M'Afrika Sibeko, thanks for sharing Bennie Bunsee writing on M'Afrika Ace
Mgxashe
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Mduduzi Sibeko
Sent: 26 July 2013 03:04 PM
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Subject: [PAYCO]
Ace Mgxashe leaves behind a broken PAC
July 24 2013 at 04:13pm
Description: 371104
Ex-QDMS
Ace Mgxashe
Bennie Bunsee
When Ace Mgxashe passed away on Sunday at his home in Table View, he joined
the list of senior PAC (Pan Africanist Congress of Azania) members and
leaders who laid the foundations of the organisation in the 1960s and who
are now dead.
He follows in the wake of Joe Mkwanazi, Keke Hamilton, Mfanesekhaya Gqobose,
Glen Mpukane, Zebulon Mokoena, Barney Desai, Vijay Megan, Imam Haroun,
Cardiff Marney, Kenny Jordaan and George Peake - the last six being
non-Africans from Cape Town of sterling political character.
Ace's death has stripped the PAC of the very last of its outstanding
members, a void now filled by immature elements with little experience of
the organisation, its history, its historical aspirations, its struggles,
its achievements and its follies.
Ace died in the manner which befitted him as a writer, author and
journalist: at his computer from a sudden cardiac arrest. He was 69, a
diabetic with high blood pressure. When he returned from exile in Dar es
Salaam, he worked for the Cape Argus and from there had a stint with the
Desmond Tutu Foundation.
Brought up to believe in the resurrection of the African people and nation
in the country, he found the repression of Africanist aspirations in the
country frustrating, as it was for the likes of Dikgang Moseneke, Joe
Thloeloe, Thami Mazwai, Christine Qunta, journalist Matthew Nkoana of Drum
fame, and Pitika Ntuli. But the anti-Africanist combination of the colonial
regime and the ANC under Mandela was too powerful to break.
He tried to revive the PAC and called a conference in Cape Town. But the
internal squabbles frustrated its development.
It is where the PAC finds itself today.
In exile, Ace was a regular contributor to the PAC journal Azania News and
its military newsletter Azania Combat. Ace was among the first members of
the PAC who carried forward the African nationalist themes of Anton Lembede
and Ashby Peter Mda, and before them of Sol Plaatje. This happened after the
formation of the white Union of South Africa and the passing of the Land Act
of 1913.
The SA Native Congress - as the ANC was then known was - formed as the
nationalist aspirations of the African people came together. It was this
tradition that Ace pursued up to the time he died, and which he tried to
revive. He recorded his experiences and views in the first volume of his
book called Are You With Us which was launched at Exclusive Books at the
Waterfront (and which incidentally never got a review, as he told me, in any
of our media).
I recall the glee with which he completed the first chapter of his second
volume. Perhaps when he died at his computer, he was working on that book.
He consulted me then for documents and advice. It was to be his final
contribution to the PAC cause, and also a record of the history of the PAC
up to the present.
The PAC was banned a few years after it was formed and much of its history
took place in exile. And it was in exile that a large part of Ace's
political life was formed and developed, a truncation between home and away
that has had a debilitating effect on our liberation movements.
In exile, Ace and the PAC were influenced by the likes of Walter Rodney,
Mahmood Mamdani, Dan Nabudere, Yash Tandon, Milton Obote, Yoweri Museveni,
the senior Joseph Kabila, Eduardo Mondlane and Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, and
Zanu leaders under the benign patronage of Julius Nyerere.
Dar es Salaam buzzed with revolutionary discussions and activities. It was
also at the height of Maoism worldwide and the PAC was not exempt from that
influence.
Ace and his comrades - led by TM Ntantlala, who was related to the
illustrious Jordan family - tried to steer the PAC towards the formation of
a Marxist-Leninist party. This led to the greatest crisis in Ace's life and
of the 100 or so comrades in the group to which he belonged.
Their move was opposed by Potlako Leballo, who was supported by the youth
that flooded into Dar es Salaam.
The leadership were defeated at a conference in Morogoro and expelled from
the PAC. It was the greatest crisis in the history of the PAC. It never
recovered.
Undefeated, Ace and his group immediately formed the APRP (Azanian Peoples
Revolutionary Party). They published the best political programme to come
out of the country's history, a mature mixture of Marxism and Africanism.
But it was too late. Ace and many like him ended their political lives in
limbo.
Africanism and
