The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), long considered South Africa's most important liberation movement after the African National Congress (ANC), surprised many with its massive electoral failure in the April elections. The PAC won 1.3% of the national vote compared to the ANC's 62.7% despite confident predictions of outright victory by some PAC leaders. Just five PAC members were elected to the National Assembly. Green Left Weekly's Johannesburg correspondent NORM DIXON asked the PAC's national organiser, and former chief representative in Australia, MAXWELL NEMADZIVHANANI for some frank answers about his organisation's electoral setback.
"The reasons are many", Nemadzivhanani began."We had very limited practical and financial resources, partly because we were not able to convince the international community about our seriousness in taking part in the election campaign, and maybe our policies did not attract the interest of big business."
But the main reason for the PAC's overwhelming defeat was the political failings of the PAC itself. "Our assessment is that our members were not psychologically prepared to shift away from liberation politics to campaign-orientated politics. This created the lingering doubt in the minds of the ordinary people about our commitment to those elections and to whether they should give us the votes or not."
These doubts stemmed from "indiscipline within the structures of the PAC and leadership bodies". Despite a unanimous decision by the PAC national congress in December to participate in the elections, a decision binding on all PAC structures, "certain leaders and structures publicly expressed opposition. It created the impression in the minds of ordinary voters that these people are divided, so why should they vote for a party that is divided."
Had the PAC been united and disciplined, Nemadzivhanani insisted, "and given the correctness of our policies, the masses would have voted for us in large numbers. Ultimately, when you look at the total loss, we feel that certain incidents carried out by PAC members gave wrong signals to the be people."
Nemadzivhanani pointed to the murder of Amy Biehl, a US student working in the townships in Cape Town. While denying that the PAC or its student group PASO, the Pan Africanist Students Organisation, were responsible for the murder, PASO members were "seen around the body of Amy Biehl and, later, outside the courts wearing T-shirts with the slogan 'One settler, one bullet' despite the fact that before we entered elections we banned that slogan". The PAC was "tainted with racism" as a result.
Continued random, and seemingly racially motivated, armed attacks by the PAC's armed wing, the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army (APLA), further eroded support, Nemadzivhanani agreed. This was compounded by the PAC leadership's apparent lack of control over APLA. "Towards the end of last year, we formally decided to suspend the armed struggle because you cannot wage armed struggle and fight elections." Sections of the PAC ignored the decision and launched bloody attacks on civilians.
"Those military actions created a problem. We dissociated ourselves from them, but certain elements [within APLA] claimed responsibility for them and at the end of it all the South African people were not sure whether the PAC had abandoned armed struggle. The suspicion and confusion created became a setback at the ballot."
Nemadzivhanani is convinced that those within the PAC and APLA "bent on carrying out a leftist extremist position" fell prey "to agents of the regime using some of our cadres without the knowledge of the APLA command structure" to launch "Third Force"-inspired operations.
Nemadzivhanani conceded that the confusion and opposition to the PAC's decision to join the elections and suspend the armed struggle were due to the PAC's own failure to educate its members ideologically and politically, especially its youth.
"I would argue that not enough ground work was done to shift our youth. They still believed that the only way to resolve the issue was with the gun, regardless of the environment around them. There was an absence of flexibility and clear understanding that given a particular environment certain programs are not feasible. I admit that youth in PASO campaigned against elections in some regions.
"We are now in a process of reorientating our youth to understand that it is not enough to shout slogans and to believe in your own illusions. The struggle ultimately is to fight against capitalist exploitation, colonialism, oppression, and social degradation, but it is fought within a particular environment. So certain forms of struggle at a particular point in time can be acceptable and feasible and at another time they may not. To teach our people ideologically is a very important task now because we feel they lack a proper ideological understanding of what has to be done at this particular time."
In another surprising admission, Nemadzivhanani agreed that the PAC had made a mistake in refusing to participate in the negotiations process that led to the April 27 election, and this in part sidelined the organisation.
"If there is a negotiation process, and the PAC claims to be a vanguard organisation of the masses, it must be involved in those negotiations. Who is to lead if the vanguard party is not there? This issue was resolved a long time ago by Lenin, who urged the workers to participate even in reactionary institutions. They must be in all those areas where the workers are so as to provide a vanguard leadership. You cannot lead from a distance."
Failure to participate in talks and the PAC's belated entry into the Transitional Executive Council just before the elections meant "many deals that hampered our active involvement were already in place". The integration of APLA fighters into the new South African National Defence Force has been "drastically affected" by not having participated in the TEC subcommittee on defence.
Similarly, while there was "an element of rigging" in the election that reduced the PAC's total, "still we are to be blamed because we did not participate in the structures controlling the elections such as the Independent Electoral Commission. You cannot stop rigging if you are not involved in those structures in the first place."
Nemadzivhanani explained that the PAC went into the elections with weak leadership structures. "The PAC was banned when it was very young; it was 11 months old in 1960. It was underground ever since. After the unbanning in 1990, PAC members came back very late. It is really towards mid-1992 that PAC members decided to come back to assist in rebuilding the structures.
"It was towards the end of last year and early this year that members of APLA decided to come back and assist us in the process to mobilise. So we did not utilise the APLA factor like the ANC used Umkhonto we Sizwe leaders like Chris Hani and Tokyo Sexwale to rebuild the structure of the ANC."
"We are looking at our weaknesses with a view to correct them", Nemadzivhanani promised. "We are now preparing for the local government elections due late this year and to rebuild our structures with a view to fight effectively national elections in 1999."
[Next week Maxwell Nemadzivhanani explains the PAC's attitude to the ANC-led government, the Reconstruction and Development Program and debates within the PAC about its future political development.]