💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › saint-andrew-what-is-pan-africanism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:50:57. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: What is Pan-Africanism? Author: Saint Andrew Date: Feb 17, 2021 Language: en Topics: pan-africanism, black anarchism, anarkata, Breadtube Source: Retrieved on June 8, 2021 from https://youtu.be/48Y5pBtRHqk
Let’s talk about Pan-Africanism, its history, its present, its
criticisms, and its future.
Many books have been written on the subject of Pan-Africanism, devoting
a lot of time to carve out some sort of definition. Some writers don’t
even bother to define it, conceding that it has meant different things
to different people at different times. I’ll be presenting just some of
their many differing views on what Pan-Africanism is and what it should
look like, so draw your own conclusions. That being said, lewwe try a
ting with the definition anyway.
Pan-Africanism is grounded in the belief that all African-descended
peoples are one nation. Not in the sense of nation state, but in the
sense of all African-descended peoples, both on continent and diaspora,
sharing an interconnected history, purpose, and destiny. That destiny
being a united and independent Africa as the basis for liberation. As an
ideology and movement, Pan-Africanism encourages solidarity and unity
for economic, social, cultural, and political progress and emancipation,
and ultimately, the uplifting of all peoples of African-descent.
Pan-Africanists have worked to resist the exploitation and oppression of
all those of African heritage, oppose and refute the ideologies of
anti-African racism, and celebrate African achievement, history and the
very notion of being African. Most Pan-Africanists throughout history
have also been various flavours of socialist, seeing capitalism as the
enemy of liberation and seeing communal relations, as were present in
pre-colonial African societies, as a necessity.
Pan-Africanism is heavily tied to Black nationalism, which arose around
the social, political, and economic empowerment of Black communities.
The nation here is not defined by borders, but rather by people who are
bound together by common experience, especially to resist Western
domination and maintain Black cultures and identities. It is wholly
separate from white nationalism, which took the name decades later and
is inextricably tied to white supremacy.
So who are some of these thinkers, leaders, politicians who have added
to the body of Pan-Africanism? Let’s see…there’s Toussaint Louverture,
Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, Marcus Garvey, C.L.R.
James, Kwame Ture, Malcolm X, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Aimé
Césaire...I could go on. As you can see, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. It
would be hard to describe all of these people as united in objective, as
their ideas were often quite divergent. Yet, in some sense, they all
flew the metaphorical flag of Pan-Africanism.
Oh yeah, Pan-Africanism has a pretty fly flag. The red represents the
blood that unites all people of African ancestry, and that must be shed
for liberation, the Black represents Black people as a nation united
under a common heritage, and the green represents the lush abundance of
Africa’s wealth.
To understand Pan-Africanism, you need some context on the history of
African peoples, which I can only provide in very broad strokes for now.
As the most genetically diverse continent in the world and the cradle of
humanity, it is from Africa that various peoples dispersed and carved
spaces for themselves across the world. Africa has a legacy spanning
thousands of years of nations, kingdoms, and cultures rising, falling,
innovating, expanding, and sharing with the wider world. Africans
throughout history contributed to the development of mathematics,
astronomy, medicine, architecture, philosophy, and more. Even
post-colonialism, there are over 3,000 ethnic groups in Africa. I don’t
use the term tribe, by the way, because historically speaking, it’s been
wielded to dismiss complex societies that Europeans have seen as
primitive.
Prior to colonization, there was no shared Pan-African identity on the
continent. How could there be? They didn’t all share the same religion,
language, or culture. The Khoisan peoples in South Africa had little in
common with the Songhai of West Africa or the Habesha of East Africa.
Africa is massive, and even people living right next to each other had
vastly different lifestyles, practices, and barriers that separated
them.
It’s no surprise then, that when the Atlantic Slave Trade kicked into
gear, starting with the Portuguese, things truly devolved into madness.
Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery, often by fellow Africans.
Kingdoms and nations which facilitated slavery were quick to become
enslaved themselves. The brutal appetite for more exploitable,
disposable labour in the Americas increased. At least 12 million
Africans were transported to the Americas, millions more died in the
perpetration of this great crime, and new nations came to be established
in the Caribbean, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere. It was the
largest forced migration event in human history. There was also the
Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, which is often left out of the conversation
surrounding the enslavement of Africans as its consequences do not
compare in size nor scope, but I do still find it important to
highlight.
