PAC in turmoil

By Norm Dixon The Pan Africanist Congress has been thrown into turmoil by the resignation of general secretary Maxwell Nemadzivhanani. The PAC, long considered South Africa's second most significant liberation movement after the African National Congress, has failed to make any headway in gaining support since the ANC's election victory in April 1994. Nemadzivhanani, a former PAC representative to Australia, said he made his decision after being criticised heavily by PAC members. He felt he should hand over to other "capable" people. He said he would look for work in the government. Since its disastrous performance in both the 1994 national elections and last year's local government elections, the PAC has been split by charges of ineptitude directed at its president, Clarence Makwetu. Nemadzivhanani is considered part of Makwetu's coterie. Makwetu managed to hold the organisation's most senior position by only eight votes, against a last-minute challenge from Motsoko Pheko, who had arrived from overseas on the second-last day of the PAC's four-day 1994 congress. Pheko is now deputy president and is expected to be elected president at the organisation's next congress. In December, the PAC's student wing, the Pan Africanist Students Organisation (PASO), declared the PAC to be in an "anarchical state of affairs" and experiencing a "leadership crisis". PASO called for the removal of Makwetu and Nemadzivhanani. The PAC National Executive Committee has decided to change the status of the PAC's annual conference, scheduled for Easter, to a congress, at which a new leadership can be elected. While the PAC's crisis derives from its inability to take advantage of the ANC-led government's rightward drift by taking a firm left-wing position (a proposal by Nemadzivhanani that the PAC transform itself into a socialist party failed at its 1994 congress), the likely new leadership has not signalled an intention to move the PAC to the left. There are moves to draft PAC deputy president Dikgang Moseneke into the general secretary's position. Moseneke is chairperson of the soon to be privatised Telkom, South Africa's telecommunications corporation.