PAC Deputy-President Lunga Mantashe pays tribute to the late PAC stalwart and chairman John Nyati Pokela, who passed in 1985.
“Ntate Pokela, whom we recall today, has left us with a simple, revolutionary message on questions of “contradictions” between class and national struggle. Class and national are two sides of the same coin.
He, Pokela, was following the 1959 Manifesto, according to which our significant problems began with the rise and expansion of European commercial markets, leading to colonialism. Thus our land was dispossessed, our labor exploited, our humanity degraded at once.
If the we must remember Polela well, we must unite on the view, that national and class struggle are two sides of the same coin: I.e., we cannot seek liberation unless it is both national and class in nature.
Long live Pokela, Long live!”
JOHN NYATI POKELA
John Nyati Pokela was born on 21 September 1921 in Herschel, near the border of Lesotho. He attended Healdtown High School and graduated at Fort Hare University College in 1949. He obtained his Higher Education Diploma in 1950. After working as a teacher for a number of years he was expelled from teaching because of his political activities in 1961.
He went into exile in Lesotho, where he became a member of the Presidential Council of the Pan Africanist Congress. He was kidnapped from Lesotho by the South African Security forces and later sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. On his release he went into exile once more.
He became chairman of the PAC in 1982. He passed away in exile and was buried in Harare, Zimbabwe, on 13 July 1985.
There’s one thing that I’ve learned from the chairman’s statements that PAC is people and the people are PAC that principle it keeps me believe in political roots of his leadership abd strength of african teaches. Izwe lethu