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'''Self-reparation for Afrikan Power: Pan Africanism and Black Consciousness
By [[Chinweizu]]'''<br>

Copyright © by Chinweizu 2006<br>

Please see the Feel Free notice at the end<br>

[Paper presented at the Global Pan Afrikan Reparations and Repatriation Conference
(GPARRC) on 26 July, 2006, at the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra]<br>

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Steve Biko.<br>

One type of struggle we regard as fundamental is . . .the struggle against our
own weaknesses.
--Amilcar Cabral, [1980: 121]<br>

You must not abandon discussion out of tact . . . There should be no
concession where there is a question of establishing a scientific truth . . .
Remember we are focused on a quest for truth and not on a sacrosanct idol we
must avoid debasing. . . .<br>
[[Cheikh Anta Diop]] [quoted in Van Sertima, Ivan 1986: 13]<br>

Professor Diop does have one important desideratum that has yet to be
fulfilled. He desires a forum or colloquium somewhere in which an extensive
and exhaustive discussion, analysis, and clarification of his ideas can be
carried out. He feels that his work and ideas have not had the proper feedback,
examination, and testing necessary to properly validate them despite their
ever-widening reception. . . . His is a search for truth, not the establishment of
a new orthodoxy.
--[[Charles Finch]] [1986: 230]<br>

== Introduction ==
First of all, I have quoted Cabral and Diop to make a point that applies to Pan
Africanism as a whole. All its ideas are in need of exhaustive discussion, rigorous
analysis and clarification to test their validity and utility. We also need to examine the
practices of the Afrikan anti-colonial struggles, from before the 18th century Haitian
war of independence to the 20th century South African anti- Apartheid struggle, and
we need to sort out the half-baked from the sound, the helpful from the harmful, the
up-to-date from the out-of-date. And in this vital exercise, we must insist, as Diop
urges, on not abandoning any discussion out of tact, or out of reverence for any hero
or idol. We must courageously persevere in the struggle against our own weaknesses,
for they, no less than the actions of our enemies, have helped to bring about our
failures and disasters.<br>

Secondly, we must understand that we want to solve the problems of the
Afrikan people not of the African landmass or continent. The focus of Afrikan self-
reparation must be to produce the conditions that would rescue Afrikans from their
dismal plight of the last two millennia.<br>

Thirdly, we must understand that getting our Arab and European enemies to
pay us trillions of dollars for the disasters they inflicted on us-- by invading,
abducting, enslaving, conquering, exploiting, robbing and exterminating hundreds of
millions of us-- will be just like collecting rain with a basket unless we first seal up
the holes in the basket. And sealing up the holes is the job of self-reparation.<br>

Fourthly, what has been the basic problem, the mother of all problems, of Afrikans for the past 2000years? Here are some clues:<br>
If we had Afrikan power to stop them, would Arabs have conquered and occupied 1/3 of our African homeland in the last 1500 years?<br>

If we had Afrikan power to stop them, would Arabs and Europeans have raided Africa and carried off hundreds of millions of Afrikans to enslave in the Americas and Eurasia in the last 1500 years?<br>

If we had Afrikan power to stop them, would Africa’s resources have been
exported to build up Europe and America while Afrikans starve?<br>

If we had Afrikan power to stop them, would Arabs have taken over Sudan for
the last 50 years and waged war on the South Sudanese to Arabise them and prevent
their independence?<br>

If we had Afrikan power to stop them, would the World Health Organization
(WHO) and its US masters have had unhindered access to our population to
AIDSbomb us? Would they have vaccinated 97 million Afrikans with AIDS- infected
smallpox vaccines?<br>
No enemy can go into China or the USA or Europe to do mass
vaccinations: Chinese, American or European power respectively would prevent it.
Now, that gives us a glimpse into the basic problem of the Afrikans for the
past 20 centuries i.e. POWERLESSNESS! –the lack of the power to protect our
lands, populations and cultures from alien attacks.<br>

