PAN-AFRICAN THOUGHTAND
PRACTICE
by
Dr
Pakiso Tondi and Mr
B.F.Bankie
bankie@mweb.com.na
At any moment, depending on internal and external factors determining the
evolution of the society in question, cultural resistance
(indestructible) may take on new forms (political, economic, armed) in
order to fully contest foreign domination. (Cabral 1973: 40).
When Pan-Africanism began …. and who launched it will never be known.
(Esedebe 1994,7)
Introduction
It was under the auspices of Pan-African thought and practice, which engulfed
Africa and its people in the Diaspora early in the 1900s, that the
situation of the socio-cultural, political and economic subjugation and
domination of Africa by Europe and Arabia was vehemently intellectually
and politically challenged. Actually ‘by the end of the nineteenth
century the former slaves began to understand what had happened to them
and from the Caribbean the concept of Pan-Africanism was born’ (Clarke
1991: 100). Furthermore, the fact that Africa, not because of its own
doing, was not making progress and that its people continued to be
amongst the wretched of the earth became a cause for concern amongst a
nucleus of African intellectuals in Africa and the Diaspora (Pheko 1999:
10).
For the total suppression and domination of the African personality in all its
forms and content, European imperialists employed various strategies
that were all intended to depersonalise and empty the African
personality of its religious and cultural heritage. In the following
definition Cabral (1973; 40) aptly captures the significance of culture
as a tool for self-definition and self-reliance when he notes that:
…culture is always in the life of a society (open or closed), the more or less
conscious result of economic and political activities of that society,
the more or less dynamic expression of the kinds of relationships which
prevail in that society, on the one hand between man (considered
individually and collectively) and nature, and, on the other hand, among
individuals, groups of individuals, social strata or classes. … [It]
is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of
history, by the positive or negative influence, which it exerts on the
evolution of relationships between man and his environment, among men or
groups of men within a society, as well as among different societies.
What this implies is that, as part of the strategy to dominate the world-view and
behaviour of the African personality, European cultural imperialism
deliberately alienated and dislocated the people of African origin and
descent from their own tools of self-expression as a people in relation
to others in the universe.
Esedebe dismantles the idea if the ‘ civilising mission ‘ of colonialism,
which rather sort to expropriate the land and the labour of the ‘
native ‘ by way of his religious entrapment through the auspices of
the missionaries. It was the United Nations World Conference
Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held
in Durban, South Africa in 2001, which made the connection between the
purveying of racism as a mode of thought control and exploitation, so
that it served the interest of capital.
Factors that contributed to the development of Pan-African concepts
In essence, as it is apparent from the writings of its first proponents,
the idea of Pan-Africanism was intended to challenge the main activities
of European imperialist domination, namely, the slave trade, European
colonisation of Africa and racism (Thompson 1969: 3). These activities
were at their height in the late 19th century. In actual
fact, as Prah (1997: 24) indicates, one of the largest single factors
that contributed to the ultimate task of the conceptualisation of the
idea of Pan-Africanism by African intellectuals such as William Edward
Burghardt DuBois (1940, 1963, 1964), Joseph Casely-Hayford (1911),
George Padmore (1956), and others, was the Berlin Conference of 1885, at
which Africa was carved up and apportioned amongst European powers
without her consent.
From the preceding argument it can be concluded that theoretically, as originally
conceived Pan-Africanist thought was intended to be a counterpoint to
the cultural and psychological effects of colonialism and Western
racism.
The Slave Trade and the Experience of Slavery
The wars in Africa that emanated from slave trading due to the demand by
European and American capitalists led to a state of instability. ‘As
the trade gathered momentum the instability grew.’ As a result ‘the
West African scene down to Congo …became a theatre of war for
capturing slaves’ (Thompson 1969: 4). The reality of this barbaric and
selfish activity was such that ‘…the slaves produced wealth for the
European and American world – wealth which laid the foundations of
European economic prosperity,’ and ‘Africa in turn received nothing
that contributed to growth either economically, politically or
culturally’ (Thompson 1969: 4). This characterised the exploitation
and underdevelopment of Africa, which is still felt today in the 21st
century and its globalisation processes.
From the very beginning of the operations of the slave trade,
resistance and protest against the degradation of Africa and its people
took various forms. ‘Africans transported across the Atlantic to
Western plantations were unwilling victims of circumstances beyond their
control’ (Thompson 1969: 4).
The three points of the transatlantic slave trade [Western Europe, (specifically England), Africa (specifically West Africa) and the New World [meaning West Indies
and USA)] became the centres for the resistance and the intellectual
development of the Pan-Africanist ideology. The language of the
abolitionist movements also formed the background to Pan-Africanism in
its broader sense. Whilst noting this it is important to keep in mind
that in the French, Portuguese and Spanish speaking parts of Africa and
the ‘New World‘, similar processes were going on. Africanism was not only an Anglophone phenomenon, and parallel movements, such as ‘Negritude‘ affected
the global African community at different levels of intensity.
European colonisation of Africa
The forcible and dehumanising acts that characterised the occupation of
Africa by Western European powers were not a walkover as it appears in
some of the literature on the subject. As a matter of fact ‘having
partitioned Africa [at the Berlin Conference in 1885], the Western
European powers found themselves confronted with the problem of
pacifying the people whom they had brought, or attempted to bring, under
control’ (Thompson 1969: 12). Here it needs to be mentioned that,
‘before the period of colonial expansion …Europeans were not
concerned with territorial annexation.’ Instead ‘they only wanted
cheap labour for their New World colonies, and as Africa provided a vast
reservoir of slaves, the whites bought blacks and transported them to
the Western Hemisphere’ (Padmore 1956: 76). What actually led to the
interest in Africa, especially in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, was the stiff economic competition among the Western powers,
which in turn gave rise to imperialistic expansion (Padmore 1956: 76).
