What does PAC stand for?

How well I remember the mixture of delight and shock it had been for my good friend Mazisi Kunene, Zulu poet and for many years the ANC's chief representative in Europe: delight, because after 38 years in exile he'd come back, almost 70 years old, to take part in the democratic process to which he'd devoted most of his life ; shock, because in his trembling eagerness to make his mark between the photo of Nelson Mandela and the green, black and yellow flag of his party, he had drawn his cross in the blank square allotted to the Pan-Africanist Congress which headed the ballot paper.

It will be the first time in the history of South Africa that the rest of Africa will be joining them to commemorate Sharpeville Day, in a manner that the founding fathers of the Pan-Africanist Congress (which organised that 1960 march against the pass law), and the ruling African National Congress (ANC), now headed by Jacob Zuma, had never anticipated when they instituted 21 March as "Human Rights Day" and a major public holiday in South Africa.

Significantly, the Fifth Pan-Africanist Congress already signalled, albeit in an embryonic form, the idea of African Unity in the following words: ".

As it is on record, the historical significance of the Lisbon Congress, following the first Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) held in Paris in 1919 and the second held in London in 1921, where attendance was made up of African-Americans and leading Africans living in Europe, was the inclusion and participation of the Portuguese-speaking Liga Africana delegates.

It was in 1900 that Sylvester Williams of Trinidad, a lawyer living in England, organised the very first Pan-Africanist Congress in London.