On the other hand, everything on the Afrikan wish list (prosperity, security,
dignity, respect, basic needs, an end to racist contempt, etc) requires Afrikan power.
Without Afrikan power, Afrikans cannot ensure that Africa’s resources are used
primarily to meet Afrikan needs. The great world powers will continue to extract
Africa’s resources for the primary use of Europe and America, thereby denying
Afrikans the resources for Afrikan prosperity. Without Afrikan power, Afrikans
cannot hold onto their land and lives and resources and cultures. We need Afrikan
power to end the kinds of mayhem and ethnic cleansing and Arabisation that are being
inflicted on Blacks in Darfur and Mauritania, which are a humiliation for all Afrikans.
And the organizing of Afrikan power requires a Pan Afrikanist perspective
that can see ECOWAS or SADC as potential sub-continental megastates to be
industrialized for the protection of all Afrikans.
But could Afrikan powerlessness possibly be cured by Scientific Socialism,
Liberalism, Marxism, Communism, Christianity, Islam, Humanism, Continental
Union Government, or by any combination of these and the other decoy solutions
offered in the last 50 years by all sorts of saviors of Africa? Were these “- isms”
designed, in the first place, to solve the specific problems of Afrikans? After 50 years
of chasing these decoy shadows, our plight is worse than before.
Perhaps it is time to make a fresh start, to take a new and comprehensive look
at our problems and what we need to do to solve them for ourselves.
Fifthly, such a fresh start requires our acceptance of full responsibility for
ending our plight. It means that we accept that, whatever Arabs or Europeans have
done to cause our condition, and whatever our ancestors may have contributed to
our plight, the responsibility is now entirely ours to cure it. Acceptance of this
responsibility is our fundamental act of self-reparation; without it, we are fooling
ourselves in demanding reparations from others.
Perhaps, the first key area in need of self- reparation is Pan Africanism itself.
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The need for self-reparation in Pan Africanism:
Outside the estacode/dollars-per-diem ranks of AU bureaucrats and intellectuals, Pan
Africanism has lost its relevance and appeal to most Afrikans. All the evidence
available today indicates that Pan Africanism has failed the Afrikans woefully.
Strictly speaking, Pan-Africanism in the 20th century scored more failures than
successes.
While its basic objective of removing the blanket of white European rulers
from Africa was achieved, little else has succeeded. Black governments may now rule
the countries of Pan Africa, but visible black rule has not removed the white
imperialist control and exploitation of our countries; nor has it done much to improve
the conditions of the overwhelming majority of Afrikans in the world. The expected
fruits of black rule have not materialized. Poverty, powerlessness, social
disintegration, cultural decay and disillusion remain the hallmarks of Afrikan
countries and communities everywhere.
More seriously, in the 50 years of Continentalist Pan Africanism, our race war
enemies have inflicted three potentially terminal disasters on Afrikans, namely, the
AIDSbombing of Africa, a resurgent Arab expansionism that is expropriating more
and more of our continent, and the AU’s NEPAD that guarantees that Africa can
never industrialize or escape poverty. The collective failure of the OAU and its
member governments to deter/prevent the AIDSbombing of Africa is a cardinal
failure of Pan Africanism.
Clearly, therefore, we need to investigate what went wrong and why, and we
need to repair the Pan Africanism that helped make things go so badly wrong.
Perhaps most importantly, in the 20th century Pan Africanism failed to mature
into a full- fledged political ideology with a sound concept of its constituency, a sound
idea of its paramount strategic goals and a sound political program of transformative
action. It also failed to adjust itself to the changes in its environment. For instance, it
has persisted in focusing only on the European domination that was the most
prominent blight on the African landscape before 1950; it has failed to recognize the
resurgent Arab expansionism that followed the withdrawal of European rule, and has
refused to organize an appropriate Pan Africanist response to it. Correcting these
failings is a task of self- reparation, perhaps our most urgent task of self-reparation
today.
And for our self-repair of Pan Africanism to commence properly, we need to
put together a Pan Afrikan intellectual collective whose task is to assemble “A Pan
Africanism Reader”, an anthology of the principal ideas, documents, as well as the
achievements and failures of the Pan African Movement, so we can all know what we
