WORKING AGAINST THE GRAIN

The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania works against all odds, both internally, wherein a systematic program to sabotage the Party and extinguish the light of the African revolution from within is at play, and externally, working in a hostile environment dominated by the neoliberal forces to deny the voice of the collective PAC leadership fair access to the Azanian masses.

There is a running narrative of PAC leadership disputes at the Supreme Courts of Appeal, which belie the democratic processes of the branch delegates whose choice has been made in a transparent and fair manner at the Congress in Bloemfontein on 29 until 31 August 2019. The PAC will definitely overcome this hurdle.

This is because the PAC draws inspiration from its revolutionary founders and their vision for change and transformation in a settler-colony. We stand against an empire pushing for their selfish interests of accumulation of capital and wealth from the exploited multitudes who reside in the peripheries of a western-centred international finance. Our credo is an anti-imperialist Pan Africanism.

The PAC unequivocally says that, side by side with the African people, there’s a fight against our adversaries for transformation and change, and victory is certain.

In the ‘new’ South Africa, the PAC outlook is consonant with that of Mangaliso Sobukwe when he adviced that to achieve real national liberation and genuine democracy we need to look no further than the Act of Union of 1909, ‘that fossilized relic’ of settler-colonialism, and scrap it out completely.

The first constitution of 1909 was created out of greed and land robbery by the Boers and the English after their internecine war on African soil in 1899 up to 1902.  The resultant Vereeniging Treaty rendered the African people ‘pariahs in the land of their forefathers.’  It led to the establishment of the Native National Congress, as a united front against oppression and dispossession, whose struggle the PAC has consciously inherited.

The second constitution was a declaration of the South African republic by the racist National Party in 1961. The PAC correctly campaigned on the home front and in international platforms that this was a bogus republic for the benefit of a minority of white supremacists. The African people and the international community agreed wholeheartedly with us.

The third constitution in 1983 was apartheid-inspired reforms that sired the tri-cameral parliament. It made dummy institutions for so-called Coloureds and Indians in a racist pecking order where whites dominated at the apex of the pyramid. It recognised the bantustans as a buffer, if you like, at the bottom of the pile, and named this farce a constellation of states. The Azanian masses rose up against this charade.

The fourth constitution in the year 1993 was an interim constitution drafted at the multiparty negotiations forum, popularly known as the Convention for Democracy in South Africa (CODESA), where horse trading, smoke and mirrors, and compromises, primarily between the Nats and the Charterists, were agreed upon. It inserted the Property Clause that concentrated the land in the hands of a settler minority, at the expense of the dispossessed majority of African people. They pulled wool over the eyes of the people.

The fifth constitution in 1996 was heralded by international powerhouses as a miracle in the southern tip of Africa. It engenders human rights and universal principles of a liberal constitutional democracy. But for us in the PAC of Azania it is like a big bloated body on thin mosquito legs.

It is built on the foundations of settler-colonialism and it has inevitably left poverty and inequality intact. It completely ignores the territorial right of African people to their birthright; it ignores the right to self determination of the indigenous people, and it opposes the creation of One Azania – One Nation – One People, as the late PAC chairman Nyathi Pokela (1922 – 1985) taught us to imagine the collective future of us all.  We believe that vision should be the bedrock of a new democracy where white supremacy and its running dogs are completely crushed.

None of the compliant political parties in South Africa stand for revolutionary change. The demagogues seem to abide by the adage that as things change, they continue to stay the same. The PAC – a tried and tested liberation movement – is therefore working against the grain. We have no doubt, however, that we will ultimately win. Victory is certain.

In this manner, we welcome you all to the Official Website of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania. We look forward to an exchange of interesting views with you. We commit that we will sweep no dirt under the carpet. We serve, we suffer, we sacrifice.

Jaki Seroke
Secretary for Publicity and Information

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *