AZAPO was formed out of the prominent black consciousness organisations namely,
Black People's Convention (BPC), the
South African Students' Organisation (SASO) and the Black Community Programmes (BCP). These were three of the 17 black consciousness organisations that were banned on Wednesday, 19 October 1977 for their role in the 16 June 1976
Soweto uprisings. A year after the formation of AZAPO, in September 1979, at its conference in Roodepoort, the national executive was elected with
Curtis Nkondo as its president. During 1987, AZAPO was banned by the South African government and forced underground and into exile. The party then boycotted the
1994 elections, but has participated in each of the elections since then. AZAPO won one seat in each of the
1999,
2004 and
2009 elections, but failed to win a seat in the
2014 general election. The current leader (National President) of the party is Nelvis Qekema who was elected at the 25th National Congress held at University of Johannesburg, Soweto on December 4, 2021. He succeeded Strike Thokoane who was elected as president of AZAPO in 2017, during the party's 23rd National Congress in Meadowlands, Soweto. In February 2022, AZAPO and the
Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) announced a new unity pact with the intention to contest elections together. ==Negotiations with SOPA==