are to repair. Then, with that body of work in our hands, we can all join in the great
discussion and analysis to find out why thing went wrong and what to do to repair
them.
The first key aspect of Pan Africanism that needs attention is the doctrine of
Continentalism.
1. Continentalism
The brand of Pan Africanism which Nkrumah launched in 1958 with his First
Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) was dedicated to the political
unification of all the countries on the African continent, regardless of race or creed or
–surprisingly-- anti-black behavior. Hence, for instance, Nkrumah, quite amazingly,
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saw fit to invite to that ostensibly Pan-Africanist, and implicitly anti-colonial,
conference the Apartheid South African government of Premier Verwoerd! In his
subsequent campaign for what became the OAU and now the AU, Nkrumah
relentlessly argued for what may be called Continentalism. He claimed that only by
bringing all the countries in Africa under one continental government, could Africans
defeat neo-colonialism economically, militarily, diplomatically etc. But, in fact, a
close look at his arguments shows that they do not validly imply a continental African
government. What he actually argues validly is that the countries created by the
European conquest and partition of Africa are each too small to defeat neo-
colonialism; and that they, therefore, should coalesce into something bigger. But what
would be big enough? He does not give any criteria for determining that. He simply
asserts, with increasing desperation as time went on and his invalid argument fell on
the deaf ears of his OAU peers, that it must be a continent-sized state! He doesn’t
consider the possibility that a continent-sized state could be too big or not big enough.
In fact, one of his funny arguments actually suggests that what would be
required to defeat neo-colonialism is a political union, not just of the African
continent, but of the entire Third World – a Tri-continental state that would bring all
of Africa, Asia and Latin America under one government. He said:
Thus far, all the methods of neo-colonialism have pointed in one direction, the
ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes throughout history – divide
and rule. Quite obviously, therefore, unity is the first requisite for destroying
neo-colonialism. Primary and basic is the need for an all-union
government on the much-divided continent of Africa. [Emphasis added]
Along with that, a strengthening of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation and
the spirit of Bandung is already underway. To it, we must seek the adherence
on an increasingly formal basis of our Latin American brothers.
--[Nkrumah, 1973:335]
On this argument for defeating a global neo-colonialism, why should it be all
countries on the African continent that should unite, and not all countries in the Third
World? The argument is really for a Union Government of the entire Third World
victims of neo-colonialist divide and rule, a Tri-continental Union Government for all
the ex-colonial countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America! On the other hand it
would apply equally to a Union Government of West Africa, or East Africa or
Southern Africa, or of Africa and the Arab World. Take your pick. Like the other
arguments Nkrumah put forward, it contains no specific reasons why the union should
be continental in scope and nothing less. Please note that Nkrumah asserts, but
doesn’t say why “an all- union government” of the African continent is a “primary and
basic need”.
Cheikh Anta Diop, another passionate advocate for African continental
unification, was no better than Nkrumah at specifying why exactly the admittedly
larger state required for Africa’s development must encompass the entire continent.
When an advocate consistently begs the question, suspicion is aroused that his
overt arguments are mere mystifications for something held on other, undisclosed,
grounds. The real reasons might be some secret fear or desire. In the case of Nkrumah
and Diop, we get a peek at their hidden motive for Continentalism when Diop said, in
a 1976 interview:
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If we black Africans take steps to include North African Arabs into a
continental federation and the latter prefer instead to elaborate organic
political ties with Arabs of Asia, this would be tantamount to a rebuff. If north
African states, rather than looking to black Africa in a natural partnership,
preferred a federation with Asian Arabs extending to the Persian Gulf, then we
would be entirely justified to organize ourselves in an exclusively sub-Saharan
federation. In such an eventuality, no one could accuse sub-Saharan
Africans of being guilty of exclusivism, [emphasis, in bold, added] since
