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The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) (later the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania), was a South African liberation movement, that is now a minor political party. It was founded in 1959 after a number of members broke away from the African National Congress (ANC) because they objected to the ANC's non-racial policies. Robert Sobukwe was elected as the first president, at the founding conference held in April 1959 in Johannesburg.
The ANC decided to launch a campaign against the pass laws to begin on March 31, 1960. The PAC decided to pre-empt the ANC by launching their own campaign ten days earlier, on March 21, 1960. Sobukwe urged people to leave their passes at home and to non-violently hand themselves over for arrest at the nearest police station. The protest erupted in tragedy when police opened fire on a group of protestors in Sharpeville, killing 68 people and injuring 186, many being shot from behind.
Shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre, the National Party government imposed a state of emergency, and banned both the PAC and ANC. Sobukwe was arrested and jailed, only to be released in 1969. Many members fled into exile, and when Sobukwe died in 1978, the PAC was left with a leadership vacuum which it never successfully filled. In 1968 PAC launched the Azanian People's Liberation Army as its armed wing.
It was unbanned in 1990, along with the ANC, but was plagued by infighting, and only gained a small percentage of votes in the 1994 election, which shrank even further in the 1999 election. In 2003, after yet another failed congress, one of the party's more prominent and popular members, Patricia de Lille left to form her own party, the Independent Democrats. This did not affect the PAC's continued poor performance in the 2004 election, though ID did better.
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