From 1 seat to 'no less than 50' - PAC sets an ambitious target

19 March 2019 - 06:31 By Andisiwe Makinana
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A PAC supporter flies the party's flag. File picture.
A PAC supporter flies the party's flag. File picture.
Image: Moeletsi Mabe

Election season generally breeds optimism, but even pastor Alph Lukau would admit that it’s a bit of a stretch to expect the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) to achieve its ambitious target of at least 50 seats in the National Assembly after the May 8 general elections.

Barely two weeks ago there were serious questions over whether PAC would even participate in the elections, as party leaders fought over its presidency.

“The PAC doesn't expect less than 50 seats,” said Narius Moloto on Monday, just 10 days after he and his colleagues were forced by the high court in Pretoria to put aside differences and find - even if temporary - a solution on who will lead them going to the elections.

He is the party’s interim president and will be its face going to the elections.

His faction has been at loggerheads with Luthando Mbinda, the PAC’s sole MP. Mbinda is one of the four men who has been claiming to be the party’s president.

Moloto's faction has tried for almost two years without luck to remove Mbinda from the parliamentary seat.

But on Monday, he said he believed the party would jump from one seat to “not less than 50” when the new Parliament is convened in about two months' time.

He made the comment in response to a question from a journalist at the Cape Town Press Club, where he had spoken about the party’s unity and its relevance, especially now that the leadership tussle has been “resolved”.

He was asked to realistically predict the PAC’s chances at the polls.

Moloto claimed that in terms of the PAC’s constitution, the minimum required membership in the provinces is 100,000.

“When you take this and combine it nationally, it should give us well over 1m [votes],” he explained.

“Then there are families of members,” he continued. “We believe that with the efforts of the members of the party and their relatives, we should be able to get there,” said Moloto without blinking.

The highest amount of seats the PAC has ever occupied is five, after the April 1994 elections. The number went down to three in 1999 and 2004. The party won a solitary seat in 2009 and again in 2014.


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