in the committee in which I served as convener for community development for BPC, there was one comrade who was serving also in that executive which was for the whole Reef, Vuyisile.

Amongst us we knew he came from the ANC camp; it really created no problems from us. If you remember earlier on, there was the TRYO trial, Transvaal Youth Organization. The number one accused in that trial was Joseph Molokeng. It was the trial where Jairus Kgokong refused to give evidence. The tilt of the case was toward the fact that people were associated with the ANC. We didn't fight about that; we treated it as one political movement. When Jairus refused to give evidence, he wasn't saying I'm doing it because some of them were doing ANC; it was comradely. They were part of us. There were never very serious conflicts in the direction of one belonging to one political organization or another. I think that's how things were going basically'' (Ibid).

Strini Moodley exposes the lingering attitude by the older sections of the liberation movement to either undermine or lay claim to the political fortunes of the BCM:

''In 1974, Fatima Meer was behind an endeavour to down-play the Black Consciousness Movement when she and a whole lot of ANC-supporting people called a Black renaissance conference in Pretoria, I think, in which they wanted the Black Consciousness Movement to redefine itself. And I think it is from that point on that you began to see that the ANC was not going to take kindly to the Black Consciousness Movement. So that by the time 1976 came – because up until then the ANC and the PAC only existed in name. They had nobody in their Umkhonto we Sizwe or APLA, or whatever it was. It is only after 1976, which had been organised by the Black Consciousness Movement, through the South African Students Movement, and when a large number of young people go into exile, that the ANC and the PAC suddenly become strong enough'' (Moodley interviewed by the University of Durban-Westville Documentation Centre for Oral History on 24 July 2002).

Moodley’s tone may sound harsh if taken out of context. It is in fact an illustration of the frustrations of the time. Moodley and his comrades had to wage a fierce war to assert their political purity and institutional independence.

Once it was accepted that Biko was the founding father of the BCM, the PAC activists found a way to link Biko to Sobukwe in a student-tutor relationship. The inference that Biko may have been Prof’s student is drawn from coincidental circumstances with regards to an incident recorded by Benjamin Pogrund (1991) and later by Xolela Mangcu (2012). Apparently, Biko had walked into a room where Sobukwe was also present. In appreciation, Biko is said to have remarked that “Tyhini, noThixo ulapha” (Phew, even God is here). Some people seem to have blown this understandable courteous outburst out of proportion to construct a God-worshipper relationship where the former created the latter. There is no doubt that Sobukwe was a great revolutionary and intellectual of the Azanian Liberation Struggle. It is not without reason that BJ Vorster specially introduced the General Law Amendment Bill to specifically deal with Sobukwe with the result that he was kept in solitary confinement and for a further 6 years on Robben Island. Because he was the first and last prisoner upon whom the Act was used, it came to be known as the “Sobukwe Clause”. But any attempt to suggest that Biko was spoonfed politics by Prof is to stretch the relationship to a breaking point. What could be accurate, though, is the point made by Snail Mgwebi (2008) that:

''…in the African context, the Black Consciousness Movement was given impetus by African nationalism and how that nationalism was later moulded and shaped by African thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s into Pan Africanism'' (The Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa: A Product of the Entire Black World).

Sobukwe was one among many such African thinkers.

The latest sophisticated and massively funded strategy is the attempted dislodging of Biko from AZAPO - the leading BC organisation that almost deified Biko’s revolutionary symbolism at a great cost to its members that lost property, life and limb in defence of Biko’s name. The ahistorical logic that Biko died in 1977 and AZAPO was formed in 1978 is used to state that Biko could not have been a member of AZAPO. Anyway, nobody has ever suggested Biko could have been an AZAPO member. These forces go further and charge that there is no relationship between “Biko’s BPC” and AZAPO. The historical fact is that BPC was banned in 1977, and the leaders and members of BPC moved swiftly to reconstitute the banned BPC into AZAPO. Strangely, the protagonists of separation and discontinuity demand to know where and when BPC met to reconstitute itself into AZAPO. It is apolitical, legalistic and preposterous to expect a banned organisation to legally meet and execute the transaction of reconstitution. When confusion reigns, it is better to listen to the primary sources. Mabasa is the person who chaired the meeting of the SAC – a BCM caretaker structure - after the 1977 banning of BC organisations. This meeting was convened on 23 October 1977 (only 4 days after the banning) at the Lutheran Centre in Chiawelo, Soweto, as a demonstration of the resilience and tenacity of the BCM as it defied the banning orders and recast itself in an ad hoc structure that would gather, reorganise and reconstitute the pieces into a political organisation called AZAPO on 28 April 1978. Mabasa informs us:

''That's the meeting where the Soweto Action Committee was formed and it was formed by people who came from BPC, people who came from SASO. …but all of us were agreeing that it's our problem, and at that point in time there was no question in terms of the correctness of the politics of black consciousness. There could have been questions as to how do we make ourselves effective, which is a healthy set up'' (Ibid).