It was through the Atlantic Slave Trade and the subsequent gruelling and
inhumane treatment in the Americas that the various peoples of Africa
were stripped of their original cultures and brought together for the
very first time. The African diaspora began to unite and develop
identities of their own. Meanwhile, Africa was colonized and carved up
by competing and collaborating European powers, all hungry for the
wealth of the continent. At the Berlin Conference, borders and divisions
were drawn that continue to cripple the continent today.
It has been nearly 500 years since the first Trans-Atlantic slave
voyage. As a people, we have not known peace nor justice since. The
creation of our diaspora came alongside the emergence of global
capitalism, European domination, and anti-Black racism. Racist ideas
were forged to support the economic motives of the elites, and even
today, many still hold to a perception of African inferiority,
(mis)informing their attitude toward our conditions. We still suffer
from the erasure and suppression of our history and legacy. Our labour
has built and continues to build the wealth of the Global North. We have
been exploited not just by European powers, but also Arab and Asian
powers, and our enslavement persists today across the world. Our land
has been stolen and we have been stolen from our land. We have been
denied autonomy, denied rights, and denied our very humanity.
The historic response of African peoples has been Pan-Africanism, a
river with many streams and currents. Let’s discuss some of the major
thinkers and movements over the years.
In the late 18^(th) century, the slave trade was in full swing. And yet,
even then, abolitionists worked to campaign for its end. One of the most
famous of these abolitionist groups was The Sons of Africa, made up of
educated, formerly-enslaved Africans in London. It was the first Black
political group in Britain and has been described as one of the first
Pan-African organizations. The Sons of Africa wrote letters to the
press, lobbied Parliament, jointly addressed the Quakers and co-operated
with other abolitionists and radicals as part of the wider campaign
against the trafficking of Africans and for the rights of all. Notable
members included Olaudah Equiano, a slave since childhood, sold twice
before purchasing his freedom, and Ottobah Cugoano, who was sold into
slavery when he was 13 years old and eventually purchased, educated, and
freed by a British merchant.
Arguably the most existentially terrifying moment for the European
empires in the early 19^(th) century was the success of the slave revolt
in Haiti. The Haitian revolution, famously led by, among others,
Toussaint Louverture, began in 1791 and ended in 1804, establishing the
first and only state to be founded by slave uprising. It challenged
long-held European beliefs about the intelligence and capacity of
enslaved peoples to achieve and maintain their own freedom. While
post-revolution Haiti faced assassinations, embargoes, crippling
taxation by the French, and a highly segmented colour-based class
society, what Haitians established was a beacon of hope for Africans
everywhere, even post-emancipation. Haiti became a safe haven for
runaway slaves, revolutionaries, and all who were oppressed.
In the mid to late 19^(th) century, early thinkers like Alexander
Crummel, Martin Delany, and Edward Blyden began to lay the groundwork
for more comprehensive Pan-African thought. Alexander Crummel, born free
in 1819, was one of the first Black nationalists, advocating for
solidarity and economic development. Martin Delany, born free in 1812,
famously called for “Africa for Africans”. He believed that Black people
had no future in the United States, and should leave to found a new
nation elsewhere, like in the Caribbean or South America. He ruthlessly
criticized so many individuals, ideas, and institutions that he
alienated moderate abolitionists. He also opposed racial segregation (0f
course) and was well known for his deep-seated pride in his own people.
Lastly, Edward Blyden, born free in 1832, advocated for a return to
Africa to help rebuild the continent. He was one of the first to
articulate a notion of “African Personality”.
A lot of their ideas and actions would be considered outdated or plain
wrong today, like Crummel’s colonization efforts in Liberia and Blyden’s
support of Zionism. Nonetheless the works and ideas of all three of
these men would still go on to inspire countless future Pan-Africanists.
Pan-Africanism really began to take shape with the beginning of the
first Pan-African conference in London in 1900. It was organized by
Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams, just before the Paris
Exhibition of the same year. It was attended by 37 delegates and 10
other participants from across the diaspora. One notable attendee was
W.E.B. DuBois, who played a leading role in drafting a letter to
European leaders appealing to them to struggle against racism, to grant
the right to self-government to the colonies in Africa and the West
Indies, and demanding political and other rights for African Americans.
It was the first time in history that Black people had gathered from all
parts of the world to discuss and improve the condition of their race.
After the conference, chapters of the Pan-African Association were set
up in Jamaica, Trinidad, and the US. Eventually they would begin to meet
under the banner of the Pan-African Congress. More on that later.
