INTRODUCING PAN-AFRICANISM

Marcus Garvey and W.E.B Du Bois Founding Fathers of the Pan African movement. Previously it was argued that Pan-Africanism was not well understood in Southern Africa. What was better understood in that region was black consciousness. Whereas black consciousness is part of Africanism, Pan-Africanism is distinct,from black consciousness, certainly in the Southern African context.Black conciousness seems to have been a particular Southern African reaction to institutionalized racism under apartheid, and should be understood as race based African nationalism, a reaction to state sponsored racism. In the Southern Africa struggle for emancipation against racism and settler colonialism black consciousness (or black nationalism) was the alternative philosophy to socialism. In South Africa and in Namibia, at least in the first phase of the struggle for selfgovernment, socialism triumphed and black consciousness lost out. This we saw as between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan African Congress (PAC) in South Africa and The South West Africa Peoples Organization (SWAPO) and The South West African Students Union (SWANU) in Namibia. In West Africa, in Ghana for example, the absence of settlers meant that the need to assert an African consciousness had no relevance. African identity was only an issue in so far as the foreign policy was concerned. Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of independent Ghana had attended the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England in 1945. He was a practicing PanAfricanist, so that the foreign policy of Ghana in the Nkrumah years was driven by PanAfricanism.In those years W.E.B.Du Bois lived in Ghana. Nkrumahs choice of continentalism ( ie continental unity ) before unity with Africas Diasporas, has resulted in a re-appraisal in west and southern Africa of his foreign policy legacy (ie Organisation of African Unity/OAU), which is felt to be at odds with the reality in the Afro-Arab Borderlands, stretching from Mauritania on the west coast of Africa, through Mali, Niger, Tchad to Sudan on the Red Sea. In South Africa, what appears to have happened, is that despite the early influence of Garvey and Pan-Africanism in the period around 1920, and the undoubted role Pan Africanism played in the armed struggle for freedom in Namibia, in South Africa in particular black consciousness was identified in the public mind as synonymous with Pan-Africanism. This situation was further complicated by the decision by the South African black consciousness movement, at the behest of Nkrumah, to call itself the Pan African Congress of Azania (PAC). Over the past decade in South Africa we saw the PAC squander its huge Pan-Africanist potential capital in its pursuit of a black consciousness agenda (Beko had said I write as I like), which had nothing to do with Pan-Africanism, but which the public in South Africa perceived was a Pan-African agenda. If the PAC had been a Pan-African organisation it should have been pre-occupied with developments in Africa and its Diaspora..

Minority communities in Southern Africa and in Africa in general consider Pan Africanism inimical to their interests. It is therefore necessary to contextualise Pan Africanism. For instance the farm murders in South Africa are associated in the public mind with Pan-Africanism. In truth Pan-Africanism is not anti-white,nor anti-Arab but pro-African.It is not a racist agenda. Pan-Africanism, as Walter Rodney stated, is the movement for the unity of the Africans at home and abroad, within Africa and its Diaspora. Specifically Pan-Africanism is the movement to unify the African Nation at home (being constituted by Africans South of Sahara) and in the Diasporas, which includes both the Western Diaspora in the Americas and Carribean, and the Eastern Diaspora in Arabia, north Africa and other parts, where people of African descent find themselves. Another truth which needs to be stated and which is often lost, is that there is only one route to African unity and that is via Pan-Africanism/African nationalism. That may appear obvious, but the fact is that few of the people who talk about African unity have taken time to read and study the development of the ideal. The question needs to be asked, why? One would go so far as to call Pan-Africanism/African nationalism a political science, or rather a particular area of polical science, or alternatively, international relations. Like any other science it can be studied. One knows of few places in Africa where specific courses in Pan-Africanism are taught. South Africa has a number of such African study centres, such as the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) and the Centre for African Renaissance Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA). In Southern Africa only the Pan-Afrikan Center of Namibia (PACON) has in its objectives the dissemination of Pan-Africanism which aim has yet to be achieved. As South Africa advances in its active role in African affairs it is obliged to adopt elements of Pan-Africanism, such as its recently found concern for the African Diaspora. In a world increasingly divided into continental unions, the relevance of the Pan-African experience will be an increasing source of inspiration, which cannot be ignored, based as it is on historical fact. We can either build on what we have, or ignore it at our peril. J.N.Karioki of AISA in Pretoria, South Africa, in his chapter contribution to the 2006 book publication of Gamsberg Macmillan ( obtainable from elmarie@bookden.com.na ) of Windhoek, Namibia, entitled Pan-Africanism; Strengthening the unity of Africa and its Diaspora , informs us how the ANC of South Africa adopted Pan-Africanism. This took place in March 2005 at the South African-African Union-Caribbean Diaspora Conference, held in Kingston, Jamaica in the Caribbean. Kariokis article is presented with three subtitles Racial Pan-Africanism, Continental Pan-Africanism and Global Pan-Africanism. He states that this Conference was called by continental Africans- South Africans, who reached out to African Diasporans- Caribbeaners, despite the African Unions exclusion of the Diaspora, at the behest of Arabia. In the Journal of Southern African Studies, volume 30, number 1 of March 2004, is found the article Communist and Black Freedom movements in South Africa and the United States: 1919-1950by Edward Johanningsmeier. The paper begins by making the