The process of occupying Africa, which was formalised at the Berlin
Conference, was humiliating to the people of Africa in that the
continent was turned into ‘…a mere pawn in European diplomacy, and
her people, the defenceless victims of unregulated exploitation’ (Padmore
1956: 76). This was unacceptable to the people of Africa and the
Diaspora, and resistance to European colonisation of Africa manifested
itself ‘…in various forms: political, cultural, religious and even
economic, including opposition to forced labour’ (Thompson 1969: 12).
One of the examples of these acts of resistance against European
colonisation of Africa was the rise of Ethiopianism in Southern Africa,
which represented a religious resistance.
Quoting Psalm 68 verse 32 (‘Ethiopia shall soon stretch her hand unto God’)
and regarding Ethiopia as synonymous with Africa, Afro-American
intellectuals and theologians, such as James W.C. Pennington and Henry
Highland Garnet, argued that the passage is a biblical prophecy that
Africa would ultimately be redeemed (Geiss 1974: 132). The concept of
Ethiopia had a liberating element in that amongst Pan-African exponents
it was used as a symbol for the demand for equality. This links with
Ethiopianism in North America and the Caribbean. The Rastafarian
Movement spread throughout the African world in the late twentieth
century, coming from the Caribbean, with it’s emphasis on the right to
return (repatriation) and the right to reparations. Persons such as L.P.Howell, Bob Marley and Mortimo Planno took these elements along with Ethiopianism to promote a
modern liberating Pan-African concept, emphasising Nation and
Nationality Rights.
Western racism
In an endeavour to address the demons of racialism and destructive behaviour
patterns (namely, inferiority complex for the victims and superiority
complex for the perpetrators) that became its manifestation, Africans
and persons of African descent developed a race consciousness which
leaders of the Pan-Africanist movement employed to unite people together
(Thompson 1969: 18). A clear understanding of the meaning and the
implications of racism in this context is necessary. Prah (1997: 82)
describes racism as:
A power relationship; a social and ideological construction, which raises
superficial biological attributes to objects and markers for social and
economic domination or subordination.
The above-mentioned situation predetermined the relationship
between the coloniser and the colonised. A closer look at the processes
of European imperialist colonial domination of Africa and its people in
general reveals that colour has always been conveniently used as an
instrument of subjugation and exploitation. In this regard Prah (1997:
2) observes that:
while this exploitation and oppression has been primarily economic, the myth of race and colour has been the language for defining and justifying this practice.
The meaning and content of Pan-African thought and practice
The Pan-African movement as a vehicle of protest that
accommodated diverse dehumanising experiences of people of African
origin and descent has no single founder or particular tenets that can
be used as a definition (Ackah 1999: 13).
Esedebe states that insinuations about the alleged permanent inferiority of the
black man and assertions that he had contributed nothing to the comfort
of humanity posed a challenge that some educated Africans took up.
According to Thompson (1969: 38), considering the factors that led to its birth as
a socio-cultural movement of a people who were fighting to assert
themselves in a world that was hostile to their existence,
Pan-Africanism may be seen as an idea that:
…was concerned not only with protest but also with fashioning of a coherent
philosophy which would enable the African as well as ‘Negro’ man not
only to enhance his material welfare but to elevate him from the
centuries of humiliation which has been his lot and thus enable him to
re-establish his dignity in a world that has hitherto conceded him none.
From the quotation above it can be concluded that as an alternative vision to the
dominant European vision the aim of Pan-Africanism thought and practice
was and still is ‘… to exalt African history and rediscover the
African personality that had been subjugated under European
domination’ (Ackah 1999: 12). From a radical position Pan-Africanism
thought can be understood as a ‘…movement by Africans for Africans
in response to European ideas of superiority and acts of imperialism’
(Ackah 1999: 12).
Similarly, gleaning from the literature that evolved from the
First Conference on Pan-Africanism in London in 1900 and the ones that
followed, Prah (1997: 81) describes Pan-African thought and practice as,
…an ideology for the emancipation of African people or people of African
descent, on the continent and in the Diaspora. It has never been
espoused as a credo for the domination or political exclusion of
non-African peoples. In this respect, it differs radically from the
Herrenvolk ideas of Hitlerian Germany, the Baaskap Philosophy of
Apartheid, or sentiments, which inform the myth ‘Britannia Rules the
Waves’.
In his analysis and description of the evolution of Pan-African thought and
practice, Ackah (1999: 13 – 14) asserts ‘the experience which is
understood as black and its political manifestation, in a broad sense
…is better understood in terms of a thematic approach.’ He argues
that these themes are what ‘…encapsulate the social and cultural
aspects of black experiences over time as well as more widely known
economic and political aspects of Pan-Africanism’ (Ackah 1994: 14).
The five themes that can be said to have contributed in the
conceptualisation of Pan African thought and practice are:
i.
Pan-Africanism: A Universal Expression of Black Pride and Achievement:
In a process to subjugate and dominate people of African origin and
descent European imperialism alienated and marginalized African cultural
heritage. As a result, specifically during the epoch of transatlantic
enslavement, people of African descent deemed it right to ‘…defend
black culture and propagate the notion of a distinct black contribution
to humanity and civilisation’ (Ackah 1999: 14). Two of the chief
exponents of the notion of black pride are the Negritude poets, Aime
Cesaire and Leopold S. Senghor. Around 1934 Cesaire and Senghor found a
journal of their own named L’Etitudiant Noir, which they used as a
vehicle to propagate their literary conception of Negritude.