Onto a rather controversial figure, let’s talk about the so-called Negro
in the Hat: Marcus Garvey. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA). Born in Jamaica in 1887, Garvey was a Black
nationalist in the Pan-African scene who advocated for racial pride and
the building of institutions for the African diaspora. However, it would
be more accurate to describe him as a dictatorial Black separatist, as
he envisioned a unified Africa as a one-party state, governed by
himself, that would enact laws to ensure Black racial purity. He
believed America was a white man’s country and he described himself as
the first fascist and Black capitalist. Although he was staggeringly
ignorant about the diversity present in Africa, considered it backwards,
and never visited the continent himself, he was big in the
Back-to-Africa movement and ran the Black Star Line shipping and
passenger company to help transport Americans to Liberia. He glorified
many Western ideas, and even gave prominent supporters British titles
like “Lords” and “Knights”. He was convicted of mail fraud and blamed
Jewish people for conspiring against him because, and buckle in for this
one, he collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan. He was deeply
anti-socialist, anti-miscegenation, and anti-racial integration. His
organization did design the Pan-African flag, which is cool, but
naturally, he alienated a lot of fellow Pan-African thinkers, as his
ideas were so utterly divergent from the rest of them.
One thinker in particular that he frequently butt heads with was William
Edward Burghardt Du Bois, born in 1868, who described Garvey as a
“demagogue” that he tried his best to ignore. In fact, they seemed to
hate each other. Du Bois is more openly recognized as a father of
Pan-Africanism, although he started with the unfortunate title
“Pan-Negroism”. Throughout his life, he contributed to a vast array of
ideas, including Black Existentialism, and consistently advocated for
the study of African history. He founded the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was an ardent proponent of
equal rights. He was among the first African-Americans to highlight the
colonial condition in Africa, and was deeply opposed to Garvey’s notion
of African-American rule over Africa. Du Bois also understood the deep
connections between capitalism and racism, and believed that socialism
may be a better path towards racial equality. He was forced out of the
NAACP due to his praise for Karl Marx and communist sympathies. Later in
his life, he fled the US and found refuge in Ghana, under the leadership
of Kwame Nkrumah, and died the day before Dr Martin Luther King’s March
on Washington in 1963, which he himself tried to organize 60 years
before.
By now we cooking. In the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, a whole wave of thinkers
and ideas came into the fold of the movement. The development and
propagation of Pan-African ideas would spread even further, and it had
tremendous influence on the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which Du
Bois had helped promote. The first four Pan-African Congresses took
place during this time. In 1919 in Paris, 1921 in London, 1923 in London
again, and 1927 in New York City.
At the first Congress, there were 57 delegates representing 15
countries, including Du Bois and Ida Gibbs, who represented Pan-Africa.
The focus of this Congress in Paris was the petitioning of the
Versailles Peace Conference, demanding that The Allies collaborate in
the administration of former territories in Africa and that Africa be
granted home rule. At the second Congress, Du Bois described the
attendance of 26 different groups of people from all across Africa,
Europe, The Caribbean, and The Americas, as well as fraternal
organizations from Asia. The focus of this Congress, which took place in
London, Brussels, and Paris, was the issuance of a declaration that
criticized European colonial domination in Africa and lamented the
unequal state of relations between white and Black races, calling for a
fairer distribution of the world’s resources. At the third and fourth
Congresses in London and New York City, the delegates again demanded
self-rule and an end to European profiteering of the continent, and
addressed problems in the Diaspora related to lynching and white
minority rule.
There were also activists and writers like CLR James that gained
prominence in this time. CLR James, born in Trinidad in 1901, made bold
contributions to Black radical thought, blending Pan-African and Marxist
ideas. He notably challenged the false dichotomy of “Pan-African
Nationalism” or “Labour Internationalism” and therefore synthesized his
opposition to racial, colonial, and class-based oppression. He deserves
a video of his own. Other thinkers of this time include American Paul
Robeson, Trinidadian George Padmore, Senegalese LĂ©opold Senghor,
Martiniquan Aimé Césaire, and Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta. You could call it a
Pan-African, Black Atlantic intellectual community, as ideas traded
freely across the diaspora.
In the late 1940s, amidst the Red Scare in the US, the rather socialist
Pan-Africanist movement receded and Africans began to take the helm
where African-Americans had before. In this era, I’d like to highlight
the 5^(th) Pan-African Congress and the rise of Kwame Nkruma.
