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Patricia de Lille broke away from the PAC to form her own party, the Independent Democrats.
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Johannesburg - The once potent Pan Africanist Congress that drove the pivotal Sharpeville pass law protests of 1960 has been relegated to a non-entity in the latest general election.
The revolutionary party, which inspired the formation of Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Movement, had been steadily losing support since the dawn of democracy in 1994.
In the country's first democratic elections, the PAC scored 1.25% of the national vote.
That dipped to 0.78% in 1999 and 0.73% in 2004.
But in this week's highly contested elections, the PAC was uncertain if it even had enough votes for a seat in the 400-seat National Assembly.
With more than 70% of votes counted on Friday, the PAC was sitting on 0.28% with 35 886 votes in its favour.
Although the final numbers of votes cast were not available yet, the Independent Electoral Commission estimated a 77% voter turnout, which would mean that around 17.7 million votes were cast.
That would mean a party needed about 44 200 votes for one seat in parliament - with the PAC so far running about 9 000 votes short to secure a voice in Parliament.
Break away from ANC
The PAC was founded in 1959 after breaking away from the now ruling African National Congress.
This was mainly because it disagreed with the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955, which in its preamble referred to "we, the people of South Africa, black and white together equals, countrymen and brothers".
The PAC did not believe that working with Indians, Coloureds and whites would help black people.
It elected Robert Sobukwe, a charismatic leader, as its inaugural chairperson.
Much rivalry between the ANC and the PAC resulted in a race to host a massive anti-pass protest campaign, with the PAC setting the date for its planned peaceful protests for March 21, 1960 - ten days before the ANC's.
Sobukwe urged people to leave their passes at home and hand themselves over for arrest at police stations.
But things took a turn for the worse when a crowd gathered at the Sharpeville police station near Vereeniging, and panicky police opened fire on the peaceful protesters, killing 69 and injuring 186.
These events contributed to increased international indignation at the system of apartheid.
Shortly after Sharpeville, the white National Party government declared a state of emergency.
It outlawed both the PAC and ANC, while about 2 000 arrests were made on March 30, including Sobukwe, who was only released from Robben Island prison nine years later.
Biko death
With many revolutionary leaders jailed, the Black Consciousness Movement emerged in the mid 1960s, under the leadership of Biko, an anti-apartheid struggle icon who died in police custody in September 1977.
The ANC and the PAC were unbanned in 1990, but the latter was plagued by in-fighting, which saw its support dwindle.
The year before the third democratic elections in 2004, a key PAC member, Patricia de Lille, broke away from the party to form her own, the Independent Democrats.
De Lille's party took 1.7% of the vote in the 2004 elections, but her support seemed to have dropped to around one percent in elections this week.
- SAPA