Senghor (1970: 179) argued that, ‘Negritude is nothing more or
less than what some English-speaking Africans have called the African
personality.’ In South Africa the notion of Negritude was expressed
through the Black Consciousness Movement that was led by Steve Bantu
Biko (Ackah 1994: 14). Biko (1978: 91-92) explained the Black
Consciousness ideology as ‘…an attitude of mind and a way of life,
the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long
time,’ which in essence is about the ‘…realisation by the black
man of the need to rally together with his brothers, around the cause of
their oppression – the blackness of their skin - as a group to rid
themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.’
ii.
Pan-Africanism: A Return to Africa by
people of African Descent Living in the Western Diaspora:
As a way of protest against the merciless shipment of people of Africans
to Europe and the Americas Martin R. Delaney, between 1831 and 1832
visited Africa, which he referred to as ‘the land of my ancestry,’
and two years later he published his call for Afro-Americans to emigrate
from the USA. Though the National Emigration’s Re-emigration Project
was not a success, it was of historical significance in that amongst
other things, it produced a clear and politically well-founded statement
of Pan-African ideas.
iii.
Pan-Africanism: A Harbinger of Liberation:
The brutal occupation of Africa by European powers, especially after the
Berlin Conference in 1885 became totally unacceptable to the people of
African descent and a host of their intelligentsia. This epoch was
characterised by activities of physical exploitation of Africa
accompanied by the ideological torture of racism. ‘It is no small
wonder therefore that given a history of such awful treatment that the
clarion cries of freedom and liberation have echoed throughout the
recent history of black experience’ (Ackah 1999: 16). One of the chief
exponents of this expression was Frantz Fanon whom Ackah (1999: 16)
describes as ‘the revolutionary Pan-Africanist, from Martinique’-
who took the liberation call personally to heart and to show his
commitment he became physically involved in the struggle to end colonial
rule by the French in Algeria just after the Second World War.
iv.
Pan-Africanism: The Political Unification of the Continent:
Closely linked to the theme of the liberation of the African continent is the clarion call for the ‘…unity [of Africa] in the form of political and economic unification, [which] became the theme of Pan-Africanism’ (Ackah 1999: 17). Kwame Nkrumah became the chief exponent of this expression, ‘he believed that the only way to resolve the problems of imperialism and neo-colonialism in Africa was the form of unitary socialist government’ (Ackah 1999: 17). This expression gave birth to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and in 2000-2001 the African Union (AU).
v.
Pan-Africanism and the Eastern Diaspora
Pan-Africanism and African Nationalism, in essence the will to unite, were the motive forces for decolonisation; they brought real development (e.g. the land). In a changing world, like any liberatory philosophy, Pan-Africanism demands continuous review, assessment and update. In the struggles against racism and settler colonialism in the South, most did not know or ignored the problems in the Borderlands stretching from Mauritania on the Atlantic, through Mali, Niger and Tchad to Sudan on the Red Sea. Whereas change in the South had the support of the funds of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, geared to ensuring the safe transfer of investment, the enslavement of Africans in places such as Sudan was ignored. No African internationalists were found fighting alongside the African Nationalists in Sudan, who were precision bombed by the Khartoum government.
Arab-Led slavery of Africans, which is generalised in the Borderlands, is important because it affects directly contemporary Afro-Arab relations. It is an issue, which has
been hushed-up in the past by both sides. Symbolically Arab-led slavery
of Africans provides the dividing line for the aspirations of the
African and Arab people for a better life through unity. Reparations for
it, if pursued democratically, will assist the emancipation and
development of both peoples. Reconciliation through reparations requires
the end of denial and the admission of guilt. Nkrumah’s vision of
continental unity remains a distant prospect, so long as both sides
defend the status quo.
Segal in his book on the ‘Other Diaspora‘ states that the Arab
slave trade began some eight centuries before the Atlantic slave trade.
Its numbers were much larger. Its gender ratio was two females to one
male and it concentrated, and still does, on the children.
The campaign for reparations for the slavery of Africans in the Western Diaspora has been lead by the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’Cobra). Its
work has connected with the on-going struggles for reparations in, for
example, Namibia.
Cheikh Anta Diop established that from the Cape to the Nile Delta
Africa had been originally populated by Black people and that the
Egyptian civilisation, which proceeded Greece, was at it’s inception
Black African. Sharawy calls the relations in the Borderlands today
ambiguous, at the point of the Afro-Arab cultural inter-change. The
Sahara was a supposed melting point. In point of fact it is a
low-intensity war zone. Adwok Nyaba tells us that Arab enslavement of
Africans was ‘either ignored, minimised or completely rejected on
false account that the Arabs either were ‘brothers in Islam’,
equally colonised and oppressed by the West, or participated in the
decolonisation struggles of the African people’. The longest war in
Africa, which has been ongoing since the arrival of the Arabs, in Sudan,
was not discussed in the OAU, as the Arabs considered it ‘own
affairs’, only for discussion in the Arab League. There was an
unspoken understanding amongst African states to remain silent on issues
such as Sudan and Arab slavery.
K.K.Prah in his research work on culture, language and history, in
February 1991 stated there is a need to distinguish between citizenship and nationality – citizens of a state can be of various nationalities. While citizenship requires the
acknowledgement of equal rights for all nationalities within the state,
nationality per se transcends citizenship and transcends often-state
borders, especially in the African case.
