On 16 January 1994, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) President, Clarence Mlami Makwetu, announced the PAC’s suspension of its armed struggle, thus opening the way for participation in elections by its members.
Making the announcement, Makwetu maintained that the PAC leadership took full responsibility for the decision by the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) guerillas to target white civilians in the early 1990s, since targets were chosen by local APLA commanders without consultation with the organisation’s leaders in Dar-es-Salaam. The announcement by Makwetu therefore marked the cessation of armed hostilities between the liberation movement and the apartheid government.
The PAC was formed on 5 and 6 April 1959 by a group of disgruntled African National Congress (ANC) members in Orlando, Soweto. The breakaway group was led by members of the so-called Africanist movement, as it objected to the ANC’s Freedom Charter assertion that “the land belongs to all who live in it both white and black” and also rejected a multi-racialist worldview, instead advocating a South Africa based on African nationalism. They insisted that the historic mission of the PAC of The People of Azania was the complete freedom, liberation and independence of Afrika, which entailed political, social, economic and military independence.
With the ANC and the PAC banned and African political activity officially limited to government-appointed bodies in the homelands, people sought
