Peter Hlaole Molotsi was born in Steinsrust, a municipal location, in the district of Kroonstad, (then Orange Free State) on July 18, 1929. His father was a primary school teacher and his mother a housewife.
After passing Standard 6 in 1942, he moved to Johannesburg. However, he continued to go to school in the Orange Free State at the Bantu High School in Kroonstad.
His teachers at Bantu High, all African, had a most profound influence on him. They taught beyond the syllabus preparing them to become future citizens of a South Africa that would be free. The student body was Pan African and made up of people from Botswana, (then) Natal, the Eastern Cape, Lesotho and other places in the Orange Free State.
His political consciousness developed at high school. There were various student formations at his school, like the debating society, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), and the African Student Organisation (ASO). There was the Cape Peninsula Students Union (CPSU), the Cape African Students Association (CASA), the Natal African Students Union (NASD), the Orange Free State African Students Association (OFSASA), and the Transvaal African Students' Association (TASA). There were also regional groupings such as the Central Rand African Students Association (CRASA) and the Orlando Students Association (OSA).
Molotsi was a leader of TASA and the Orange Free State African Students Association. He was also a member of CRASA and OSA. As a member of these various student organisations heI got to know people from Orlando High, St. Peter's, Madibane High, etc. They would meet during holidays and friendship developed among them.
He finished his matriculation in 1949 and returned to the Transvaal where he started working for the Bantu Press. Molotsi was involved in politics as well and became a member of the ANC Youth League in Orlando in the early 1950s. He got to know people like Nthato Motlana and others from Fort Hare who were very active during those days.
This was the time when ANC Youth League branches were forming everywhere. He became chairman of the Orlando East branch of the Youth League.
In the 1950s, Molotsi was an active participant in the Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws. He served as an unofficial social worker, looking after the dependants of the people who were jailed, visiting their homes, finding out the needs of families, of dependants. He was also imprisoned with some of his colleagues and charged under the Suppression of Communism Act, serving his prison term at the Boksburg/Benoni jail. Molotsi got to know Anton Lembede through Youth League lectures through A. P. Mda, who organised groups of select people into what later came to be known as Africanist groups. Membership of the Africanist group was by invitation. He was part of the group in Orlando East, with Prince Vilakazi, William Jolobe, Mavimbela, Tshitsha, and others. Lectures were held on various topics dealing with the struggle. Study cells were formed. He participated in the 1952 Defiance Campaign as a volunteer, and in the mid-1950s, while employed by the Bantu World; he became part of the circle of militant nationalists around P. K. Leballo in Johannesburg's Orlando Township.
He worked for the Bantu Press as a freelance reporter at the beginning. Then he became a proof-reader, eventually becoming the editor. The newspaper changed from the Bantu World to become the World. The paper used to come out in about three languages. One issue would be in English, the next in isiZulu, and the last in Sesotho. Molotsi was responsible for the pieces in Sesotho.
Under the pseudonyms of "Pele-en-Pele" and "Mphatlalatsane," he edited and wrote pieces for The Africanist. The Africanist, a bulletin, became the mouthpiece of the Africanist group within the ANC. Molotsi became the editor of the bulletin in 1955 and was succeeded three years later by Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe. The Africanist group was at loggerheads with the SACP who, although members of the ANC, had their own newspaper. So, as members of the ANC, they also decided to have their own newspaper. The ANC was a large umbrella embracing everybody from left to right.
They then formed the Pan African Congress (PAC) with Robert Sobukwe as their leader and Molotsi became the PAC's secretary for Pan African Affairs. His task was to engender studies of African political structures and develop groups that would have knowledge of what was happening in each African country – their political formations, women's formations, youth formations, and labour formations.
The name of the organisation emerged during its December 1959 inaugural convention.