The selfsame SAC, made up of BPC and SASO leaders, was the one that ultimately effected the political reconstitution of BPC into AZAPO on 28 April 1978. Mabasa takes us through the consultation process that led to the formation of AZAPO:

''We literally went throughout the whole country… We were consulting with people about whether they think it’s important to have another national structure coming up. And initially you meet two or three people, and you say "Okay comrades, look around. Sit with people, consult, give us a report." By the end of February '78, we had got feedback from each and every area that people think we should not allow what happened in 1960 to happen again. We should not allow a vacuum to develop. People feel that there should be a national organization started. We then went about consulting, seeing how to go about it, checking the leadership'' (Ibid).

The High and Low Tides
With that said, the point can now be made that the chicken and egg relationship between PA and BC is accentuated when you try and find out who were their leading thinkers. Some of the leading thinkers of BC would be WEB Du Bois, Carter G Woodson, Malcolm X, Kwame Toure, etc. But the very same intellectuals were also the leading thinkers of PA. Du Bois is also known as the father of Pan Africanism. Malcolm X was an unquestionable exponent of BC and Black Power, yet in 1964 he formed a Pan Africanist outfit called the Organisation for Afro-American Unity (OAAU) about a year before his assassination. In his writings and speeches, Toure mentions BC by name and implores us to internalise it. To further show that BC and PA are not mutually exclusive, in 1970 he joined and led Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). In 1971 he collected his essays into a book curiously titled Stokely Speaks: Black Power to Pan Africanism. Black is organically associated with BC in political discourse and praxis. It is an elusive task to resist the temptation to notice Toure’s sequence from BC to PA. His BC was so entrenched that he jettisoned the Black Panther that flirted with whites.

The post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) fallacy is not the easiest thing to avoid. Because the BCM was officially formed in 1968 while the PAC was formed in 1959, the erroneous assumption is that the PAC was responsible for the BCM. By the same token, the assumption is extended to suggest that PA is older and as such superior to BC. Once more, let me state that this is a futile inquiry that feeds into the counterproductive egos of the organisations espousing PA and BC. Even so, chickening out of the discourse would merely help to entrench false stereotypes and myths. The historical fact is that African people were shipped out of the continent as slaves to different world destinations. Once dispersed by the enslaving forces, what mattered most was survival in their immediate localities and circumstances – their existential conditions. It could not be Pan Africanism, but Black Consciousness that would be immediately relevant in the particularity of their circumstances. In fact, careful reading of history and literature may indicate that PA germinated much later as an attempt by BC-oriented activists in search of their kind in distant lands to cement ties of black solidarity. But even in the particularity (BC) of their existential conditions, the enduring chains of solidarity of the generality (PA) of their circumstances brought them together to plot their resistance and liberatory efforts. This is an instance of the contradictions embodied in the chicken and egg conundrum. Mgwebi tells us that:

''According to Padmore, the idea of Pan-Africanism first arose as a manifestation of fraternal solidarity amongst Africans and peoples of African descent. This great idea was originally conceived by a West-Indian barrister, Henry Sylvester Williams of Trinidad who practised at the English Bar at the end of the 19th century'' (Ibid).

Williams was instrumental in organising the first Pan-African conference in London in 1900 with the objective “to set up a forum of protest against colonialism”. If the Pan-African conference ultimately took place only in 1900, there were activists and scholars like Edward Wilmont Blyden who in the mid-19th century had already begun to conceptualise the Black Condition in search of the “African Personality”. An intellectual activist of that time, Du Bois (1903), writes:

''Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader, for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line'' (The Souls of Black Folk).

Du Bois then deals with the concept of consciousness (BC) of the Negro in “a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world”:

''The history of the American Negro is the history of his strife, -this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face'' (Ibid: p6).