Blyden, Garvey and Du Bois mentioned the African Nation. The lessons of history teach us that the African Nation is constituted by Africa south of the Sahara and the
African Diaspora. This is to be organically realised to incorporate both
the Western and Eastern Diasporas of Africa. Africans in the zones of
Arab influence, both in Africa and Arabia, were Arabised and
deliberately de-nationalised, as was the case in Darfur in Sudan.
According to Bulcha, Africans in the Middle East and Asia remain
‘a disjointed Diaspora‘, although he goes on to clarify that records
indicate that our people in those places show a persistent desire to
repatriate. Their African identity/personality was never in doubt.
In the East, there are, according to the United Nations,
‘Africans and Afro-descendants communities in Asia’. The
Afro-descendants are those Diop described as having ‘ a common soul
‘. These are the descendants of the first wave out of Africa, such as
the Aborigines of Australia, the Papuans and the Agta/Sakai of Thailand,
Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines. For example, the
Pacific Islanders today hold dearly their African Nationality, as do the
Papuans
The issue of the mergers of the Diasporas and Africa needs to be addressed squarely. In the AU context this issue was decided at the meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
17th - 20th April 2000 of the Legal Experts and Parliamentarians on the Establishment of the African Union and the Pan-African Parliament (ref CAB/leg/23.15/6/Vol IV), when, due to Arab influence, African descendants were excluded from the affairs of the
Parliament. The Arabs have consistently opposed the linkage of Africa to
its Diaspora. Indeed it is something they see as a doom signal. Yet they
had formed their Arab League in! 945, some forty years before the OAU.
The linkage of Africa to its Diaspora is central to the Pan-African
project. So the Diaspora today has Observer Status at the Economic and
Social Council of the AU.
Here it should be clear, the problem is not one of religious intolerance and anti-Muslim sentiment, but the issue is the deliberate racist policy of denationalising and
Arabising Africans, in order to take their lands.
Ackah’s (1999) thematic description of the Pan-African thought
and practice shows that the meaning and content of the concept was
shaped mostly by historical events that confronted the people of African
origin and the Diaspora. This means the fight against European
imperialism and racism and Arab expansion and racism were the propelling
forces in the development of the Pan-African movement.
Due to its complexity as a thought that emerged as an emotional, political and
intellectual response of the African to the European and Arab
colonisation of Africa and racism that accompanied it, Pan-Africanism
is/can be defined in both a narrower and broader sense. In the narrower
sense the definition of the ideology is limited to a political movement
for the unification of the African continent, and the broader definition
includes the cultural and intellectual movements of all Africans all
over the world.
The Narrower Meaning of Pan-African Thought and Practice
In its narrower sense the Pan-Africanist ideology can be traced as far back as the close of the 18th century. Esedebe locates the birth of Pan-Africanism to the so-called
New World, and the era of the Declaration of American Independence
(1776), lead by plantation/slave owners. The principles of the American
Revolution implied civil rights for all. However, blacks were not
included, as the African was not considered ‘civilised’ or even
human. Spurious racist concepts of superiority meant in North America
that first the Amerindians were enslaved before the Africans. Thus in
the sixteenth century the inability of the Amerindians to resist Spanish
military might meant that they were weak and therefore less deserving of
respect. This shared experience between the Amerindians and the Africans
of North America was to replicate in similar realities in South America.
With the founding of the church that became known as the African
Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816, an African-American by the name of
Richard Allen and his followers in the city of Philadelphia planted the
early seeds of Pan-Africanist thought. The name ‘Africa’ expressed
the need to emphasise solidarity with Africa. It was an expression of
Africanism (Thompson 1969: 8). The founding of the church represented an
attempt at self-assertion by people of African descent in the Diaspora.
Later the church spread as far as Africa. :
The idea was intended to eradicate negative notions about the African personality
that existed and as such formed the foundations upon which strategies of
socio-cultural and economic underdevelopment of Africa and European
racism were and still continue to be based. European racism as an
ideology was used as an excuse for the dehumanisation of the African
people and the socio-economic underdevelopment of Africa as a continent.
The following is an example of one of the depersonalising caricatures of
the African personality that prompted African intellectuals to respond:
The European was described as “light, lively, and inventive” while
Africans were considered to be “cunning, slow, and negligent
[emphasis mine] (Prah 1997: 77).
Notions such as these, which are basically about socio-cultural
power-relationships, were employed by some of the European philosophers
as a means to perpetuate and rationalise the practice of slavery and
colonial subjugation of Africa and its entire people in the world.
Pan-Africanism thought in the narrower sense can be specifically identified with both
the First Pan-African Conference in 1900 and the two distinct
conferences, which were held both in Accra in 1958 (Thompson 1969: 24;
Pheko 1999: 10). The First Pan-African Conference initiated the
organised promotion of the concept. The latter were distinct in that
they were the first conferences to be held on African soil and as such
signified the Pan-Africanist movement’s second phase in its historical
and intellectual development. The Accra Conferences initiated the
Continentalist phase of the movement lead by Nkrumah. It sorts the unity
of the Continent as the primary objective. The OAU excluded the Diaspora
from its work.
The First Pan-African Conference of 1900 and its significance in the
ideological development of Pan-African Thought and Practice
The Pan-African Conference in London, from the 23 to 25 July 1900,
was the first ever held to propagate these ideas, and it was attended by
a small group of men and women who were Africans and Afro-Americans from
the New World. The idea of such a meeting was the brainchild of Henry
Sylvester-Williams, who was a West Indian barrister. ‘This conference
was the beginning of a structural, ideological concept of
Pan-Africanism’, precisely because ‘at this conference [the people
of African origin and descent] did not ask for freedom’. They actually
‘… asked for a means of preparing African people to enter the modern
world’ (Clarke 1991: 105). Thus it is maintained that this Conference
marked the launching of the first phase of the organised Pan-African
movement in the broader sense – ‘…a period of nationalist
gestation in Africa when ideas were being evolved by African,
Afro-American and Afro-West Indian intellectuals’ (Thompson 1969: 27).