At the 5^(th) Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945, in the
presence of 200 members, the foundations of contemporary Pan-Africanism
were laid. The goal was to draw up a general outline of a practical
programme for the political liberation of Africa. They were far more
militant than previous Congresses, desiring a free federation of African
socialist states. As we will soon see, the results in the latter half of
the century were a bit of a mixed bag. The Congress made demands for
Independence, called for solidarity among all oppressed and exploited
peoples, and condemned imperialism, racial discrimination, and
capitalism. The 5^(th) Congress would produce a diverse crop of African
intellectual and political leaders who would go on to influence the
continent in a variety of ways, including Obafemi Awolowo, and Kwame
Nkrumah.
Nkrumah, born in 1909, was a pan-African Marxist-Leninist who led the
Gold Coast independence movement that created the nation of G hana in
1957 and co-founded the Organization of African Unity in 1963. He was
deeply influenced by Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore,
CLR James, and Edward Blyden, looking to them for guidance on how Africa
can build itself to become a force for good in the world. With
independence, he became Ghana’s first Prime Minister.
Ghana under his leadership was basically a social democracy with a
strong welfare state, education, healthcare, and some nationalized
industries. He also worked to rapidly industrialize the country. Nkrumah
promoted a Pan-African culture, decried Euro-centric norms, promoted
traditional clothing, and opened museums and other cultural
institutions. He also banned tribal identification in an effort to
suppress the influence of local chiefs, with little success, and slowly
grew his autocratic abilities, banning other political parties and
becoming President for life. He was also criticized for building up a
personality cult. Eventually he was overthrown in 1966 via
Western-backed coup and the National Liberation Council that took
control privatized national industries under the supervision of
multinational corporations. He never returned to Ghana again, and spent
the rest of his days in Guinea, as honorary co-president of Ahmed SĂ©kou
Touré, a fellow “president for life”.
By now, Pan-Africanism was beginning to decline outside of Africa. In
the US, The Black Panther Party became active between 1966 and 1982,
militantly advocating for Black Power and organizing community social
programs and cop-watches. The FBI considered the Black Panther Party
“the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and worked
to infiltrate the structure of the Party, assassinate and jail members
and leaders, and drain resources. More than any previous Black political
organization, the Black Panther Party emphasized class struggle, even
over Pan-Africanism, leading to an eventual split with Kwame Ture and
other more black nationalist members. The organization was far from
perfect, with many internal divisions and tensions, due to the
leadership’s hostility towards dissenting perspectives and alternative
ideologies.
Meanwhile in Africa, the 6^(th) Pan African Congress commenced in 1974
in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Unlike previous Pan-African Congresses, it
took place outside of the Western imperial core. It was at this stage
that Pan-Africanists identified the threat of neocolonialism,
considering the overthrow of various African governments and the use of
Africans to assist in their downfall. Thus there was more emphasis
amongst Pan-Africanists on class struggle against Western, Eastern, and
African capitalists. However, they also, slowly, began to realize the
failure of the various bureaucratic forms of socialism, and that the
masses needed to be more involved to defeat elitism and autocracy. They
also finally openly addressed the issue of women and decided to give
support to political struggles for equality undertaken by black women.
This period also saw the rise of religiously zealous state capitalists
like Robert Mugabe and Muammar al-Gaddafi, and the rise and fall of
Thomas Sankara. Mugabe was the corrupt and ideologically vague Prime
Minister and then President of Zimbabwe for three decades, starting in
1980. Gaddafi was an anti-Semitic Pan-Arabist and Pan-African who ruled
Libya for 42 years starting in 1969 and advocated for the “United States
of Africa”. Thomas Sankara was the so-called Che Guevara of Africa who
launched largely positive, radical programmes for social, ecological,
and economic change in Burkina Faso beginning in 1983. Of course, he
also suppressed striking workers, banned unions, and restricted media
freedom so...I have mixed feelings about him. Perhaps I’ll talk about it
some other day. He was assassinated and his government was seized in
1987.
The last decades of the 20^(th) century dealt with the question of what
Pan-Africanism should look like as the new millennium approached.
Scholars began to develop the body of Afrocentrism, which emphasized
African modes of thought, culture, and historical perspective as a
corrective to the long tradition of European cultural and intellectual
domination.
With the end of the Cold War, a new era of globalization began, yet
Africa remained vulnerable to external intervention and neo colonialism.
