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Celebrating six decades of Pan-Africanism: Alternative routes for continent's heritage

By: Ali A. Mazrui

[ Posted On: 2006-09-24 ]

Last year marked the 60th anniversary since the end of the World War II. With additional moral relief, the year also marked the end of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, Gypsies and others. Also celebrated was the aftermath of the invasion of Normandy by the Allies.

But one little event of 1945 was significantly omitted: a small conference of immense historical significance for Pan-Africanism. The event signified an important phase of Black history.

Since then Black history has encompassed four stages of Pan-Africanism: global, continental, sub-continental and local. One of the ironies of the African experience is that Pan-Africanism went global before it went local.

Last year marked the 60th anniversary since a globally oriented Pan-African Congress met in Manchester, England, in 1945. At that time Pan-Africanism was global partly because World War II was just ending, and the world was searching for alternative visions for the future.

That year also witnessed the formation of the United Nations Organisation, the first truly global institution. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, was far less representative of the human race as the USA and Africa were excluded from it.

The Pan-African Congress of 1945 was in the shadow of such momentous global events. This relatively obscure Pan-African Conference in Manchester included participants destined to become global figures, including Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, W E B Dubois of the United States and George Padmore of the Caribbean. They were unknown at that time, but they grew into global dimensions. There was also the Pan-African legacy of Jamaica’s Marcus Garvey in the background of Manchester.

In the 1950s and 1960s Pan-Africanism moved from a global-centric Black movement to an Afro-centric continental movement. As head of the newly independent Ghana, Nkrumah hosted the all-Africa People’s Conference in 1958. This meeting brought together representatives of the people of Africa to Accra. He also hosted a separate conference of the few African states that were already independent.

In 1963 Pan-Africanism went truly continental with the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa. The year 1963 was good for relations between Arab Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Algeria had just become independent in 1962 and Egypt’s Gamal Nasser was becoming a truly global figure. But 1963 was a bad year for relations between Anglophone and Francophone Africa because of the assassination of Sylvanus Olympio in Francophone Togo, and the suspicion that Anglophone Ghana might have been implicated.

The OAU nursed the wounds between Francophone and Anglophone Africa. It also helped to build on the emerging cordiality between Arab Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Relations between the two almost evolved into a case of pid pro quo. African states supported the Arabs in their struggle against Israeli injustices to the Palestinians. Conversely, Arab states supported Africans in their struggle against the injustices of apartheid in South Africa. But there were states on both sides that would have supported each other regardless of the pid pro quo proposition.

After this continental phase when Pan-Africanism was struggling for decolonisation and against racial minority rule, the movement went sub-continental in the form of sub-regional integration. The East African Community rose and fell. The Economic Community of West African States was spread on the wings of West African solidarity. Southern Africa reached new levels of regional integration decades after the old days of Pan-African Movement of East, Central and Southern Africa. North Africa tried to find modus vevendi between Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism in the wake of Gamal Nasser’s death in 1970.

Pan-Africanism was then challenged on the cultural front. The question had arisen as to whether Africa was a convergence of civilisations and not just a mixture of tribes and mini-states.

Islam and the West converged with the ancestors of Africa.

Cultural nationalism in Black America often looks to ancient Egypt for inspiration, perceiving pharaonic Egypt as a Black civilization. Caribbean Black nationalism has shown a tendency to look to Ethiopia. The Egyptian route to Black cultural validation again emphasises complexity and gloriana. On the other hand, the Ethiopian route to Black cultural validation can be Biblical and austere. These are comparative Diasporas in search of ancestral reaffirmation.

The most influential Ethiopic movement in the African Diaspora has become the Rastafari movement, with its Jamaican roots. Named after Haile Selassie’s older titled designation, the Jamaican movement evolved a distinctive way of life, often austere. Curiously enough, the movement’s original deification of the Emperor of Ethiopia was more Egyptian than Abyssinian. The fusion of Emperor with Godhead was almost pharaonic.

The ancient Kings of Egypt built the pyramids as alternative abodes. The ‘divine’ monarchs did not really die when they ceased to breathe; they merely moved to a new address. To die was, in effect, to change one’s address and modify one’s life-style. In this sense the original theology of the Rastafari movement was a fusion of Egyptianism and pre-Biblical Ethiopianism. The resulting life-style of the Rastas, on the other hand, has been closer to romantic simplicity than to romantic gloriana. In North America the Rasta style is still more likely to appeal to people of Caribbean origin than to long-standing African-Americans with their grander paradigm of cultural pride.

Pan-Africanism and Pan-Islamism are two alternative routes towards the African heritage.

After all, Islam first arrived in the Americas and in South Africa in chains; it was brought to the Western hemisphere by enslaved Africans and in South Africa through enslaved Malays.

If Alex Haley is correct about his African ancestor, Kunta Kinte was a Muslim. So Haley assures us in the book, Roots. In reality the Haley family under slavery was better able to preserve its African pride than to protect its Islamic identity. Slavery damaged both the legacy of African culture and the legacy of Islam among the imported Black captives. But for quite a while, Islam in the Black Diaspora was destroyed more completely than was Africanity.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Prof. Ali Mazrui is Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Kenya.

| View Profile & All Articles By: Ali A. Mazrui |

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