There was a move by the regime to extend pass laws to African women; that needed an immediate response. The PAC prepared for an anti-pass campaign whereby they would mobilise people to leave their passes at home, to fill the jails of the country, to remove the sense of fear and to break down the system of mass imprisonment. The idea was that it would be a snowballing movement; that Langa and Sharpeville would begin the process. As the jails began to fill up, the regime would move the imprisoned people to other areas. But wherever the prisoners were moved to, there too people would defy the system and the movement would spread like that from north to south. When all the country's jails were full the regime would have no place to send the prisoners and would be compelled to come to terms.
The PAC believed that this course of action would culminate in forced negotiations. In the course of the next three years they would set up more branches and mobilise people at the same time.
The Sharpeville shootings took the PAC by surprise. Within six months a meeting was held inside the country that opted for armed struggle. The decision was taken by the PAC at a meeting held in Paarl in August 1960 inside the country. By this time Molotsi was out of the country on the authority of the president of the PAC before he went to prison. The decision that he should leave was ratified by the organisation's working committee. The reason was that he was the secretary for Pan African Affairs and that his name was well known in African states, and further, he was the link with the rest of Africa.
Molotsi left South Africa, with Nana Mahomo, on the eve of the Sharpeville shootings; the Sharpeville shootings occurred the following day. He was in Bulawayo when he heard about the Sharpeville shootings. When they got to Malawi (then Nyasaland), people from the Malawi Congress Party, which was a successor party to the Nyasaland African Congress met them. They slept in the surgery of Kamuzu Banda, who was to become Malawi's president. The police were looking for them all over because the South African government had already broadcast the fact that they were abroad. There was something then called the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, under the British Empire. They were also looking for them, with the help of MI5, the military intelligence of Britain.
They had left by the Underground Railroad, using documents they had stolen from the Nyasaland Labour Bureau in Johannesburg. They had contacts in the Labour Bureau, whose function was to recruit workers from Nyasaland mainly to work in the mines in South Africa. They had stolen the key to the Nyasaland Labour Bureau in End Street, Johannesburg, several weeks before. They went in, stole the documents and stamped them accordingly. Using Malawian names, the pair left South Africa, dressed as mineworkers returning home at the end of our contracts.
From Nyasaland thye went to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and were received by TANU (Tanganyika African National Union), and then to Kenya where they were received by KANU (Kenya African National Union). Subsequently they set up the first PAC offices in exile in Ghana, from where they operated. Their mission was to publicise the PAC all over Africa and the world and to ask for assistance for their struggle.
When Vusi Make joined them, they decided to distribute the work. Nana Mahomo set up an office in London and Vusi Make went to the Middle East. Molotsi was given the responsibility for Africa. In time they were able to count on PAC people who were abroad for study purposes like Stanley Letanka, Peterson, and Selby Mvusi. South African teachers already working in Ghana would give off their time ”” people like Gumbi, George Chali, and Mdudu (who had taught at Madibane High).
They raised funds, from friendly African countries and from European countries too. The ANC was more favoured in Europe because it was a European-oriented organisation. The PAC was more favoured by the African states by reason of our Pan Africanist ideology. But African states did not command the kind of resources possessed by the USSR, which also backed the ANC – because of links with the Communist Party and highly respected people like Moses Kotane, J. B. Marks, and Edwin Mofutsanyane. On the other hand, the PAC received limited support from China – that was during the Sino-Soviet dispute – which provided diplomatic training facilities and funds.
The PAC in exile worked with the ANC in exile. They formed a United Front because there were issues on which they agreed, like the boycott of South African goods and the cultural isolation of the country. According to Molotsi, “The marriage between the PAC and the ANC was dissolved, however, because of pressure from people coming from South Africa with different ideas, plus the impact of whites who favoured the ANC and had a distaste for black so-called racists that did not offer any place for them in Africa. The PAC slogan, "Africa for Africans", was considered a threat! The ANC slogan, "South Africa belongs to all", was considered less racist, more accommodating. But we could not agree that Africa was the dancing ground for all, including imperialist forces that could dance and jump as they pleased. Africa belonged to Africans; the rest would have to dance on one leg!”