connection between the Garveyist movement in the 1920s and South African activists. Interestingly it has no difficulty in incorporating both the socialist and capitalist (i.e. left and right) orientations in one text. Johanningsmeier is clear about the interaction between the African Diaspora and South Africa by way of Garveyism and Pan Africanism and by way of African-American marxists and black South African marxists. The point here is that Pan-Africanism embraces both the left and right options. Prof Kwesi Prah in his paper entitled Capacity of the Southern African states in developing and implementing policies promotive of African unity through PanAfricanism delivered in Durban in October 2003, tells us about the work of the PanAfricanist Henry Sylvester Williams in Cape Town around 1903. P rah refers to figures such as Sol Plaatje, Selope Thema and Walter Sisulus early politicization by way of Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) founded in Jamaica in 1911.The African World newspaper of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1925 published Garveys African Fundamentalism in an African language. The chapter contribution of Tony Emmett entitled Popular Resistance in Namibia 19201925, in the book Resistance and ideology in the settler societiesedited by Tom Lodge, published in the Southern African Studies series in Johannesburg in 1986, is the authorative source on Garveyism in Namibia. It teaches us that the UNIA Branch in Luderitz was launched in 1921. In that year the branch consisted of 31 members. Names such as Frtz Headley and John De Clue come down to us from the research of Emmett. By January 1922 a UNIA branch existed in Windhoek. Emmett explains how the ideas coming from the UNIA brought together the various ethnic groups in the area of South West Africa to oppose German imperialism. Prior to the influence of Garvey, the groups sort individually to confront foreign influence. The birth of Namibian nationalism finds its root in Garveyism. Prah says in his above-mentioned paper,the Ideal of African unity has been a consistent and ever present feature in African nationalist through since the end of the 19th century.In the unipolar world today, moving to a multi-polar world tomorrow, the politics of unity will be the dominant discourse globally. This discourse for us will be grounded in the soil of African nationalism. However whereas the nationalism which decolonised east Africa was in pursuit of the recognition of the states created by the Berlin Conference, none of these states proved viable. The future objective therefore is the unity of the African Nation, a larger objective than the nation state project. The seed of Pan-Africanism originated in Africa. It then crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, North and South America, where it germinated in the experience of Africans under slavery. In the western Diaspora the experience was refined into a modern philosophical ideal, which came back to Africa by way of a set of ideas circulated at venues such as the 5th Pan-African Congress of 1945,the 6th Pan-African Congress held in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania in 1974, the 7th Pan-African Congress held in Kampala,Uganda and via the Pan-African Congress series convened by WEB Du Bois. The 8th PanAfrican Congress will be convened by Ibbo Mandaza in Zimbabwe.