their appeals to the North would have been refused. [Moore, 1986: 261]
This is a clue that the unargued and illogical conclusion, that we need an African
continental state, was driven by fear of being accused of “(racial) exclusivism”. In
other words, in the integrationist atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s, Pan Africanists
feared that if they advocated a union of sub-Sahara countries, or any smaller grouping
that would include only blacks, they would be accused of racial exclusivism, i.e.
segregation/“black racism”. Continentalism was, therefore, something believed
without good reason, but out of fear-- in other words, a superstition!
With this clue from Diop, we can now attempt to diagnose the roots of
Nkrumah’s passion for an illogical Continentalism.
Nkrumah: the roots of his continentalist superstition
As I pointed out above, Nkrumah’s argument contains no specific reasons why
his proposed Union Government must be continental in scope. This lack of Africa-
specificity was typical of his anti-colonial advocacy. For example, his pamphlet
“Towards Colonial Freedom”, which was written in 1942 and published in 1947,
closed with the exhortation “PEOPLES OF THE COLONIES, UNITE; The working
men of all countries are behind you.” [Nkrumah, 1973:41] In the same vein, the
“Declaration to the Colonial Peoples of the World”, a resolution which he wrote, and
which was adopted at the 5th PAC in Manchester, also ended, not with the exhortation
“Africans/Blacks of the World—Unite!” which would have been appropriate, but with
“COLONIAL AND SUBJECT PEOPLES OF THE WORLD – UNITE”. [Nkrumah,
1973:44] Nkrumah himself seems to have been vaguely aware that his anti-colonial
theses were usually not for Africa specifically; for, in commenting, after Ghana’s
independence, on “Towards Colonial Freedom” Nkrumah himself said, “Although I
have concentrated on colonial Africa, the thesis of the pamphlet applies to colonial
areas everywhere.” [Nkrumah, 1973:16 fn] Why, we may wonder, was he shy of
focusing on the specific Ghanaian/Black African situation for its own sake rather than
merely using the African situation as a convenience in arguing for the global anti-
colonial cause? In this eccentric procedure, Nkrumah was unlike Biko whose focus
was consistently on black South Africa, his immediate and natural constituency; and
also quite unlike Cabral for whom the reality in Guinea was always the focus and
who, though no less a Third World internationalist than Nkrumah, insisted that “ our
own reality is at the centre of a complex reality, but it is the former that most concerns
us.” [Cabral, 1980:47] Was Nkrumah perhaps a racial integrationist who was
emotionally uncomfortable about being too much identified with his natural, Black
African constituency? And, if so, why?
In the document known as THE CIRCLE, which he drew up soon after the
Manchester 5th PAC, Nkrumah advocated creating and maintaining a “Union of
African Socialist Republics.” [Nkrumah, 1973:48] These exhortations from the 1940s
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suggest that Nkrumah was, at heart, a global anti-colonialist rather than a Pan
Africanist specifically; in fact, that he was a socialist internationalist, probably a
Trotskyite, who found himself at some point obliged to focus on promoting socialism,
first in one country, Ghana, and thereafter for one continent, Africa, pending any
opportunity that would release him from the “parochialism” of one country or
continent, and let him finally become an unconstrained global socialist
internationalist. Was Nkrumah, then, basically a universalistic socialist missionary
who, as the saying goes, “happened to be black” and who went home to Ghana/Africa
to convert his people to socialism? Or was he primarily an African liberationist for
whom socialism was a useful ideological tool? This should be investigated as the
finding could throw unexpected light on his primary identity, constituency and
preoccupations, as well as on aspects of his behavior that have had adverse
consequences for Afrikans.
His socialist internationalism aside, there is still to be considered the added
factor of Nkrumah’s commitment to “non-racialism”. That was evident in his CPP
constitution (1949) which lists among its aims “abolishing imperialism, colonialism,
racialism, tribalism and all forms of national and racial oppression and economic
inequality among nations, races and peoples . . .” [Nkrumah, 1973:59] Could
Nkrumah’s “non-racialism”—probably imbibed from the 1930s American socialist
milieu with its slogan “Black and white unite and fight!”-- have reinforced his
devotion to a global, multi-racial anti-colo nialism, and helped blind him to any union
in Africa that, by excluding Arabs, would be open to the accusation of racial
