Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism

http://www.thisdayo nline.com/ nview.php? id=125197

Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism

By Professor Bolaji Akinyemi,

10.15.2008

Consciousness of an idea precedes giving it a name. When was the consciousness of being an African as distinct from being a Kikuyu or Ibibio or Ashanti born? Without dating it, Julius Nyerere said rather prosaically “the Africans looked at the Europeans and looked at themselves and knew that vis-à-vis the Europeans, they were one”.

Two issues arise from Nyerere’s position. Firstly is that this Africaness which transmutes into Pan-Africanism as the orthodox norm was a reaction to an external phenomenon. This is not unique to Africa or unique to this particular phenomenon. Communities, states and nations are created to distinguish them from other communities, states and nations. Therefore, the implication of this assertion does not translate into a perjorative conclusion that Europeans created Pan-Africanism. That kind of conclusion could only be validly drawn if only the Europeans had set out deliberately to create a consciousness of being African.

The second issue has to address the question of the relationship between the African Diaspora and Pan-Africanism. If we uphold Nyerere’s position, then the creation/awareness of Pan-Africanism was authoctonous. In fact, the same consciousness developed independently in both Africa and in the Diaspora and arose as a reaction to the same phenomenon of otherness. In other words, Pan-Africanism is an experiential phenomenon (a phenomenon that arises as a reaction to experience) in both its diasporic and domestic spheres. But there is a distinct difference between the two. It is debatable whether the African consciousness ever developed into an attempt to build a relationship to resist colonialism. In other words, did the Luo ever seek an alliance with the Kikuyu against the imposition of a Pax-Britannia. Very doubtful. But there is record to show that from the very beginning, Prince Hall (1787) and Paul Cuffe (1815) , the diasporic Africanness had developed beyond “we are different” to “we are the same”

The third issue raises the relationship between race and Pan-Africanism. Again, if we accept Nyerere’s thesis, it raises an intriguing question: did the consciousness arise from the initial contact with Arab or Asian slave raiders? It is a mute point to which there is at present no answer. But the relevance of this issue will become evident when the issue of whether Pan-Africanism should be given a racial or a geographical expression is discussed. The fact that from time to time an African state raises the issue as Zaire’s Mobutu did in the 1970s when he advocated that African states south of the Sahara should form a separate Pan-African organisation or the raging debate between Ali Mazrui on one hand and Pan-Africanists of different hues over the role of the Arab civilisation in pre-colonial Africa is evidence that the relationship between Pan-Africanism and race is still an issue to be finally laid to rest.

One conclusion that can be laid to rest is that Pan-Africanism from the beginning has had to contend with tension between its radical rejectionist wing and its integrationist wing. The rejectionist wing was associated with Prince Hall who in 1787 tried to raise funds in Boston to return poor Africans from the United States back to Africa, Paul Cuffe who in 1815 set sail with 40 other Africans from the United States to form a settlement in Sierra Leone, and Marcus Garvey whose “Back to Africa” movement electrified America between 1916 and 1920. The integrationist wing was associated with W. E. B. Dubois, Washington and a host of others whose position was that the Africans in America should stay and fight for equality in Africa.

Even though a series of conferences took place in the United States and the United Kingdom, the fate of the Pan-African venture on the eve of the independence of African states was uncertain. The integrationist wing had won the struggle against the rejectionist wing in the United States and the Caribbean. The issue on the eve of the independence era was whether the independence of Africa would mark the ultimate fulfillment of the Pan-African dream or not. Let it not be forgotten that Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Liberia and Ethiopia had been independent before the independence of Gold Coast (Ghana) and nothing had been heard from them about the Pan-African dream.