It is not difficult to see why there was bad blood between Marcus Garvey and Du Bois. Mgwebi throws light on this divergence of opinion between the two:

''Unlike Garvey, Du Bois did not advocate the “Back to Africa” philosophy. He believed that the American Blacks have a right to remain in America which they helped develop. He did not share the ideas of Garvey on the question of “purity of African descent” (Ibid).

In fact, Du Bois dismisses Garvey’s “Back to Africa Movement” as a “grandiose and bombastic scheme, utterly impracticable as a whole”. Garvey’s extremism placed him at odds with other (Black Conscious) Pan Africanists. He was so obsessed with his “Back to Africa Movement” that he found himself in alliance with the Ku-Klux-Klan whose leaders like John Powel often addressed Garvey’s meetings. The Klan’s support for Garvey’s call was driven by racist hatred of blacks. And so to them the prospect of “cleansing” America of blackness was a plausible move. George Padmore (1956: 97) shares his jitteriness about Garvey and quoted him as having boasted that:

''We were the first Fascist. We had disciplined men, women and children in training for the liberation of Africa. These Black masses saw that in this extreme nationalism lay their hope and readily supported it. Mussolini copied fascism from me, but the Negro reactionary sabotaged it'' (Pan Africanism or Communism?)

Where there seems to be outright agreement between Padmore, Du Bois and Garvey, is their looking askance at communism. Unlike the two, Padmore had a brief contact with communism, and later disengaged from the Communist Party of the US and the Commintern after the latter’s “adaptation towards the British, French and the USA colonialist powers – a turn which Padmore regarded correctly as treacherous to Black interests everywhere” (P Trewhela; 1988, cited by Mgwebi).

These strong views against communism found reception in African Nationalism in South Africa. The radical Programme of Action and the general politics of the ANC Youth League laid more emphasis on race rather than on class. The protagonists of the Youth League were the likes of Anton Lembede, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Sobukwe. The magnetic influence of the likes of Blyden, Padmore and in particular Garvey was there for all to see. The ANC’s slogan “Mayibuye i-Africa”; the PAC’s “Izwelethu i-Africa”; are derivatives of Garvey’s “Africa for Africans”. The extreme application of Garveyism saw organisations like the PAC at first being ambivalent about the involvement of Indians and the so-called Coloured people in their organisation, while the ANC would accept them provided that leadership would have to be African. Even the acceptance of socialism had to be premised on the African experience – African Socialism.

While the PAC subscribed to African Socialism, the BCM had its own share of ambivalence towards the race/class discourse. In 1976 The BCM adopted the Mafikeng Manifesto that put forth its economic thrust as Black Communalism. It is during John Pokela’s leadership that the PAC shifted its emphasis towards Scientific Socialism, while the BCM did the same post-1977 during the era of AZAPO. The PAC believes in the concept of one human race, and has misgivings with the concept “black”. While AZAPO always accepted the concept of one human biological race, AZAPO insists that race does exist as a political construct that uses colour as its reference in the majority of cases. Overemphasis in the existence of one human race may run the risk of obfuscating the Race Question in political discourse. Black people are not responsible for the creation of the political race construct; and as such our political response thereto is sourced from our existential conditions. For that reason, the concept “black” remains critical in defining and advancing the struggle against white racism. The acrimony between the PAC and the BCM was characterised by moves at the 1988 NACTU conference to replace “Black” with “African”. An AZAPO leader Vanesco Mafora cautions against this negative relationship:

''To be sure, any attempt to render “Black” against “African” amounts to a distortion of pan-Africanism itself. Both in the BCM and the PAM there are elements who are actively attempting to sabotage the inexorable synthesis of the pan-Africanist and BC ideologies which is referred to in [AZAPO’s] Position Paper'' (Frank Talk, Vol 3: 1989/90).

In demonstrating the importance of the term “black” in bringing the National Question and National Self-Determination sharply into focus, Mafora invites Sobukwe or “God” himself to settle this matter:

''… In every struggle, whether national or class, the masses do not fight an abstraction. They do not hate oppression or capitalism. They concretise these and hate the oppressor, be he the Governor-General or a colonial power, the landlord or the factory-owner or, in South Africa, the white man. But they hate these groups because they associate them with their oppression! Remove the association and you remove the hatred… (I)t is plain dishonesty to say I hate the sjambok and not the one who wields it'' (Future of the Africanist Movement, The Africanist, January 1959).

