Pan–Africanism: Exploring the Contradictions

Politics, Identity and Development in Africa and the African Diaspora

William B. Ackah

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351912976
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

What does it mean to be an African today? Starting from that question the author takes the reader on a fascinating intellectual journey into the realm of Pan-African thought and practice. Moving from Africa to North America to Europe, the text insightfully explores the pre-occupations of black elite, in the three continents, exploring their shared visions and also their conflicting interests. Tackling thought provoking issues in politics, cultural identity, and economic development, the book provides the reader with a refreshing, jargon free insight into relations between Africa and the African Diaspora. A must read for anyone interested in politics, identity and development in Africa and the African Diaspora.

1 The Search for Identity

Where do you begin to search for who you are? Why begin such a quest in the first place?

If being black in Britain were a truly acceptable phenomenon then perhaps the desire to settle the dilemma of my identity and being would have been less acute and my quest would have no meaning.¹ For many black people however, not only in Britain, but also in the rest of Europe, and for that matter in the world, there exists the feeling that black people no matter what they do, are never truly accepted.

The curse of racism and the world-wide dissemination of negative and degrading stereotypes concerning black people is like a constant itch that no matter how much one tries to scratch, it continues to irritate. It is as if that as a black person you have to somehow justify your right to live, work and have a sense of independent being on planet earth, that your humanity, has a question mark beside it.

It is as if one has been defined, manipulated and dismissed as unimportant like an animal and not a human being. As the main character in Ralph Ellison’s novel describes:

I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you sometimes see in circus side-shows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me.²

What Ellison manages to convey so clearly and what many black people feel, is that they are denied a sense of independent being. It is not only people of African origin who feel that their ability to be themselves is being denied. Jean-Paul Sartre the existentialist philosopher understood this situation very well, he writes:

By virtue of consciousness the Other is for me simultaneously the one who has stolen my being from me and the one who causes “there to be” a being which is my being. Thus I have a comprehension of this ontological structure: I am responsible for my being-for-others, but I am not the foundation of it.³

For many black people the ‘Other’ described by Sartre is white society. It was the white man who was responsible for slavery and colonialism. It was the white man who has sought to define and shape us. It is his language that we speak, his codes that we adhere to, and it is to him that we justify our actions. This prognosis hurts. There was and is a sense that as black people we are more than just a mere reflection of the white man’s image of ourselves. We are a people with our own image, purpose and destiny and one felt and feels the need even today to recover that. As Sartre explains again:

Thus to the extent that I am revealed to myself as responsible for my being, I lay claim to this being which I am; that is, I wish to recover it, or, more exactly, I am the project of the recovery of my being.⁴

It is the project of the recovery of one’s being that strikes a special chord in my heart and the hearts of many black people. But how does one recover one’s being? How can the constantly irritating itch of racism be scratched out of existence?

Pan-Africanism as an idea/movement has for the past three centuries and even further back in time,⁵ thrown up personalities and ideas that have given diverse groups of black people a sense of being and purpose. Reading how Toussaint L’Ouverture overcame the might of French imperialism you really felt that you could overcome the obstacles in your own life.⁶ Listening to the music of black musical giants like Bob Marley and John Coltrane as the confidence of their ability and the belief in what they were doing shone through their art, you felt you could express the blackness that had been trapped within and let it all flood out. Reading the works of great black figures like Aimé Césaire you felt that there was a native land that you could return to and be a part of.⁷ Hearing about the exploits of the warrior queen Nzingha, you could believe that oppression and tyranny had to be resisted.⁸

Delving deeper and deeper into the rich and diverse black experience the world over, I could sense a recovery of being taking place within. There was now emerging a pride and confidence in being black. Now you could be like Malcolm X⁹ and tell the white man who he was, because at last you understood who you were. Ultimately you believed that the impossible dream was possible, like the audacious, legendary black patriarch Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own creative genius we made ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit, and eternity our measurement… Remember we live, work and pray for the establishing of a great and binding racial hierarchy, the founding of a racial empire whose only natural, spiritual and practical limits shall be god and “Africa, at home and abroad.”¹⁰

Garvey more than any other black leader in the African diaspora epitomised the project of the recovery of one’s being. His ideas and practical work embody the spirit of Pan-Africanism and his appeal for black people to find their sense of being in their racial identity is still strong today. Garvey and the whole Pan-African movement has had a strong influence on my thinking but it is not a dilemma-free influence. In the first instance is a sense of being solely determined by ‘race’ or colour? Is the project of the recovery of being the same for all black people all over the world? Is my experience the same as the peasant farmer trying to eke out his existence in rural Mali? Or the black congressman in Washington with long term presidential ambitions? Can one base one’s life and the development of a society on the basis of common racial identity, as Garvey ultimately believed?

