Zachius Botlhoko Molete was born in 1930 in Winburg in the Orange Free State of mixed Tswana-Ndebele parentage. His father was a teacher. He spent 1949 and 1950 at Kroonstad High School, where he was drawn into Youth League politics. In December 1949 he met A. P. Mda at the annual conference of the African National Congress (ANC), and throughout the rest of his political career he maintained a belief in Mda's ideology of nationalism. Graduating from Fort Hare in 1953, he taught briefly in the Free State, then moved to Johannesburg and took up law studies. He joined the circle of Africanists around P. K. Leballo and was later chosen secretary for publicity and information when the PAC was formed in 1959. He had meanwhile moved to Evaton, near Vereeniging and Sharpeville, and when the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) launched its antipass campaign in March 1960, he led a large demonstration of Evaton residents. Released after the emergency in late 1960, Molete represented the PAC at the December 1960 Consultative Conference of African Leaders but later withdrew his support from efforts to organise a follow-up conference in 1961. Delegated by imprisoned PAC leaders to head the PAC's underground organisation in late 1960, Molete was re-arrested in 1961 and sentenced to a three-year jail term. He fled to Basutoland (now Lesotho) while on bail, pending an appeal in early 1963. He left Basutoland in 1964 and later worked with the PAC in Zambia and East Africa, traveling widely as a party representative. He is now a teacher in Kenya.