Probably possessed by Biko’s mission to unite the Liberation Movement, The BCM has up until now shown predilection towards the unity of the Left Forces. As far back as in 1982 the BCMA initiated a meeting through the Gaborone office of the PAC to explore cooperation and unity with the PAC. There was agreement that the 5-a-side meeting would be attended by representatives at the same portfolio levels. Despite its relative financial dire straits associated with the status of being a radical political force, the BCMA demonstrated its commitment by flying its 5 delegates from Harare to the PAC’s Head Quarters in Dar es Salaam. Although the BCMA’s Chairperson (Mosibudi Mangena) and Secretary General (Mpotseng Kgokong) realised on their arrival that their counterparts (John Pokela and Joe Mkhwanazi) would not honour the meeting as agreed, they however attended the meeting anyway. There was agreement to forge unity and cooperation. It was further agreed that the decision would be ratified at the respective Central Committees of the two organisations. That was sadly the end of the matter. To contextualise this failed attempt, during the same period Pokela made overtures to Oliver Tambo and the ANC for unity. Tambo showed no enthusiasm to the move resulting in it being stillborn.

As has been alluded to above, AZAPO still managed to revisit the matter by developing position papers in 1989. In 1991 the BCM (AZAPO and BCMA) initiated a meeting with the PAC to once again explore unity and develop a common approach in dealing with the Harare Declaration that sought to arm-twist the Liberation Movement to conclude a Negotiated Settlement with the white minority regime of the Nationalist Party. The meeting sat on 9-10 August 1991 in Kadoma, Zimbabwe, and was consequently dubbed the Kadoma Consultation. The organisations took the principled position that “the only kind of negotiations [they would] be amenable to is to discuss the transfer of power from the minority to the majority through an elected Constituent Assembly”. Accordingly:

''The meeting rejected talks-about-talks as not being substantive. The Kadoma Consultation reiterated that the only mechanism that can genuinely democratise the system in our country is the Constituent Assembly elected on a one person, one vote basis with all Azanians over the age of 18 voting on a common voters roll in a unitary state'' (The Kadoma Consultation Document).

As a recognised party by the OAU, it was not easy for the PAC to ignore the OAU’s Harare Declaration that prescribed a negotiated settlement for the liberation movements. It looked like the PAC eventually cracked under this pressure and found itself in violation of its own principled positions and the Kadoma Consultation spirit by participating in talks-about-talks in preparation for the 20 December 1991 CODESA. The said talks-about-talks were not in a “neutral venue”; they were not chaired by a “neutral mediator”; nor was the CODESA about the “transfer of power from the minority to the majority”.

Having been left out of the Steering Committee that was tasked with organising and convening the Patriotic Front scheduled to sit on 26 October 1991, AZAPO fought its way into the Committee to be with the ANC and PAC. AZAPO did not agree with the invitation of organisations like the Democratic Party (DP) and Bantustan delegations to the Patriotic Front. Through its Secretary General Don Nkadimeng, AZAPO wrote to all those organisations advising them that they were not welcome to the Patriotic Front. The white liberal DP demanded AZAPO’s expulsion in return for its participation in the Patriotic Front. The ANC and the PAC obliged, leaving little room for alternative reasoning other than that they sought to appease the DP.

Not even that betrayal deterred AZAPO from still regarding the PAC as an important natural ally of the BCM. In recent times there have been several cooperation meetings some of which led to the BCM inviting the PAC to share a platform with it in hosting June 16 services in Regina Mundi. The PAC has returned the favour by inviting the BCM to share a platform with it to observe Heroes’ Day in Sharpeville.

The Synergies
Black Consciousness is essentially Pan Africanist, and Pan Africanism is essentially Black Conscious. BC’s Pan Africanist character is revealed by the fact that it is not confined in the US or South Africa. But it has spread to other countries where Black Africans suffer racism due to their skin colour. One example would be Brazil where the biggest Black Consciousness Movement is located today.

Both philosophies/ideologies have as their point of departure existential conditions of the landless oppressed and exploited masses. This positions them to be not just liberatory and socialist, but be filled with a combative energy that is anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist.

