Potlako Leballo

Potlako Kitchener Leballo (19 December 1915–January, 1986) was an Africanist who led the Pan Africanist Congress until 1979. Leballo was co-founder of the Basutoland African Congress in 1952 and a World War II veteran and primary school headmaster.

Leballo was born in Lifelekoaneng, Mafeteng, Lesotho (then called Basutoland) in 1915, the youngest of fourteen children, but claimed he had been born in 1925. His absentee father was a catechist in the Anglican Church who taught at St. Paul's Mission in Tsikoane and he was reared by two of his father's elder brothers. One of these, Motsoasele, was a fervent nationalist and retained his traditional religion until his death in 1947. The other uncle, Nathaniel, was an Anglican pastor and Potlako received a Christian education, first at St. Saviour's in Hlotse and later at Masite Institution in Morija. While at St. Saviour's, he was abducted by Uncle Motsoasele who took him to receive his traditional Sotho initiation known as lebollo. Lebollo was contrary to St. Saviour's rules and, as a result, he was expelled.

In 1940, Leballo became a student at Lovedale College, near Alice, Eastern Cape, South Africa.

He was active in the African National Congress Youth League until he and other radical leaders including Robert Sobukwe were expelled from the ANC and went on to form the PAC, a more radical Africanist movement. He held the distinction of having successfully nominated Chief Albert Lutuli (1952) and Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe (1959) to the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) respectively. He stated later (1984) than he believed that leaving the ANC (although encouraged by Kwame Nkrumah and the Basuto leader Ntsu Mokhehle) was a mistake and that his "Africanists" should have fought for control of the party rather than forming a new one. He was elected Secretary General of the PAC and within a year the new party was seriously challenging the ANC.

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