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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The socio-economic and political roots and consequences of Pan African Congress (PAC) militancy |
Author: | Lipede, A.A. |
Year: | 1994 |
Periodical: | Journal of Eastern African Research and Development (ISSN 0251-0405) |
Volume: | 24 |
Pages: | 139-162 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Southern Africa |
Subjects: | national liberation movements Pan Africanist Congress politics Pan African Congress history political science |
Abstract: | The militancy of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) has a long tradition. The author examines the socioeconomic and political roots of PAC militancy and locates them in their historical context, arguing that the ethos of the movement had its origin in the 1930s and early 1940s in the effects of the extremely harsh economic conditions created by the Great Depression on South Africa's African majority. The ensuing intensification of the conflict between black and white led to increased nonviolent protest by Africans which was met by State violence and extreme forms of repression. In return, Africans, particularly sections of the ANC (the Africanists), adumbrated new militant forms of passive resistance, which were adopted by the ANC Annual Conference of 1949. This, and the intense Boer nationalism of the post-1948 period, exacerbated a growing tendency within the ANC and spurred the militancy and obduracy of the Africanists who later left the ANC to establish the PAC in 1959. The consequence of this radicalism was the evolution of a movement which was the first to embark on premeditated attacks on enemy targets, apartheid-created institutions and collaborators. The movement has remained firmly committed to the armed struggle and has become increasingly marginalized from the mainstream of political processes in the South Africa of the 1990s. Notes, ref., sum. |