Ex-PAC leader Makwetu 'died a bitter man'

Anti-apartheid activist and former Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) president Clarence Makwetu died a bitter old man as he believed the ANC had sold out on the land question.

ANTI-apartheid activist and former Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) president Clarence Makwetu died a bitter old man as he believed the ANC had sold out on the land question.

The 88-year-old leader died in Queenstown last week after a long illness. Makwetu, a staunch Pan-Africanist, believed that the return of the land to the black majority would be the only measure of having gained freedom.

He spent many years in apartheid prisons and eight of those were with former SA president Nelson Mandela on Robben Island.

Makwetu led the PAC into the Codesa (Convention for a Democratic SA) negotiations and the first democratic elections.

Makwetu, however, remained bitter as he did not see the ruling party to be steering the country towards Pan-African socialism where the black majority would be pulled out of squalor through access to land.

University of Cape Town's Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza, who edited the manuscript of Makwetu's autobiography, said the snail's pace of SA's land reform kept Makwetu in perpetual bitterness.

"He thought that the ANC had failed the people and this pained him.

"This is the view that is shared by many people, including myself, because the government has failed to give the land back to the people.

"It's not only about getting the land but about being able to utilise it for agricultural and other purposes," Ntsebeza said.

Ntsebeza, the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies, has conducted extensive research on the land question in South Africa and the Southern African Development Community, especially in Zimbabwe.

He said he did not ask Makwetu some difficult questions before he died.

"Interviewing is like interrogation sometimes and I did not really ask him some tough questions.

"I felt that it would be torture on his part if I continued because he was old and was also suffering from a stroke and loss of memory," Ntsebeza said.

Following his expulsion from the PAC in 1997, Makwetu went on to form and lead the Pan Africanist Movement (PAM).

Makwetu's son, Mazwi, said his father resorted to land activism in his home town of Cofimvaba in the former Transkei where he had a farm, livestock and several fields.

"He was helping people on how to utilise the land. Although he was no longer active in politics, he provided counsel to both the PAC and PAM and urged them to unite," Mazwi said. The two parties held a meeting with Makwetu's family in Cofimvaba yesterday and said they were planning to ask the government to give him a state funeral.

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Ex-PAC leader Makwetu 'died a bitter man'
http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/04/04/ex-pac-leader-makwetu-died-a-bitter-man
By Siviwe Feketha | Apr 04, 2016