exclusivism? Any black anti-colonialist intimidated by the scarecrow of “racial
exclusivism/black racism” into evading the political reality of black skin in a white
supremacist world, would not consider, let alone be enthusiastic about, a blacks-only
sub-Sahara union, even if that would be enough to defeat neo-colonialism in Africa!
If this diagnosis is correct, we owe Nkrumah’s advocacy of the continentalist
superstition to a combination of the socialist internationalism and the non-racialism he
had imbibed from his liberal and socialist mentors in the imperialist world.
But the antidote for this particular non-racialist superstition was indicated,
even during the integrationist 1960s, by John Oliver Killens when, in his 1965 essay
“The black writer vis-à-vis his country” he observed that:
Negroes are the only people in this world who are set apart because of
who they are, and at the same time told to forget who they are by the
very people who set them apart in the first place.
–[Killens, 1965:358-359]
A few years later, in the early 1970s, the young Steve Biko, in building his
Black Consciousness Movement, developed the much-needed therapy for this
superstitious fear. Among other things he correctly argued that integration was a false
antithesis to segregation/apartheid, and that the correct antithesis was Black
solidarity/unity. For the specific context of apartheid South Africa, he argued:
It is time we killed this false political coalition between blacks and whites as
long as it is set up on a wrong analysis of our situation . . . [and because] it
forms at present the greatest stumbling block to our unity. . . . The basic
problem in South Africa has been analysed by liberal whites as being
apartheid. . . . For the liberals, the thesis is apartheid, the antithesis is non-
racialism, but the synthesis is very feebly defined. They want to tell the blacks
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that they see integration as the ideal solution. Black Consciousness defines the
situation differently. The thesis is in fact a strong white racism and therefore,
the antithesis to this must, ipso facto, be a strong solidarity amongst the blacks
on whom this white racism seeks to prey. [Biko, 1987:90]
And Biko further observes, quite correctly:
The concept of integration . . . is full of unquestioned assumptions. . . . It is a
concept long defined by whites and never examined by blacks. . . . [It is one
of the] concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate
from the black man’s mind. . . . Black Consciousness is an attitude of mind
and a way of life, . . . the realisation by the black man of the need to rally
together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression—the blackness
of their skin – and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that
bind them to perpetual servitude. [Biko, 1987:91-92]
Biko, the Black Consciousness prophet, further argued that, in South Africa,
As long as blacks are suffering from inferiority complex – a result of 300
years of deliberate oppression, denigration and derision – they will be useless
as co-architects of a normal society. . . . Hence what is necessary as a prelude
to anything else that may come is a ve ry strong grass-roots build-up of black
consciousness such that blacks can learn to assert themselves and stake their
rightful claim. [Biko, 1987:21]
And Biko drives his point home thus:
Those who know, define racism as discrimination by a group against another
for the purposes of subjugation or maintaining subjugation. In other words one
cannot be a racist unless he has the power to subjugate. What blacks are doing
is merely to respond to a situation in which they find themselves the objects of
white racism. We are in the position in which we are because of our skin. We
are collectively segregated against -- what can be more logical than for us to
respond as a group? When workers come together under the auspices of a
trade union to strive for the betterme nt of their conditions, nobody expresses
surprise in the Western world. It is the done thing. Nobody accuses them of
separatist tendencies. Teachers fight their battles, garbagemen do the same,
nobody acts as a trustee for another. Somehow, however, when blacks want to
do their thing the liberal establishment seems to detect an anomaly. This is in
fact a counter-anomaly. The anomaly was there in the first instance when the
liberals were presumptuous enough to think that it behoved them to fight the
battle for the blacks. [Biko, 1987:25]
Biko’s full critique of integration should be required reading by all Afrikans today.
This Black Consciousness therapy helped to produce a new breed of black
freedom fighter in South Africa, the self-confident type, unconfus ed and uncrippled
by fears implanted by false liberal doctrines like integration and non-racialism. It
