DID YOU KNOW
A medical practitioner based in Atteridgeville, Dr Peter Tsele, contested the position of founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress and resoundingly lost to the academic and editor of ‘The Africanist’ political journal, Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe.
Dr Tsele had been a founder member of the Congress Youth League in 1945 and was admired as an Africanist to the core. He openly condemned the Charterists at the Orlando conference of November 1958, along with the likes of Peter Raboroko, Zephania Mothopeng, Peter Molotsi and others.
After losing the elections at the Convention of the Africanists in April 1959, Dr Tsele broke away from the PAC and formed the Pan African Freedom Movement. Unfortunately he was fatally involved in a car accident in August 1959.
Firebrand, Josiah Madzunya did not contest the position of PAC leadership even though the media touted him as a possible president of the newly formed organization.
It however turned out in the end that Mangaliso Sobukwe would become a charismatic leader, not only of the PAC, but of the African people as a whole.