[2] The other uncle, Nathaniel, was an Anglican pastor and Potlako received a Christian education, first at St. Saviour's in Hlotse and later at Masite Institution in Morija.
He stated later (1984) that he believed that leaving the ANC (although encouraged by Kwame Nkrumah and the Basuto leader Ntsu Mokhehle) was a mistake and that his "Africanists" should have fought for control of the party rather than forming a new one.
The 1962–1964 Poqo uprising failed partly because the shipment of arms to the Transkei coast from Ghana and Egypt vanished, reportedly sold by corrupt PAC officials, but mostly because of Leballo's expulsion from Basutoland (his own country) following South African government pressure.
The main threat however came from the US Carter administration that had resolved it needed South Africa as a stable element in the equation to settle the Zimbabwe issue.
In the ensuing standoff at Chunya, Tanzanian troops killed four unarmed APLA soldiers, wounded forty, and dispersed the survivors.
Although he was welcomed by Edgar Tekere, the ZANU (PF) Secretary General and other party and military leaders, others including Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, pointedly kept their distance.
Handed a few dollars by his intelligence officer as he was rushed onto a plane, Leballo eventually arrived in Libya after being shunted around the Middle East and losing all his luggage.
The Basutoland Congress Party, which he had co-founded and whose military wing he had trained, acknowledged that Leballo had played a major part in bringing down the regime of Leabua Jonathan Molapo in 1986.
Although largely forgotten in South African politics, Leballo was responsible for temporarily turning the PAC away in the years 1966–1979 from semi-fascism towards Maoism.
He recognized the futility of the Poqo slogan "drive the whites into the sea" (later revived by the remnant PAC as "one settler one bullet" with disastrous electoral consequences – 1.2% of the vote in 1994 and 0.7% thereafter).
Sibeko's grab for power in 1979, the Chunya massacre, and Leballo's peripheralization were not just the termination of one man's career but the death of a credible left wing alternative to the ANC/SACP alliance.