Pan Africanism Resurgent?: The Rise of PASMA at the University of the Western Cape

ABSTRACT: This essay examines the emergence of the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa, at a time during the post-apartheid era when support for the ‘parent body’ of this organisation, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), was extremely low nationally. We discuss PASMA’s emergence in 1997 against the backdrop of the politics of racialisation and colourism in the Western Cape, and show how support for PASMA spread to other campuses and gained prominence nationally with the emergence of the South African student movements known collectively as Fallism (2015–17). We also consider some differences in gender politics between PASMA at UWC and the PAC, to provide context for the fact that in 2018, a PASMA member, Simthandile Tyhali, became the first openly queer Black woman to be voted in as leader of a Student Representative Council in South Africa. In 2022, in a move that arguably demonstrated transformation from below in the PAC’s trajectory on gender, Tyhali was appointed the national spokesperson for the PAC.