As Thompson (1969: 24 – 25) points out, amongst other things
this Conference aimed at the following:
to act as a forum of protest against the aggression of white
colonisers; to appeal to the ‘missionary and
abolitionist tradition of the British people’ to `protect Africans
from the depredations of Empire Builders’; to bring people of African
descent throughout the world into closer touch with each other and to
establish more friendly relations between the Caucasian and African
races; to start a movement looking forward to the securing of all
African races living in civilized countries, their full rights and to
promote their business interests.
It is clear from the above that the Conference represented amongst
the first organised efforts outside of Africa to protest against Western
European domination and degradation of the African people. The desire
for the unity of Africans and peoples of African descent was clearly
expressed. In essence ‘the meeting put the term ‘Pan-African’ into
circulation and stressed the need for equity between the races’ (Gann
and Duignan 1967: 91).
In an attempt to bring the situation of the people of African
origin and descent to the attention of the whole Western European world,
Pan-Africanist ideologists, such as the then President of the
Pan-African Association Bishop Alexander Walters, General Secretary
Henry Sylvester-Williams, and Chairperson of Resolutions Committee W.E.B.
Du Bois formulated a statement which stressed that:
In the metropolis of the modern world, in this the closing year of the
nineteenth century, there has been assembled a congress of men and women
of African blood, to deliberate solemnly upon the present situation and
outlook of the darker races of mankind. The problem of the twentieth
century is the problem of the colour line, the question as to how far
differences of race – which show them-selves chiefly in the colour of
the skin and texture of the hair – will hereafter be made the basis of
denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost
ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilisation
(emphasis mine) (Thompson 1969: 26)
Though this appeal is said to have not had any effect on European imperialists
at the time (Thompson 1969: 26) it is still echoing today, precisely
because it addressed a practise and behaviour that continues to polarise
the human world-view and relations along race and colour lines and
between the rich and poor.
The Roles that W.E.B Du Bois and M.M. Garvey played in shaping Pan-African
Thought and Practice after 1900
In the list of names of African-American intellectuals who
attended the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900 was that of
Dr W.E.B Du Bois (1868-1963), Earlier on, in 1897, he is reported to
have made a statement to the effect that, ‘if the Negro were to be a
factor in the world’s history it would be through a Pan-African
movement’ (Legum 1962: 24),
Considering this pronouncement it will be right to conclude that for Du Bois the
First Pan-African Conference was a dream come true and a step-forward by
people of African origin and descent in their struggle against European
colonialism and racism. Like a prophet of old, at the first Pan-African
Conference he declared that:
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line –
the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and
Africa, in America and the islands of the sea (Legum 1962: 25).
This statement has been echoing throughout the decades until today, in the 21st
century. Personally, for Du Bois the Conference had an immense influence
on him to an extent that ‘three years after attending the London
Conference, in 1903 he broke [ties] with the then hero of Negroes and of
white Americans, Booker T. Washington’ (Legum 1962: 25).
The Afro-Jamaican Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940) in his objectives and
programme of action is reported to have:
sought to unite all Africans the world over, to establish a bridgehead on the
continent of Africa from which to fight colonialism and weld the whole
of Africa into a united nation (Thompson 1969: 42).
Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was the first Pan African mass organisation, which established branches wherever Africans were to be
found, dispersed around the world, including Africa. In the early 1920s.
it introduced African Nationalism for the first time as a uniting factor
in Southern African politics.
It serves no useful purpose within the unity movement to make comparisons between Du Bois and Garvey. Both dedicated their lives to the struggle of the African people
as a whole.
The Du Boisan Congresses between 1919 and 1927
Following the First Pan-African Conference in 1900, between 1919 and 1927, Du Bois
organised four Pan-African Congresses that became known as the Du Boisan
Congresses, and as such marked the first phase of Pan-Africanism. The
Congresses were:
i.
The First Pan-African Congress: Paris (1919);
ii.
The Second Pan-African Congress: London, Brussels and Paris
(1921);
iii.
The Third Pan-African Congress: London and Lisbon (1923); and
iv.
The Fourth Pan-African Congress: New York
(1927).
Thompson
(1969: 55) indicates that, the first and the second congresses showed
promise for ‘the growth of the Pan-African idea’, but the last two
are reported to have been ‘…disappointing and revealed a diminution
of its forces’. These congresses characterised the first phase of the
Pan-African thought and practice which had its shortcomings in as far as
the realisation of the objectives of Pan-Africanism were concerned.
The First Congress was held from the 19th to 21st February 1919, and on its
conclusion it adopted a lengthy resolution, which did not address the
right of Africans to self-government. In addition, it failed to
address the crucial question of holding subsequent Congress as an aspect
that was important for the life and work of the Pan-African movement.
In as far as the Second Congress is concerned it met first in
London and then in Brussels and Paris. Whereas in London English
speaking Africans predominated, in Brussels and Paris Francophone
elements were present.
Generally, linked to the Pan-African idea, among other things the
congresses were held for the purpose of maintaining the continuity of
the Pan-African movement and the unity of people of African origin and
descent. Unfortunately the congresses could not rise to these
challenges. In addition, in terms of their chief objective, namely,
self-determination for the people of African origin and descent, they
achieved nothing substantial until 1945 (Thompson 1969: 56). One of the
factors that contributed to the movement’s failure to achieve its
chief goal was the fact that it was mainly confined to intellectuals and
this rendered its arguments rigidly rationalist (Gann and Duignan 1967:
91).