Kwame Nkrumah changed all that. His speech at independence rather than revel in the glorification of Ghana’s independence, staked out the bold claim that Ghana’s independence would not be complete without the total independence of other African states. It was a unique and unprecedented proclamation, declaring the independence of a state, not as an end in itself but a means to an end. It staked out a militant and radical position which meant a resuscitation of the rejectionist diasporic position in a refined and redefined form. Without wasting time, he moved beyond a declaratory posture to give structure to his position. A Bureau of African Affairs was set up in the Presidency and was manned by non-Ghanaian Africans and diaspora Africans from the United States and the West Indies. No African leader had done this before and none had done this after Nkrumah. It remains a unique contribution by Nkrumah that is still to be emulated. What is obvious is that Nkrumah recognised from the very beginning the danger posed to Pan-Africanism by independence of African states. He recognised the power of seduction of the trappings of independence or to put it in the imitable way of Nyerere “once you have become used to a 21 gun salute as a President, you don’t want a 19 gun salute as a Vice-President”. He took two further steps by summoning and hosting in 1958, two Conferences: a Conference of Independent African States and an All-African Peoples’ Conference. Kwame Nkrumah sought to achieve the following objectives: The first was to lock independent African states into a commitment to pursue the Pan-African dream. The second was to ensure that African states which were still to become independent would not become independent in a Pan-African vacuum. Thirdly, recognising the seductive nature of atomistic state power, he inaugurated the concept of a peoples’ driven Pan-Africanism through the instrumentality of the All-African Peoples’ Conference where non-government political parties were in the majority. The resolutions coming out of the series of All-African Peoples’ Conferences have been consistently more radical than decisions coming out of the conferences of states. To a large extent, the Peoples’ conferences were holding the feet of African Presidents to the fire of radical Pan-Africanism.

Of course one would have to admit that if success is defined only in terms of full achievement of objectives, then to the extent that Africa does not have an African Continental Government accompanied by an African High Command - - two major planks in Nkrumah’s dreams, then one would have to conclude that Nkrumah was a failure on the Pan-African scene. But that conclusion would be far off the mark. Nkrumah succeeded in making independent African states join in the drive to establish a Pan-African organisation, a drive which finally led to the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity and later African Union. The argument that without Nkrumah’s 1958 initiatives, the Organisation of African Unity would have been established in 1963 cannot be sustained. While it is conceded that the Charter of the Organisation of African Unity is a far cry from an African Continental Government, it also marked a far cry from an unorganised continent of atomistic states.

Earlier on, I had raised the issue of the relationship between race and Pan-Africanism. Race in this context does not refer to the European race but to the relationship between Africa south of the Sahara and Africa north of the Sahara. Before 1958, there is no evidence that the Arab countries or citizens were involved in any of the Pan-African activities in the United States or in Europe. It would have been just as easy for Nkrumah to have limited his initial Pan-African moves to Liberia, Ethiopia, Guinea and Ghana. It was his vision of a Pan-Africanism that is defined by geography rather than race or history that triumphed. Pan-Africanism came to be defined as a pan-continental movement and the Organisation of African Unity came to mean an organisation representing all states located on the African continent. That position ignored the history of Arab slave raiders in Africa or the continuing history of racism against Africans which exist up till today in Arab countries.

I am not sure that this issue of the relationship between African states and Arab states has been laid to rest finally. The common struggle against colonialism, the towering figures of Gamel Nasser of Egypt and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, the need to build solidarity among the Third World countries against a cold war-ridden world and the dictates of a united front against apartheid in South Africa and colonial rule in Southern Africa, all combined to suppress factors that could have called into question the supposed mutuality of interests between Arab Africa and Africa South of the Sahara. Now, these factors have receded into the background. Competition among state or national interests are coming into prominence. African states are becoming increasingly vocal that North Africa shares in seats reserved for African states and also shares in seats reserved for the Middle East in international institutions. Also, as a new generation of African leaders come to power, more confident of itself, and more removed from the titanic global struggles of the past, that legacy of racial tension between North Arab Africa and Africa South of the Sahara may surface. But on one issue, the race factor was not ignored and that refers to the rule of white minorities over African majorities. That special situation was regarded as a colonial situation simpliciter rather than a case of democracy.

Pan-Africanism owes a lot to Kwame Nkrumah. Even though his vision is still to be fully realised, he succeeded in defining the parameters that the continent still contends with today.

•Akinyemi is former External Affairs Minister