However, this period also saw some wins against settler colonialism,
such as in South Africa with the end of Apartheid. The question of
reparations for the impact of slavery and colonialism was reinvigorated
at the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations in Abuja, Nigeria, in
1993. The Seventh Pan-African Congress was held in Kampala, Uganda, in
1994 and the Organization for African Unity was replaced by the African
Union in 2002, which declared that it would encompass the entire African
diaspora. The relevance of socialism in Pan-Africanism was now being
questioned by post-Cold War era capitalist African leaders.
Pan-Africanists and Black Africans also began to question who counts as
an African in order to best create the conditions for African liberati
on and unity, as the enslavement of Black Africans by Arabs continues
even to this day, especially in Libya and Mauritania.
So what’s happening now?
There’s so much more I could’ve gone into concerning the past century of
Pan-Africanism. What is clear is that while there may be agreement on
the need for change, there are many differing views as to the nature of
this change and how it might be brought about.
Pan-Africanism isn’t discussed as often these days, even in radical
diasporic circles, despite ongoing issues of corruption and oppression
on the continent. Racism, Eurocentrism, the consequences of enslavement,
colonialism and its legacies, a capital-centred world, and imperialism
are all still relevant. Yet celebrities, opportunists, liberals, and
memes have seized popular consciousness. A lot of people seem to have
forgotten about international solidarity, but things might start
changing soon.
Black Lives Matter Global Network might be considered by some to be a
Pan-African movement, but is it? The Network states that its “intention
from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the
world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their
communities.” But can it truly be considered Pan-African without a
central concern with Africa? Is BLM Global something different
altogether? What is the future of Pan-Africanism?
I’m not a seance, but through this journey exploring Pan-Africanism,
certain lessons have been made abundantly clear.
Firstly, Pan-Africanists need to delve much deeper into African history
in order to avoid the errors of early thinkers, who homogenized African
peoples and did not understand or reconcile divisions between nations,
communities, and countries on the continent and in the diaspora. We are
united in our struggle, but struggle isn’t all there is. We are still a
diverse and multifaceted people, with different needs and interests that
need to be taken into account.
Secondly, petitions don’t work. Electoral and liberal strategies for
Pan-African liberation are time consuming ventures with very little
payoff. The first Pan-African Congresses were focused on appealing to
the governments of the world to respect African rights and freedoms, but
it mostly fell on deaf ears. Even when such efforts did succeed, the
rulers of the world still found ways to exploit us, through neo-colonial
practices facilitated by the Black faces in high places they set up.
And speaking of Black faces in high places, it’s clear that centralized,
top-down organization based on elitism and cult of personality, as well
as statist ventures as a whole, are a dead end. As the saying goes, “The
Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” At best, such
leaders have become mere social democrats in a still stratified, neo
colonized society, like Nelson Mandela. At worst, they’ve become
corrupt, opportunistic autocrats, violently forcing their will onto the
people, like Robert Mugabe. Or they’ve ended up imprisoned/assassinated
like the Black Panther Party leaders, resulting in the demise of the
whole organization. None of these attempts have led to the autonomy,
free association, and self-realization of the masses. None of them have
prefigured anything close to the freedom of African peoples that
Pan-Africanism espouses. Pan-Africanism needs to move past
leader-centric organization and focus on the full involvement and
consensus of the people through horizontal organization based on local
autonomy and global solidarity.
Pan-Africanists must also understand that there can be no Pan-Africanism
that maintains sexism, colourism, texturism, homophobia, transphobia,
queerphobia, ableism, or any other mode of oppression. Previous
movements have failed to include and uplift some of the most vulnerable
in our community. We can’t change the past but we can learn for the
future. The Anarkata philosophy and movement is particularly skilled at
this, as it draws from a number of revolutionary frameworks, including
Black Marxism, Pan Africanism, Black feminism, Social Ecology,
Anarchism, and Queer liberation to build an inclusive, horizontal,
anti-imperial, and eco-focused movement without being invested in
hierarchy, centralization, or a “Pan-African State” as the means to
achieve global Black liberation.
There’s still a deep hunger for freedom. There’s still a need to unite.
We’re still being subjugated and exploited by nations and capitalists of
all flags. Africa & Africans, and oppressed peoples across the Global
South, remain the pillars that hold up the capitalists of this Earth.
Pan-Africanism is just one of many tools at our disposal as we make our
way forward with knowledge of our history and ambition for our future.
Our ecologically grounded, horizontally organized, decentrally planned,
locally focused, globally minded, and socially centered future.
Peace.