Contemporary Africa And Pan-Africanism
9 April 2009
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However, the main challenge to its growth and adoption has been in rallying behind a common purpose. Earlier on newly independent nations struggled with an organisational form to encapsulate the Pan-African intent. But at the 1957 conference in Ghana and in subsequent conferences, including the 1974 Dar es Salaam Conference, differences in ideologies, political orientation, regional interests, and leadership hindered meaningful progress from being realised.
Our inability to acknowledge and reconcile divergent strands in ideology and movements has strained the development of Pan-Africanism beyond the faction. Individuals at the centre of Pan-Africanism and their politics were indicative of the shades and interests in the movement. Garvey, unlike Du Bois and others was not an intellectual or from the black elite class. He was thus not very popular among his more rationalist peers. Garvey's flamboyance and aspiration as provisional president of Africa is observed in figures like Bokassa, Mobutu, Chiluba, Amin, Mugabe and Taylor, while the more poised intellectuals like Du Bois are observed in figures like Nkurumah, Nyerere and Kaunda. These personalities could not eat at the same table, creating deep personal and political divisions that continue to the present day.
A number of leaders and countries were, however, willing to try to make the grand concept of a united and free Africa a reality. They made great sacrifices to liberate their fellows who were still in bondage, but upon liberation the latter have been reluctant to reciprocate with equal doses of good will. South Africa, a country whose anti-apartheid leadership benefited from the Pan-African experience is now a political and economic sore to African nations. The killings of mostly African immigrants in 2007 and 2008 are but an extension of wider anti-African immigration policies pursued by the South African government. Indeed stringent visa conditions against nationals of former frontline states persists, while European nations that supported apartheid have greater access to Africa's economic magnet.
Yet, at the helm of South Africa's political leadership are revolutionaries, people who were given refuge in neighbouring states to wage a liberation struggle. It is this class that has failed to translate to the masses that stayed behind the value of unity among Africans and the sacrifices neighbouring countries made and continue to make to enable peaceful coexistence in South Africa. How can a class who benefited from an emancipatory ideology in action abandon it amidst so much expectation of a renaissance in the continent?
This presents an opportune moment to explore some of the shifts that have occurred in the continent, which may signal a repositioning of the Pan-African agenda for continued relevance. I will speak only to the most salient areas that I think are critical to novel articulations of Pan-Africanism, so as to promote unity and inclusion. These are aspects that thus far have been ignored by past articulators who, being more consumed with reasoning, failed to nurture a collective will that would transform the African identity.
In many ways the Africa pre and post independence leadership embodied Pan-Africanism. These heads of states who were poll bearers have since died, been assassinated or deposed. The current generation of African leaders are not inheritors of this legacy. In fact with the bulk of the adult population in Africa being born between 1985 and 1990, a period when the original objective of liberation and independence had been achieved, the challenge is in substantiating the continued relevance of the ideology to new generation of Africans who have inherited the seeds of mistrust sown by former disciples of Pan-Africanism like Jomo Kenyatta and Kamazu Banda.
Today's Africans, if they have heard of Pan-Africanism, then it is in a context of what was, not what is or what could be. Pan-Africanism remains an obscure rhetoric that informs an increasingly obsolete academic and activist culture. It formed part of Africa's pre-independence era such that those born in an independent Africa find little attraction with its emancipatory charm. The present occupation in the continent is political and economic unity, as evidenced by the African Union's most visible project c (New Partnership for Africa's Development). Its central thesis is, however, not home-grown nor is it final outcome homebound.
At inception, Pan-Africanism was tied to strong intellectual, labour and other social movements e.g. student movements, revolutionary movements and literary movements. Pan-Africanism was a central thesis in their advocacy. Political agitation for the rights of black people was going on simultaneously both in America and in the continent calling for the end of oppression of black people. This shared purpose is no longer shared by the more recent crop of African Americans in power. Rather the perception is that the likes of Condoleezza Rice or General Colin Powell[1] are a liability to the continent. Overall, they did very little to boost image of Africa or to advocate for the continent.
