John Pokela, Leader of Anti-Apartheid Group

John Nyati Pokela, head of the banned anti-apartheid Pan Africanist Congress, has died in a Harare hospital at age 63, the state-run government news agency Ziana reported.

Ziana quoted unidentified hospital officials as saying Pokela died June 30; the cause of death was not revealed.

Pokela was imprisoned in South Africa for 13 years for violating sabotage and anti-propaganda laws. After his release, he went to Tanzania in 1981 and became chairman of the Pan Africanist Congress.

The congress was founded in 1959 as a breakaway group of the African National Congress. The split originated in a dispute over the role of whites in the fight against white minority rule.

Pokela left the national congress to become one of the founders of the Africanist congress, organizing and coordinating its activities until South African police captured him in 1967.

The 73-year-old African National Congress, the main guerrilla group seeking an end to white rule in South Africa, is multiracial, and the Africanist congress rejects white participation and objects to the national congress’ links to pro-Soviet groups. Both groups were banned in South Africa in 1960.

Pokela was a teacher in the 1950s but was barred from his profession in 1957 over his political activities.