The Fifth Pan-African Congress and the role that George Padmore
played to resuscitate the Pan-African idea
Though the period between the last
of the Du Boisan Congresses in 1927 and 1944 had no known activities
that marked continuity of the Pan-African idea, however several
gatherings were held which appear as preliminary conferences prior to
the 1945 Congress.
Here two
examples of such gatherings mentioned above are considered. The first
one is the Paris Conference that was organised by Timeko Garan Kouyaute
at the beginning of 1934.
After several attempts by the ‘Father
of Pan-Africanism’, Du Bois and other leaders such as, Dr Harold
Moody, the Jamaican leader of the League of Coloured People that was
described as the conservative component of Pan-Africanism, the Fifth
Pan-African Congress assembled from the 15 – 19 October 1945 at the
Charlton Town Hall, Manchester, and was attended by over two hundred
delegates from all over the ‘coloured world’ (Thompson 1969: 58).
It needs to be noted here that the meeting of the Fifth Pan-African Congress was
in the main made possible by the collaboration of the Pan-African
Federation (PAF), which was a federation of several groups that had
emerged between 1927 and 1944, and George Padmore’s International
African Service Bureau (IASB). The leadership of Padmore was
outstanding. This was the last Pan-African Congress held outside of
Africa.
It is possible that it was through the advice of Padmore that the organisers
of the congress were strategic in that ‘with due deference to his
earlier contribution to the Pan-African movement Du Bois was confirmed
as Chairman during the rest of the conference’ (Thompson 1969: 58). In
a nutshell, the deliberations of the congress, centred on the grievances
of the delegates, which they regarded as the direct result of slavery
and the colonial system, with their concomitant racism and social
insecurity (Thompson 1969).
The Results of the Fifth Pan-African Congress.
A new breed of African nationalists who attended the Congress made it their
business to clarify issues. ‘They rejected assimilation, demanded
independence outright, and tried to organize mass movements to secure
these ends’ (Gann and Duignan 1967: 97). As a result, the aspirations
of Africans were clearly articulated in Kwame Nkrumah’s Declaration
to the Colonial Workers, Farmers and Intellectuals, were he opted
for non-violent struggle such as strikes and boycotts, which obligated
the African elites to organise the mass movement, if they wanted to
remain relevant.
In terms of the main objective of the Pan-African idea, namely the combating of
colonialism, one contributing factor that made the Fifth Pan-African
Congress successful and a historical landmark was that:
in
order that detailed discussion might be facilitated and adequate
resolutions framed, the continent of Africa was divided into regions,
and apart from broadly general resolutions on the conditions of
‘coloured people’, local resolutions, which emerged, reflected the
peculiar problems of the various regions (Thompson 1969: 58).
The above was an aspect that had been missing in previous congresses that were held between 1919 and 1927.
For the first time delegates from Africa went back home with a basic idea of both the philosophical and political framework for their programmes of struggle against
continued European colonialism and racism in their various countries.
The Second Phase of the Pan-African idea and the first two Accra Conferences of 1958. In addition to the resolutions of the Fifth Pan-African Congress in
Manchester, which had a far-reaching political-will to tackle European
racism and colonialism, a number of advantageous factors contributed to
the launching of the Second Phase of the Pan-Africanist philosophy.
Amongst these factors was the change in the world climate on the
colonial question. As indicated by Thompson (1969: 119):
…change in attitude generally, and especially, within the territories of the
colonial powers, gave an added weight to the plea of the colonial
peoples in Asia. A curious combination of factors emerged of this
attitude. It marked a reversion from the attitude in the preceding era
before the [Second World] war when colonialism was more defensible. The
Atlantic Charter, by asserting the rights of all peoples to choose the
governments under which they would live, prepared the ground for a more
vehement anti-colonialism.
The attitude that is described above bore some fruits in that it
was accompanied by the granting of independence to colonies such as
India, Pakistan and Burma in the years 1947 and 1948, and these events
encouraged African organizations that fought for nationhood and the
unity of Africa (Thompson 1969: 120).
The other favourable factor that became a bonus to the launching of the
Second Phase of Pan-Africanism was the independence of Ghana in 1957
(Thompson 1969: 119). With the attainment of neo-colonial status by this
West African country, a message was sent throughout Africa that, ‘what
some had thought impossible had happened; a Negro-African government had
come to being determined to assert that Africans could govern
themselves’ (Thompson 1969: 124).
It was Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana, who talking of African liberation, stated that the so-called ‘ independence ‘ accorded to African states as a
result of negotiated transfers of power, since no African state was
allowed to usurp colonial power on the battle field – that this did
not result in sovereign power, but rather neo-colonial status. None of
the states of Africa south of the Sahara has achieved sovereignty, only
Zimbabwe, and to an extent South Africa, are struggling in that
direction. This could be excused on the basis of globalisation, but
Africa on this score should learn from Asia, some of whose states are
fully sovereign, controlling political and economic power.
The second phase of Pan Africanism committed Africans to the objective of continentalism as the priority. That is the unity of the continent, as the road map to
progress and development.
The transplantation of the
Pan-Africanist movement to Africa
After the Manchester Pan-African Congress of 1945 with its powerful resolutions that were intended to totally uproot European colonialism and its racist
practices, Pan-Africanism remained in the realm of ideas (Thompson 1969:
126). It was only thirteen years later that the Pan-African political
movement landed in Africa in 1958 after Ghana’s independence. The
event of the independence of Ghana was of historical significance in
that it:
removed one of the disabilities under which the [Pan-African]
movement had operated in the first phase, namely, the absence of a base from which propaganda and ideas could be disseminated (Thompson 1969: 126).