Below I select some clauses from the 1989 AZAPO Position Paper to demonstrate important areas of convergence between PA and BC:

• In 1960 and 1976 respectively the PAC and the BCM demonstrated their roots in the consciousness of the oppressed masses and showed decisively that they represent a single historical continuity.
• Both Pan Africanism and BC emphasise the National Question and the Land Question and delineate the repossession of occupied soil as a key component of their programmes.
• Both ideologies stand pointedly and vehemently opposed to the liberal and reformist position of the Kliptown [“Freedom”] Charter.
• It was the BCM which popularised in mass struggle the name “Azania” adopted by the PAC in exile.
• The concept of African Personality and the basis of the PAC’s Status Campaign outlined in 1959 reached their apogee in BC’s emphasis on psychological emancipation, Black Self Pride, Self Affirmation and Self Reliance in the 1970s and 1980s.
• The position of scientific socialism – currently shared by both ideologies – developed out of rather nebulous economic policies which were progressive in their time, place and context; viz African Socialism adopted by the PAC in 1959 and Black Communalism by the Black People’s Convention in 1975.
• Both BC and Pan Africanism share a policy on anti-collaboration with the oppressors and their political instruments and both ideologies reject white tutelage in the struggles of the oppressed.
• Black consists of two prongs, viz the reality of oppression and liberatory consciousness and hence encapsulates a political strategy which excludes all members of the ruling class and collaborators therewith. It captures two cardinal principles of BC, viz the unity of the oppressed and anti-collaboration.
• The word African reflects a sharp definition of the National Question which sees the indigenous African as the core of the Azanian nation, with the other Black groups being appendages to this core and forces a choice – either with the African majority or with the settler minority.
• Both ideologies emphasise the cultural dimensions of struggle and reject all value systems which seek to make the dispossessed foreigners in the land of their birth

The areas of political and ideological interface between BC and PA are self-evident. Trying to find areas of divergence between the ideologies is like trying to separate grains of sugar from those of salt. The differences in tactics and strategies adopted by organisations that subscribe to PA and BC are sometimes mistakenly interpreted as differences in philosophy and ideology.

The Road Ahead
Judging by the dictates of the revolution today, cooperation should not be restricted to joint-services, but to the forging of a fighting Black Power Front with the objective to wrestle for the reconquest of the land, total liberation and socialism. A project of this magnitude cannot be executed by cadres who see no further than their noses. Both the PAC and the BCM should be prepared to suffer short-term organisational setbacks that would in time put a spring in their step to reach unprecedented heights to long-term gains. The fighting Black Power Front should not be confused with the usual electoral pacts or tactical coalitions to win a few parliamentary seats. Such expedient coalitions spring to existence around elections and evaporate soon thereafter. A fighting Black Power Front should champion the struggles of the poor and the black working class that is left to its own devices in the platinum strike running to the fifth month at the time of writing. This Front should throw the struggles of the landless, black farmers and homeless into the melting pot of the revolution. The BCM translated the concept of liberated zones not so much in geographic terms as in food sovereignty and related self-development initiatives like health and housing. All these mass mobilisation efforts should help give leadership and direction to the rebellions of the fighting masses towards total liberation.

You should be surprised that I have not attached the fighting Black Power Front to either local or national government elections. Winning parliamentary seats should never be the main objective of a liberatory apparatus like this one. Once our organisations are associated with the everyday struggles of the poor in the communities and therefore outside parliament, such parliamentary seats will come like a swarm of bees to us. A Movement that fights for the reconquest of land and socialism cannot resign itself to winning a few parliamentary seats and full stop. Though it may start with a few seats, the objective should be to acquire state power. If that may include electoral victory, so be it. But our primary motive should be informed by the indomitable spirit to polarise contradictions with the ultimate objective of creating a Revolutionary Climate in our country. Parliamentary seats for their own sake – if not for the sake of their occupiers – would amount to a counter-revolution that would set the struggle back for 100 years.

Addressing a June 16 service in 2013 where AZAPO, SOPA and PAC shared a BCM-created platform, Don Mattera was overcome by emotions and urged the organisations to unite before he died. He added that he considered Black Consciousness to be the journey, and Pan Africanism the destination. That is the chicken and egg conundrum that makes the inquiry about which is older and superior between PA and BC an exercise in futility.

By Nelvis Qekema
President of Azanian Peoples Organisation (AZAPO)

The article was first wrongly credited to EDWARD MITOLE.