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Poqo (Armed wing of the PAC)

Poqo was formed as an armed wing to the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) during the 1960's and was known for its aggressively violent sabotage campaign. Unlike other resistance organisations of the time, such as uMkhonto we Sizwe, Poqo made no effort to avoid loss of life and was the most anti-White underground movement of its time. Its aim was to overthrow the South African government in order to replace it with a socialist African state. The word “poqo” means “pure” or “alone” in Xhosa and the organisation drew most of it’s following from the Western Cape and the Transkei.

Arguably the largest underground grouping of the 1960's, Poqo's strategy intentionally involved killings. Their main targets were Langa and Paarl policemen and their alleged informers as well as Transkei chiefs (read as collaborators with the apartheid regime) and their followers. The structure and functioning of the organisation was based on the Communist cell, where members do not know the identity of their fellow members. Any person who disclosed Poqo information was sentenced to death and about ten members of the organisation were executed for betrayal.

Following Poqo’s aim of destabilising the country and inspiring an uprising, organisation targeted Paarl on 22 November 1962. The crowd of 250 men, who were armed with axes, pangas and other home-made weapons, marched from Mbekweni location to the town and attacked the police station, homes and shops. They also killed two Whites: Frans Richard (22) and Rencia Vermeulen (18).

They followed this attack with the violent murder of a family camping at Bashee River in the Transkei on 4 February 1963. Norman and Elizabeth Grobbelaar, their teenage daughters Edna and Dawn and Mr. Derek Thompson were hacked to death in their caravans. People across the country became fearful and the government was spurred to vigorously suppress any potential rebellion. Already strict security laws were strengthened when the Minister of Justice, B. J. Vorster, enforced the 1964 General Laws Amendment Act, otherwise known as the Sabotage Act and the 90-day law. This law made sabotage a capital offence and gave the Minister house arrest and detention without trial powers.

Both Poqo and uMkhonto we Sizwe armed responses to the injustice of the White minority state of South Africa, but Poqo proved more dangerous at the time. Its leaders were less known in security circles and its approach was much more brutal and potentially powerful as a movement sowing mass terror. Due to apartheid’s repressive response and the virulently anti-White stance of Poqo, it found itself without the mass support it needed, and the organisation fell apart.

Click here for the Truth and Reconciliation report on Poqo.

Sources:

Liebenberg, B. J. & Spies, S. B. (eds)(1993). South African in the 20th Century, Pretoria: van Schaik.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/rhodesia/metrochap9.html