The idea of the African personality became one of the main pillars
in the process of the revitalization of African cultural values that
were eroded by European cultural domination. The first two Pan-African
conferences to be held on the African soil were held in Accra, Ghana in
April and December 1958 (Thompson 1969: 126). Eight African governments
that were independent at that time, namely, Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco,
Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Ghana, attended the April conference.
These governments on behalf of Africa as a whole issued a joint
declaration condemning colonialism and the apartheid system in South
Africa.
In December of the same year,
1958, the first All-African Peoples’ Conference was held. It
purposefully linked itself with the Pan-African tradition. ‘The wider
implications of the first two Accra Conferences of 1958 ushered
Pan-Africanism into the realm of Realpolitik’ (Thompson 1969: 126).
The Sixth Pan African Congress, Dar Es Salaam, June 1974 52
delegations representing Independent States in Africa and the Caribbean,
Liberation Movements and communities of people of African descent in
North America, South America, Britain and the Pacific met at the
University of Dar Es Salaam’s Nkrumah Hall to open the 6th
Pan African Congress (PAC).
The 6th PAC represented the first in the series
convened in Africa, in a self-governing African state. Just prior to the
meeting there was some anxiety about attendance by some states, afraid
that their radicals would attend and upstage them. This resulted in the
absence of a number of leading Caribbean Pan Africanists, who were not
happy with the leading role assumed by Governments, some of which were
anti-people and inherently reactionary. The Congress nevertheless, made
a big impact on the Liberation Movements of the African countries still
under colonial domination, especially the former Portuguese colonies of
Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau and settler colonialism in the then
Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Shortly after the Dar
Es Salaam meeting, the bulk of these countries rid themselves of
colonialism.
There were sessions on economics, national liberation, culture and
education and science and technology. The most remarkable event was the
paper of Walter Rodney. The lucidity of analysis, especially on the
hostility to Pan Africanism by the Governments of the independent
African States, provided an understanding, which is as valid today as it
was in 1974. Rodney asked, which class leads the national liberation
movements; how capable is this class of carrying out the historical
tasks of national liberation and; which are the silent classes on whose
behalf national claims are being articulated?
Rodney saw Pan Africanism as internationalist and a brand of nationalism. Those who
came to lead the self-governing states were incapable of transcending
the inherited territorial boundaries. Pan Africanism is irreconcilable
with international capitalism. Indeed the African petty bourgeoisie
leadership since independence has been a further obstruction to the
development of the African Revolution. Rodney talks of a false
antithesis between Pan Africanism and Communism. Finally Rodney asserts
that the neutrality and unity of nationalism is illusory and that in
practice particular classes of strata capture nationalist movements and
charts their ideological and political directions. The 6th
PAC issued the following resolutions: -
On economic development through self-reliance
On democratisation of international institutions
On the struggle against economic imperialism
On the use of African resources, and
On drought and famine in Africa.
The Seventh Pan African
Congress, Kampala, April 1994
The 7th Pan African Congress was the second to be held on the African continent
in the one hundred years of history of the PAC. At this congress
President Y Museveni of Uganda was the Patron, Col. K. Otafiire the
Convener and Dr. T. Abdul-Raheem the Secretary General. Congress set-up
a Post-Congress Secretariat under the leadership of the
Secretary-General, which continued to function in Kampala into the late
1990’s. The late A.M. Babu will be remembered for the active role he
played in the convening of the meeting.
The New Vision newspaper published in Kampala on the 8th
of April 1994 extracts from closing address of President Y Museveni to
Congress. He summed up science as a prime of all social evolutions. He
noted that the slave trade had been a joint enterprise between the local
chiefs and the slavers. He lamented the deaths, two days earlier, of the
Burundi and Rwandan Heads of State in a plane crash – the
ramifications of which lead to subsequent regime changes in Rwanda and
Congo/Zaire.
The theme of the Congress was ‘Facing the Future in Unity, social progress and
democracy – perspectives towards the 21st century’.
Seventeen African Governments were represented either by their diplomats
accredited to Uganda or by official ministerial delegations. More than
thirty African countries were represented by different political forces
and groups, especially opposition, pro-democracy, youth and women
activists.
In the view of the Secretary-General, the Pan African movement has
always had as its primary goal the seizure of political power by Pan
Africanists in order to unify politically, our divided peoples. He saw
it as a duty to attract into the fold all those who express interest or
are committed to the movement. The 7th PAC made a conscious
effort to attract women to the movement.
The 7th PAC was attended by Salim A. Salim, Secretary-General of the
Organization of African Unity (OAU), who saw that once independence
attained the attraction of Pan Africanism wained, being replaced by
ideas of sovereignty as a more interesting option than continental
political union. Salim urged the revival of Pan Africanism, whose ideals
should be held aloft. Continental unity was, in Salim’s view, the
primary objective. Some ten years later some would condemn
continentalism as one of the cause of the myriad problems of Africans
from Arab encroachment from the North, to the exclusion of the African
Diaspora from any meaningful role in the state sponsored unity movement.
Salim stated he wanted to see an OAU meeting the same challenges as the
Congress itself.
Pan-Africanism in it’s Broader Sense
The 7th PAC closed with a re-invigorated Pan African movement. So much so that
the dynamism coming from the 7th PAC impacted at high level
leading to the re-structuring of the OAU into the African Union (AU).