African unity, among other things, is challenged by the language divide: Anglophone, Lusophone, Francophone or Arab speaking. It is ironic that as a people Africans would rather dialogue via the languages of their colonisers and oppressors but resist attempts to adopt an African language to evidence integration. Therefore Africa continues to operate not only in different language zones regionally, but also nationally, as the more educated elites who run the country and services conduct business in the tongue of the masters while the majority of the population converse in indigenous tongues. Thus indigenous Africa remains rooted while official (and professional) Africa is markedly uprooted.
Albeit philosophical, Pan-Africanism found expression in student movements such as Nkrumah's African Student Organisations in the US and the West African Student Union in Europe. Most nationalist leaders were at different points introduced and inducted to Pan-Africanism during their student days. Alas student movements globally have been weakened. In Tanzania, for example, they are not as political as they were in the 60s and 70s. Today most of their advocacy concerns survival issues and not national and international questions. Furthermore, being increasingly materialistic, young people presently do not have the same affinity to their countries or to the continent, believing that the continent owes them. Rather than involving themselves in the business of salvaging Africa, they see the opportunity to study abroad as a ticket out of Africa. If they do come back to the continent, it is foremost to work for multinational companies and international agencies.
Moreover most intellectuals from Africa, champions of Pan-Africanism, are in flight in foreign universities while labour movements have been weakened by neoliberal economic policies and agendas. Few artists have the political consciousness to contribute to political causes the way Miriam Makeba, Harry Belafonte and Bob Marley did. Political consciousness, nationalist fervour and matriotism are qualities that are passé in the larger political culture.
Certainly, Obama signifies many things to many people. For African American he may epitomise the fruits of a long struggle for civil rights, while for Africans he validates the continent's attribution as a natural source for global leadership - after all he is the son of an African who managed to do what his kin in America failed to for so long. Significantly, Obama redeems the rift between African and African Americans. But whether this necessarily translates in a shared Pan-Africanism remains uncertain, as Obama's politics find greater resonance in the integrationist and reconstructionist politics of Lincoln than in Du Bois, Malcom Shabazz or Martin Luther King Jr.
This is an important reality to contend with as we reconsider the utility of Pan-Africanism today, not just in the diaspora but also in the continent. Surely the face of the diaspora has since changed with Africans and people of African decent being dispersed, mostly by choice, in the East as they are in the West, this time as economic migrants as well as skilled labourers, as diplomats and traders. The more recent diaspora have countries of origin with local chapters. Today we see an African diaspora with a real not just an imagined affinity to the continent. We are dealing with a very different diaspora with different dynamics that needs to be captured in a relevant political articulation.
Remarkably, women continue to be markedly absent from the movement's face, spaces and content. It is notable that women are more visible in Marcus Garvey's populist movement than in more sophisticated chapters. Women such as Amy Ashwood and Amy Jacques, who both were married to Garvey, were active in the Back to Africa movement. The Nardal sisters from Martinique, Claudia Jones and Una Marson, the Jamaican poet were visible literary figures. Among the few African women associated with early Pan-Africanism are Constance Cummings John and Stella Thomas both from West Africa. A similar pattern is also observed in liberation movements where a certain type of freedom fighter was prized over others. Women continue to be unacknowledged and relegated to the background, raising deep suspicion among women with respect to its emancipatory potential.
Indeed, the faces and voices of Pan-Africanism tend to be male, black, mostly middle-aged, and located in academic institutions or think tanks. To a large extent Pan-Africanism remains a global phenomenon that has confined itself to global political agendas and less so on struggles on the ground. For this reason we struggle to define it appropriately in our local languages. I yearn for a popular expression of Pan-Africanism and a matching consciousness such that the concept does not appear surreal, abstract and out of touch with reality and the populace, particularly the youth who are the inheritors of its future.
* Salma Maoulidi is an activist and the executive director of the Sahiba Sisters Foundation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.
NOTES
[1] The same can be said of the governor general of Canada, Michäelle Jean and black woman or Diane Abbott and Paul Boateng from Britain
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