As the jew is held together by his religion, the white races by the assumption and unwritten law of superiority, and the Mongolian by the precious tie of blood, so likewise the Negro must be united in one grand racial hierarchy. Our union must know no clime, boundary or nationality. Like the great Church of Rome, Negroes the world over must practice one faith, that of Confidence in themselves, with One God! One Aim! One Destiny!¹¹

A few years ago I had the opportunity to live and work in Haiti. It is still a wonderful, mysterious place even in the midst of turmoil and it will always be exalted in Pan-African circles for its pre-eminent position as the first independent black republic in the Western world. The great achievements of Toussaint and Dessalines in forging a new black nation from the abyss of the enslavement process were magnificent, but those landmark events took place over two centuries ago, what of Haiti today? The recent Haiti that I remember from my travels was a country of pain and suffering, rather than victory. The oppressors of the people in the main were not some distant other, the cold reality was that black soldiers, killed black civilians, black elite stole from and victimised their own people. This was what was happening to one of the former.stars in the Pan-African crown. Could appeals to unity on the basis of a common racial identity save Haiti?

Unfortunately it is not only Haiti that is in trouble today. In Africa the drama of corrupt leadership, oppression and poverty is robbing too many black people of a viable, prosperous future. Could Pan-Africanism help create a better scenario? Is it a sense of being that is the missing component in the Haitian and African development models? Or is there more to development than simply rediscovering what has been lost? It is these questions and the issues of Pan-Africanism, identity and development that will provide the basis of the second chapter of the book and will resonate throughout the work.

Another crucial issue that I will explore in the second and subsequent chapters is that of black leadership. All visions need visionaries but when the vision fails does one have the right to blame the visionary? The black visionary in particular has had to risk life and limb in order to give African peoples wherever they are a sense of purpose and destiny. So can one fault them?

Growing up I can remember being starved of any kind of positive black image. As a consequence when I heard, saw or read about any remotely positive black individual I would embrace them wholeheartedly. Even if I had reservations about certain things they said or did I would shut them out of my mind. After all, here were people who had achieved something in the pernicious world of the white man so they deserved adoration. Malcolm X,¹² Marcus Garvey,¹³ Kwame Nkrumah,¹⁴ Angela Davis¹⁵ one could not get enough of these people and their achievements. I put them on a pedestal and elevated them safe above the harsh words of the white critics, who seemingly wanted to see all successful black people brought down low. Now however, after going to Haiti and reflecting on the plight of black people in general around the world, nagging questions enter the mind. In the first instance have I as a black person, have black people in general elevated our leaders to the point where we can no longer criticise, or more importantly no longer constrain them? Malcolm X is a legend for many black radicals, but he had strong anti-Semitic leanings for a time.¹⁶ Marcus Garvey was a great visionary with mass appeal but some of his remarks and ideas border on fascism.

We feel that we should now set out to create a race type and standard of our own which could not in the future be stigmatised by bastardy.¹⁷

All leaders have their faults but in the Pan-African context who has pointed out these faults loudly and on a consistent basis? Many black leaders have had opportunities and experiences that are far removed from that of ordinary people, how does this affect their vision? Is it compatible with that of their followers? Have black leaders been responsible leaders, sharing the same sense of mission as their followers, but moving a step ahead? Or have many risen so high above their followers that it is only god and the sky that constrains them and not the welfare and aspirations of their black brothers and sisters?

It should be acknowledged that many of the official heads of state of predominantly black countries find themselves in a difficult situation. They are under pressure to come up with the ideas, strategies and performances to enable their respective nations to catch up with the West. But their populations in many instances have lifestyles and methods of survival that have more in common with the beginning of the last century than the end of this current one. How has the black head of state met this challenge? It is a difficult dilemma, one that the novelist Richard Wright understood well. In a dedication to all non-white elites he writes:

the Westernized and tragic elite
of Asia, Africa and the West Indies-

the lonely outsiders who exist precariously
on the clifflike margins of many cultures-men who are
distrusted, misunderstood, maligned, criticised
by Left and Right, Christian and paganmen
who carry on their frail but ind...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms
• 1 The Search for Identity
• 2 Pan-Africanism: The African Diaspora and the Reality of Africa
• 3 The Regional Trend in Africa and the World
• 4 The Diaspora Dilemma and the Western Perception of the African Crisis
• 5 The Impact of African-American Culture on the Formation of Global Black Identities
• 6 Breaking Old Ties and Laying Down New Foundations in Africa and the Diaspora
• Bibliography
• Index