produced self-confident blacks who insisted on doing things for themselves and all by
themselves, and who did not feel they had to prove themselves to whites.
To see the validity of Biko’s doctrines for Pan Africa today, one needs first to
note Biko’s remark that “the black-white power struggle in South Africa is but a
microcosm of the global confrontation between the Third World and the rich white
8
nations of the world.” [Biko, 1987:72] More specifically, we should note that the
black-white situation in Apartheid South Africa was a special local case of the global
situation between whites and blacks. We can therefore validly transpose Biko’s
doctrines to the global situation that Pan Africa ostensibly is struggling to eradicate.
Accordingly, in a world where blacks are oppressed and exploited by white
Arabs and Europeans, any Afro-Arab alliance is just as false a political coalition as
that in South Africa was between whites and the blacks they oppressed. To realize
that is to find the intellectual ground for the courage to repudiate the Afro-Arab
alliance and continental political union that Nkrumah promoted and Diop
advocated.
We need to be ever mindful of Biko’s remark that “the biggest mistake the
Black World ever made was to assume that whoever is against Apartheid is
automatically our ally.” [Biko, 1987:63] And we need to apply it to the global
imperialist situation.
Still in that vein, let us see what Black Consciousness doctrines would say of
the AU, NEPAD, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) prescribed for
Africa by Blair’s Commission for Africa. Biko rejected the Bantustan idea on the
fundamental ground that “it is a solution given to us by the same people who have
created the problem.” [Biko, 1987:82] His rejection would equally apply to the AU
Trojan horse with its wrecking crew of NEPAD, MDG etc. which-- like what Leon
Damas called “the theories that they season to the taste of their needs”-- are
designed to worsen our problems, not solve them.
In South Africa, Biko asked: “whether the Bantustan leaders do not see the
barrenness and fraudulence implicit in this scheme?” He answered thus: “We have
some men in these Bantustans who would make extremely fine leaders if they had not
decided to throw in their lot with the oppressors. A few of them argue that they are
not selling out but are carrying on the fight from within . . . ” He ended by dismissing
them and their delusions with the comment “After all, as one writer once said, there is
no way of stopping fools from dedicating themselves to useless causes.” [Biko
1987:84]
When we realize that these so-called independent African states that have been
herded into the AU by Gadhafi are nothing but the glorified Bantustans of the G8
system of UN Imperialism, i.e. the global system’s version of those Bantustans of
Apartheid South Africa, we can see the aptness of applying Biko’s remark to all these
black heads of state and government in the fraudulent and useless AU.
My point in this exercise has been to illustrate that we have enough sound
ideas within the body of Pan Africanist thought to challenge and correct the false
ideas and misguided projects that have crippled us, if only we would collect and
study the tradition and use it to correct itself. And I’d like to suggest that we form
and equip a collective of our academics to do this job. In the last 50 years, all
manner of half-baked ideas have been hurriedly implemented, and even with
desperate urgency, while the Pan Africanist intelligentsia failed to cry foul and to
subject them to rigorous debate and correction. We must mend our ways. As a
contrite act of self-reparation, we must create the necessary organs of unfettered
debate and use them effectively henceforth.
We cannot blame Nkrumah, Diop and others for their errors. They gave what
they thought were the right ideas. But it was for us to have collectively corrected their
errors, and we didn’t. We have yet to do for Diop’s ideas what he himself pleaded for.
And it is our duty to Pan Africa to do the same for all ideas on offer, even those by
prima donnas who are touchy about criticism, or by Presidents who are full of
9
themselves. We must do our duty and politely ask those who resent pub lic criticism to
keep their ideas to themselves and not pollute the public space with them.
By the way, to throw a cold and sobering splash of comparative reality on this
delirious hankering after a continent-sized political union, we should note that the
megastates and great powers of the 20th and 21st centuries –USA, USSR, EU, China,
Russia, India – are actually of sub-continental, not continental, size. The only
actually continent-sized state is Australia, which is not a great power at all! Unless we
wish to persist in playing the fool who insisted on walking on a cloud, we should trim