The experience of the Eastern Diaspora is now being shaped.Its voice is emerging. It did not resonate in the past, as did the Western Diaspora by way of Pan-Africanism,because of the fact that the voice of Africans in the Middle East and Asia was lost due to their denationalisation. We can expect the eastern Diaspora to be more audible and articulate in future, in demanding its space in the Pan-African forum. To go to the essence of the experience of the Diaspora and the lessons to be learnt, these are the practical learning experiences of history -for example Haiti won its sovereignty by armed struggle two hundred years ago. What the experience of Haiti teaches us is that Africans can only expect trials and tribulations as they seek to promote their development. Haiti in its two hundred years of self government has had to contend with invasions , occupations and changes of government, the latest being the forcible removal of President Aristide in 2004, now living in South Africa. How did Haiti contend with these situations ? Why is Haiti one of the least developed countries of the world was it because Haitians were lazy? These and a host of other questions provide us with lessons. Everywhere the Africans were taken out Africa, be it Arabia or the West, they found themselves enslaved as chattels. How did they survive in this hostile environment? These experiences in the belly of the beast teach us in continental Africa how best to defend our interest and who our real friends are. Who were Garvey and Du Bois? What did they achieve? How did they implement their agendas? Why did Nkrumah opt for continentalism and yet identify Garvey as the best example to emulate? Did either of these define for us the African Nation? Concerning the East African context in proto-Pan-African/Pan-African matters Ethiopia holds a unique position.A distinction must be made between ancient Ethiopia ( Kush ), ending with the battle of Adowa in 1896 and modern Ethiopia thereafter. Writers such as Casely-Hayford, with his Ethiopia unbound, brought attention to Ethiopia and its African activities. Ethiopianism came to be understood, in the western Diaspora, as an African Christian church, which remains powerful to this day in north America and the Caribbean. The vision of this church remained African. Parts of it repatriated to Africa ( eg Liberia, South Africa etc ) as did its missionaries. One of these was Edward Wilmot Blyden, whose interest in Islam, took him from Liberia, where he was settled with his family, to the Middle East. Helmi Sharaway in his book Afro-Arab times , published in 2005,states that in 1866 Blyden became the Consul of Liberia in Beruit and Damascus. Blyden was an early patron of African Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. In Febuary 1929 Jomo Kenyatta arrived in England from Kenya and attended the International Conference of Negro Workers, which was also attended by Pan-Africanists such as George Padmore, South Africans and others.With time Kenyatta was to become one of the leading lights of the Pan-African movement, taking the philosophy back to Kenya, along with Koinange, Makonnen and Odinga.

Mohamed Ali Duse ( 1867-1944 ) called himself an Egyptian of Sudanese descent and regarded himself as an African. He worked in many capacities in England. He edited The African Times and Orient Review, a Pan-African journal covering Africa north and south of the Sahara, the Caribbean and Asia. The Journal laid heavy stress on Islam and provided a moderate critique of colonialism.. It appeared in the period 1912 to 1920.In 1920 Duse moved to the USA due to his business interests and collaborated with Garvey on the publication of his The Negro World. In 1931 Duse left the USA and settled with his wife in Lagos, Nigeria. Here he published the paper The Cornet, which journal was to play a significant role in the rise of Nigerian nationalism.In August 1944 he chaired the founding meeting of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), the first mass nationalist party in Africa south of the Sahara. Duse passed away in 1944. The ideas he promoted were to become practical politics. In East Africa Pan-Africanism is central in the agenda of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) led by Yoweri Museveni. This dates from its days in the bush, as a liberation structure. In its issue of October 2006 the South Sudan Post, quoting Museveni, states that from its onset the NRM was for Pan-Africanism so as to strengthen the voice and capacity of Black people.He goes on to state that the Arab chauvinist regimes of Sudan did not want to be neigbours with a Uganda led by Black nationalists. Only in 2002 did the Sudan government stop support for the Lords Resistance Army (LRA).Uganda remains firm in its support for Pan-Africanism. Whereas there are different approaches as to how to build African unity, the reality is that this movement is by its composition, broad based incorporating all shades of opinion.This is the challenge.The two leading pioneers in the Pan-African movement, Marcus Garvey and WEB Du Bois are herewith introcuced on equal footing. Garvey and Du Bois were the Founding Fathers of the African unity movement. They were not the first Pan-Africanists but they emerge, by their dedication and commitment to sets of principles, as significant leaders, who unified Africans across continents. From The Negro almanac- a reference work on the African American, compiled and edited by Ploski and Williams, published by Gale Research Inc. in Detroit, USA in 1989, we learn that Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887. He dedicated his life to the advancement of the African people of the world through the creation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communities League. He believed that Africans could never achieve equality unless they became independent founding their own nations, governments, businesses, industrial enterprises and military establishments. Garvey departed this world in 1940, in England. It is said that whereas many in his day rejected the ideas of Garvey, it is clear that subsequently these have strongly influenced the thinking of Africans globally. With time the vision of Garvey goes from strength to strength. WEB Du Bois was born in the United States of America in 1868. He was an outstanding critic, editor, scholar, author and civil rights leader. He was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in 1909. He

convened the First to the Fifth Pan-African Congresses in various parts of the Western World. He died a citizen of Ghana in 1963 and a member of the Communist Party. Prah in his paper states that Pan Africanism represents the most distinguishing feature of African nationalism as a wider project than neocolonial state formation, opposing the balkanization of the continent. Countless nameless Africans within our Continent gave of their lives to advance African nationalism. Pan-Africanism is made in large measure by the nameless Africans who gave of their lives so that we could be free.

Leer Marialbai 2007