Yet the AU and the promotion of the African Renaissance concept by
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, despite their apparent promise,
in the final analysis failed to meet one of the cardinal principles of
the Pan African movement, the integration of the Diaspora and it’s
Continent. In Darfur the AU was unable to go to the root of the issues
and advance solutions, merely separating the belligerents.
In the period post 1994 events in the Borderlands have
increasingly received focus, demanding attention. Mauritania is a case
in point, deriving its name from the Moors, otherwise known as Arabs. In
1991 the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated the population as fewer
than two million, of which sixty per cent were black Africans. Africans
originally occupied the area. Arabs arrived from 570AD driven by drought
in Arabia. They had been proceeded by Berbers.
Whereas the Arabs originally lived in the north of Mauritania as
nomads, with African pastoralists living in the south, drought in the
north lead to the Arabs moving south, assisted by a racist Arabist
Government in the capital Nouakchott, pushing the Africans off their
lands, as happened in Darfur.
There are at least half a million Black slaves in Mauritania. A
practice dating back to the 8th century. John Mercer in his
Introductory Remarks in the Anti-Slavery Society Report of 1982 states
that Nkrumah’s friend, Muktar Ould Dada, Head of State of Mauritania
from 1960 to 1978, kept slaves behind the Presidential Palace. Groups
such as the African Liberation Forces of Mauritania
(FLAM) created in 1983 by Black Mauritanians, took up arms
against the government, opposing Arab racism.
At the 7th Pan-African Congress held in April 1994, in
Kampala, Uganda was Dr John Garang De Mabior, representing the Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army
(SPLM/A). Garang’s speech then replicated that delivered to the 17th
All Africa Students’ Conference (AASC) in 2005. Garang said
Africa must unite not as a continent, but as a Nation, and therein
lies our collective survival as a people.
In Sudan people such as the Borgo, Berti and Maali were forced to
denationalise and become Arabs. In 1960. these groups were used to fight
Southern Sudanese with great ferocity. The African Darfurians were
pitched against the Southerners. Later the Khartoum government armed an
Arab nomad militia from Tchad and Libya, against the Africans in Darfur.
It was at this point the African Darfurians realised they were the
subjects of Arab racism, that Islam would not save them and that they
were indeed Africans. This process of conscietisation was consequent on
the sacrifices of the South, which in point if fact, forced Khartoum, by
armed struggle, to the negotiating table.
Garang went on to say in his Address to the 7th Congress:
This Congress must consolidate
the solidarity, or rather the oneness of the Africans on the Continent
and those in the Diaspora. This Congress must call upon Africans in
North and South America to play an effective role in the African
Renaissance and in building the African Nation….
In the article ‘Iraq in Black‘ by Theola Labbe published in
Crisis Magazine March/April 2004, it is stated
that the number of Black people in Iraq is unknown. Many African slaves
were imported when Iraq was the capital of the Islamic world. Many
descendants of these live in Basra today. They are the subjects of
racism and discrimination. Some trace their origins to places in Africa
such as Kenya and Nubia in Sudan. Traditions are kept, such as healing
and spiritual rituals. A statistic to be kept in mind is that there are
over one million Black Saudis in Saudi Arabia. That country officially
abolished slavery in 1962.
The campaign for reparations, for example, for Arab–led slavery, is at the
stage of ‘fence-setting‘. That is the creation of a powerful moral position supporting
reparations. The World Conference Against Racism and it’s NGO Forum,
both of 2001, show the way forward for positive action on such diverse
issues as slavery and colonialism (Para 99 Conference Declaration) and
provides remedies such as reparations. The NGO Forum pronounced on
Slavery in Mauritania, Sudan, Cameroon and Niger (Para 99, 236 and 237),
colonialism (Para 44 and 95), as well as on Africans and African
Descendants (Para 231), providing for reparations. (Paras 238-247)
The 17th All African Students’ Conference (AASC), Windhoek,
Namibia, May 2005.
The All African Students’ Conference (AASC) series purposefully
linked itself with Pan African tradition and was constituted by African
students from Africa and the Diaspora as well as individuals from
organizations working in the interest of Africa and the Diaspora. The
first AASC convened in 1989. All previous meetings had taken place in
historically black institutions annually in North America or the
Caribbean.
The 17th AASC held 28th - 29th May 2005 brought the series
home to Africa. The Office of the Dean of Students, University of
Namibia (UNAM), hosted the meeting. The theme of the 17th
Conference was ‘Pan Africanism – Strengthening the link between
Africa and its Diaspora’. The proceedings of the Conference were
published. Themes of the conference were: - the Impact of Pan
Africanism; Identity and Society – some Pan African perspectives; Pan
Africanism and Curriculum Development in Africa and it’s Diaspora; Pan
Africanism, African Nationalism and Afro-Arab Relations – putting the
African Nation in context; Promoting Inter-African Trade, Meeting the
Economic Challenges; Towards the 8th Pan-African Congress;
Students involvement in the Pan–African Movement; and Early influences
in the Pan-African Movement; and Reparations and Nationality Rights –
meeting the challenges of the Diaspora in the 21st century. The
Statement, which issued from the Conference, amongst others, placed
emphasis on Haiti, The African Nation and tensions in the Afro-Arab
Borderlands.
Conclusion
The reason the Pan-African movement lost momentum once ‘ independence’ was
achieved was the over preoccupation with the nation state, which drew
it’s inspiration from the Berlin Conference of 1884-5. The same
national entity that Walter Rodney in his paper for the Sixth
Pan-African Congress identified as the major impediment to
African unity. Another cause was the weak sense of national unity
amongst us. Here reference is not to the states, created by
‘independence‘, but the supra body, the African Nation.
April 2006
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