From its birth on 6th April 1959, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) became the pace setter in the politics of South Africa. In this role the PAC became also a reliable barometer and faithful defender of the true aspirations and interests of the indigenous African people of this country. There is nothing of national political significance that ever happened in South Africa without the PAC being in the lead and being the cause of it all.

For instance, when the Pan Africanist Congress adopted its ideology of Pan Africanism in 1959 and worked closely with giant Pan Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, C. L.R. James, W.E.B. Du Bois. Sekou Toure; many ANC leaders and the then white-led pseudo-Communist Party of South Africa denounced Pan Africanism as "racist" and "reactionary"

They were then very strong supporters of the now collapsed Soviet Union which was the leadership of pseudo-communism in the world. The African Union and the Pan African Parliament are the products of Pan Africanism to which the Pan Africanist Congress contributed immensely to their creation. PAC did this with their blood. That is why the imperialist forces targeted the PAC as "radicals", "militants" and "extremists".

But even the worst enemies of the Pan Africanist Congress recognized the PAC as the embodiment of Pan Africanism when Senator Fagan in the South African apartheid colonialist in parliament in 1963 said:

"The PAC is not a communist organisation….It is a product of the Pan Africanist idea. Pan Africanism cannot be killed with a blow. Neither by a series of blows. If we put all PAC leaders behind the bars, others will take their place. If we should rely on force, to fight Pan Africanism it will be a fight without end. We might win the first round, but there will be a second round. We might win the 10th round, but there will be an 11th round…."

Indeed, if genuine Pan Africanists get on the driving seat of the African Union and the Pan African Parliament; the Pan African currency, the Pan African Central Bank, the Pan African monetary zone and the Pan African Skills Bank will soon be on the way. Two giant Pan Africanists on the continent of Africa long stated very authoritatively the need for the African Union. It was at the time when those who are now to host the Pan African Parliament shunned the Pan African views of these giants like a terrible disease.

In 1959, the first President of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania said rather prophetically, "Nobody disputes our contention Africa will be free from foreign rule….But the question is: after freedom then what? The ready answer of white ruling minorities is chaos and a reversion to barbarism and savagery. The ready answer of Pan Africanists is…the creation of a United States of Africa and the advent of a new era of freedom, creative production and abundance…." This was in accord with the 1959 PAC Manifesto which among other things defined the historic task of the Pan Africanist Congress as being: "To forge, forster and consolidate the bonds of African nationhood on a continental basis…To work for the creation of a continental Union of African States as a concrete institutional form of the African nation." This Union was intended "to as an effective bulwark against the forces of imperialism."

On 24th May 1963 at the height of POQO activities in South Africa; in fact shortly, after Sobukwe was imprisoned on Robben Island without trial, under a special law made to crush the Pan Africanist Congress; Kwame Nkrumah that shining star of Pan Africanism said: The resources (of Africa) are there. It is for us to marshal them in the active service of our people. Unless we establish the African Union now, we who are sitting here today shall tomorrow be the victims and martyrs of neo-colonialism."

For purposes of true history, it is important to remind that the terminology "United States of Africa" and "Africa Union" were used by Pan Africanists long before the Organisation of African Unity was formed. Those Eurocentric journalists and writers who today claim that African Union comes from "European Union" are ignorant. The Europeans named their organisation long after Pan Africanists talked of the "African Union" and "United States of Africa." . Those who once vilified the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and its ideology of Pan Africanism find themselves dragged into the African Union and the Pan African Parliament kicking and screaming.

Of course, Pan Africanists who are now kept out of these bodies with the assistance of neo-colonial forces wonder whether non-Pan Africanists ideologically, can realize the Pan African vision of the Sobukwes, the Nkrumahs, the Mothopengs, Sekou Toures, George Padmores, Azikiwes etc.

The PAC Champions The Land Question In South Africa

The PAC has insisted that there can be no genuine liberation without equitable redistribution of land in South Africa. They who control the land control the economy. The PAC has always held that the eradication of poverty, combating squatter camps and match box size "houses", provision of employment and other essential services leaves the African people of this country with no choice other than that of putting the land question on top of the political agenda of South Africa. That is why the Pan Africanist Congress, despite insults directed at it, has boldly called for the amendment of the constitution of South Africa to allow the land-robbed people of this country to claim their land before 2Oth June 1913.

Land was robbed from the African people long before the Native Land Act 1913. Indeed, as the Secretary of the South African Native Congress, Solomon Plaatje wrote: " Awakening on Friday morning June 2O 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land if his birth."

The PAC has also pointed out that the Restitution of Land Rights Act is illogical and unjust. It limited land claims to 31st December 1998. Those who missed this date are forever deprived of land stolen from them through colonialism. Africans in this country fought for over 300 years to regain the land of their ancestors.

Don’t Sell Our Land To Foreigners

The PAC has always advocated that the first law in the South African Parliament should have been to prohibit the sale of land to foreigners. Today foreigners are buying land sold to them by other foreigners who acquired it colonially, however indirect. The Pan Africanist Congress was the first political organisation in South Africa to propose that foreigners who want to invest in our country must be given leases of 99 years, instead of being sold land as their permanent property. The PAC has declared that it does not make sense to sell land to foreigners when Africans are landless millions are homeless and unemployed. Land is the source of decent homes and employment."

The Pan Africanist Congress has warned that as long as "our land which is the source of our mineral wealth, agricultural products, pastoral farming and fishing is sold to foreigners before it is even equitably are distributed, the indigenous majority of this nation can forget about the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment. There is nothing wrong with this PAC position. Russia did not sell its land to foreigners until 2002. Britain sold its land to foreigners for the first time in 1870.