Molotsi married Iris More, whom he had previously met in South Africa, in Accra, in 1962, Ghana, where she was on her way to the Asian Women's Conference. He operated from Ghana until the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. At the formation of the OAU, as the liberation movements, they attended as petitioners to get recognition from the independent African states. In the years that he was in Ghana he saw the PAC grow in stature. They operated a radio station there, so that the PAC could communicate with people in Africa and beyond. They developed links with the agencies that distributed news to the world. In this way their voice was being heard all over the world. The PAC even managed to send messages to South Africa. Some people used to hear the messages but the South African Government jammed the broadcasts and when they did that they operated from Cairo as well.
Elias Ntloedibe replaced him in Ghana. In 1964 he went to Dar es Salaam to strengthen the mission there. The PAC headquarters was still in Lesotho. He helped set up headquarters in Dar es Salaam because most of their members were passing through Dar es Salaam. In addition, it was unsafe in Lesotho, as it is completely surrounded by South Africa. Lesotho was vulnerable, a danger spot. The communications in Lesotho were completely controlled by South Africa. The economy of Lesotho was virtually controlled by South Africa. The funding was completely controlled by the South African banking system. All they could was use the diplomatic levers of Lesotho, that's all they had, and nothing else. When the PAC headquarters moved to Tanzania, as in Ghana, they shared offices with ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union). That was before the split in ZAPU with the formation of ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union).
By this time his health became bad because of the weather that he had to receive medical attention in Nairobi. He was advised that for purposes of better reaction to medication he should get to a cooler place. Dar es Salaam is very hot and Nairobi cooler.
Molotsi had first met Professor Gwendolyn Carter at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) when she was on a visit to South Africa and he was addressing a PAC meeting at Wits. When they met again in Nairobi she arranged for him to go to the United States because the doctors treating him said that he would need a long time to rest. He decided to use that time to further his studies, which in South Africa had been suspended and so he left for the United States.
Then it became necessary to establish representation in the United States also. The PAC didn't have a permanent representative there. Molotsi came in to act as a representative of the party in the United States and at the United Nations. They operated from his house in New York City, as a temporary party office, and it was registered as such at the US State Department. He set up a permanent office on 43d Street, New York. They also registered at the United Nations (UN), where he was once again a petitioner; that was the status of representatives from the liberation movements.
I can disclose to you now that we negotiated the removal of Sobukwe from Robben Island. Molotsi petitioned the secretary-general of the UN and appeared in his office at the UN. They exercised pressure to have Sobukwe removed from Robben Island because of his health. The South African Government placed him under house arrest in Kimberley. They raised funds and furnished his house with the help of the PAC branch there. They also urged influential people to finance Sobukwe’s study programme which enabled him to complete an economics degree.
He decided to further his studies. He completed his liberal arts degree in two-and-a-half years at the University of Rochester, doubling up as a graduate student and a PAC representative, educating the public and calling for support and raising funds.
They also engaged in a programme to raise scholarships to support PAC students scattered all over Africa. The PAC also worked with the Black Panthers, a group hostile to the United States government.
After he gained his liberal arts degree from Rochester, he completed a master's degree in Education at Fordham University and a PhD at New York University. During his time in the US, Molotsi lectured at several universities on African literature, history and political science. He was an assistant professor for a long time and then an associate at several summer schools. That became his chosen profession alongside my life in the struggle.
In 1967, the PAC had a consultative conference at Moshi, Tanzania. Molotsi travelled from the United States to that conference. From time to time the organisation needed to consult and to consolidate its strategies. This was the second consultative conference in exile after the one in Lesotho. The most important decision was to intensify the armed struggle. A number of decisions were taken, but the important one was to intensify the armed struggle, both inside the country and to enlarge the PAC’s army – which steadily grew to become APLA. APLA was established after the Moshi conference in 1967. But it was a continuation of the Poqo activities.