PAC The Only Party Speaking On Apartheid Debt And Reparations

The Pan African Congress is the only political party in South Africa that has raised the illegality of the payment of the apartheid debt. This debt is odious in international law. It was incurred for the genocide of the African people. It is serviced at over R50 billion. It hinders development. The PAC is the only political organisation in South Africa which has raised the issue of reparations for the victims of apartheid.

The PAC has rejected the view of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that there are only 22,000 victims of apartheid in this country and that their compensation is R30,000 each. This is about five thousand American dollars or a little over two thousand British pounds. The argues that All Africans – millions of them are victims of the crime of apartheid. They are entitled to reparations.

PAC Demands Free Education And Unemployment Allowance

The PAC has advocated free education for those who cannot afford it. In parliament a PAC member of parliament responding to President Mbeki’s state of the nation said, "Our children must receive free education tailored to the needs of our country’s development to construct our country technologically to heights where we shall have technological capacity to process our raw materials here at home and export them as finished products and enrich ourselves."

In its 2004 Election Manifesto the PAC called for an unemployment allowance of five hundred Rand per month per person. It pointed out that the privatisation of strategic state assets to which it is opposed has contributed to massive unemployment in the country. Meanwhile even the so-called Communist Party of South Africa and some leaders of COSATU have campaigned for the party which is pushing the privatization programme of capitalists while they misleadingly claim to be serving the interests of the workers. Privatisation is nothing else, but the colonization of Africa’s economy. In South Africa 98% of the wealth of the country is controlled by non-Africans.

Release All Former Freedom Fighters From South African Prisons

The Pan Africanist Congress is the only political party in South African that has campaigned for the release of former freedom fighters such as members of the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army, Mkhonto Wesizwe and others. These forces fought against apartheid. The United Nations through the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid declared apartheid a crime against humanity. It was therefore, illegal and unjust wrong to parade the freedom fighters and apartheid criminals before the TRC, and punish by imprisonment many former freedom fighters against the crime of apartheid.

History Is A Tool For Mental Decolonisation

Despite the crucial national issues which the Pan Africanist Congress is raising and championing in South Africa and Pan Africa; some political nincompoomps claim that "the PAC is stuck in the past."

To the PAC and mentally decolonised African people and progressive forces; this is not surprising. These political imbeciles are quite satisfied with the situation where the African people have a national flag, a national anthem and a parliament, but control nothing economically. They live in poverty. Their country’s wealth is devoured by foreigners. We have to study yesterday in order to create today. The PAC study of yesterday is that all is still not well for the African people who were the subject of liberation in South Africa. The objectives of the liberation struggle have taken a back seat. Africans are getting poorer. Few are receiving education. Their hospitals and clinics are in shambles.

Rural areas and African townships continue to be cesspools of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment. In the townships Africans continue to live in filthy squatter camps not suitable for human habitation as well as in crowded match box size "houses". The life expectancy of the African people is shortest and their child mortality highest. The ruling party is also gambling with the lives of the people when it comes to the treatment of the devastating disease of HIV/AIDS.

Land evictions of Africans are daily, just like under the apartheid colonial regime. In July 2004, hardly three months after the general elections; there were running battles between the citizens and the police shooting just as in the olden days.

Repetitions of "Bredell" occur with monotonous regularity while while a minority of whites own 8O% of the total land surface of the country including the mines. Sheriffs seize the properties of the helpless poor with impunity. The former oppressor and their Black captured elite are getting richer and richer.

To make a people assume that oppression is their natural lot, oppressors often remove them from the respectable commentary of their history and make them dependent on the history of their oppressors. That is why political nincompoomps want the matchless liberation credentials of the Pan Africanist Congress destroyed so that the African people can keep the memory of their colonial history; or that of the falsified history of the liberation struggle in South Africa, displayed in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg; and, therefore, continue to manipulate the masses and economically oppress them and dispossess them perpetually of their land.

History is a tool for mental liberation and decolonisation of the mind. It must never be forgotten that the cruelest thing colonialism did to the colonised Africans was on the mind. Africans were taught by their colonisers that they were an "inferior race." The colonial history was used to destroy the memory of what the Africans were, before their unfortunate contact with the European slave traders and colonialists. Consequently, even many African "leaders" in South Africa suffer a pathological colonial mentality. They mimic Europe. They love the history of colonialism more than that of Africa and of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.

Let’s get it right once and for all. History is a clock which intelligent people use to determine their political and cultural time of the day. The role of history is to tell a people what they have been and where they have been. What they are and where they are. The most important role that history plays is telling a people where they still must go and what they still must be.

The PAC will never accept the situation where people have a national flag, a national anthem and a parliament but control nothing economically. The Pan Africanist Congress shall not neglect the past and the present in order to create a future in which Africans are not dominated and their wealth is not devoured by foreigners in their presence.

The stubborn fact of the matter is that the Pan Africanist Congress is the pace setter in the politics of South Africa which serve the interests of the African people. The PAC is indeed, a reliable barometer and a faithful defender of the fundamental interests of continually dispossessed African people of this country. Africans will create a world of their own and power which protects their own interests; only when they appreciate that life is past, present and future. Nothing of national political significance has ever happened in South Africa for the African people without the Pan Africanist Congress. Nothing shall happen in South Africa without the PAC and its policies which flow from its ideology of Pan Africanism.