our ambition to what is, at least geographically and culturally, possible. Therefore, the
project of an African megastate should be guided by the feasibility conditions for
putting it in the power league of China, EU, USA, Russia and India, and not by
some superstitious craving for continental size.
Other issues in Pan Africanism crying out for self-reparation
Continentalism is not the only aspect or doctrine of Pan Africanism that is crying out
for correction. Having looked at that error in some detail, all I have time to do here is
list a few others, with brief comments, so they can be attended to afterwards.
2: African identity
The question of African identity and its criteria has not yet been rigorously analyzed
or Afrocentrically resolved. What is Africa? Who are the Africans? What are the
cultural and biological boundaries of Africa/Africanness?
This fundamental matter of defining Africa and the Africans--those that are
the constituency served by Pan Africanism-- has been bedeviled by the same fears of
exclusivism that helped install the superstition of Continentalism. Those black
Africans who fear the white enemy would label them exclusivists are prone to evade
including the color/phenotype/racial factor when defining the African. Some insist on
defining Africanness in purely cultural terms. Some fools even say that the African is
anybody who is “committed to Africa”! Others, such as the AU bureaucrats who
organized the 2004 Conference of AU intellectuals in Dakar, urge what they call
“identity fluidity” and assert that:
Africa, whose construction is currently on the agenda, transcends geographical
borders as well as cultural or racial barriers: it extends from both sides of the
Sahara; it is white and black, Arab and African, continental and insular; it is a
cultural meeting point where successive strata of cultures of Eurasian origin
intermingle with indigenous cultures born in the Continent of Africa (Mbeki’s
Speech: “I am an African” epitomizes these assertions in that it recognizes all
the above assets). The concept of identity fluidity has now become imperative;
...
-- “Draft Concept Paper” to AU Intellectuals meeting, Dakar, Oct. 2004, p.7.
On this question of identity, we sorely need to take our cue from Biko and boldly
“rally around the cause of our suffering” and, without apologies to our enemies and
their integrationist dupes in our midst, define ourselves for ourselves on the basis of
our black skin--the cause of our suffering. A continent does not make a people, and
so cannot legitimately be used to define or name a people. Ancestry, historical
experience and culture are the valid factors for defining a people. Our latching at
10
all unto a geographic name (African) is a seminal error that is spewing unending
problems and confusions we could do without, and we should find our way out of it.
As a first step out of that costly error, we must Afrocentrically limit the African
identity to those from Africa who have, over the centuries, been singled out as targets
for enslavement by the black color of our skins. Hence, whites, European as well as
Arab--the very predators who decided to target blacks for racialised chattel
enslavement-- cannot be legitimately inc luded with us, their prey, just because
they’ve forcibly made themselves our neighbors on the African landmass. By the
Africans, Pan Africanism can legitimately mean only the members of the indigenous
populations of Africa who were, for the last 20 centuries, targeted for enslavement by
Arabs and Europeans on account of their black skin color. That is the fundamental
historical factor. Anybody who is not a biological descendant of these blacks cannot
qualify as an African. Perhaps we could make our usage sufficiently distinctive by
reserving the term Afrikan for such indigenous populations and their descendants –
until we adopt a name for ourselves from an Afrikan language. In which case, we are
interested in Afrikans and after that in Afrika their homeland, and not first in Africa,
the continent, and then in Africans –those populations of any race whatever that are
now located in the African continent, whether black or white, indigenous our
exogenous, imperialist predators or their prey. Pan Africanism must therefore, with
Black Consciousness rigor, limit its constituency to Afrikans , i.e. Black Africans and
their global diaspora and, provisionally, rename itself Pan Afrikanism.
Black Consciousness historical considerations aside, it would be scientifically
incorrect to define Afrikans without including the biological/racial factor of black
color/phenotype, for, as political science assures us:
People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history,
values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes,
ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level,
civilizations. . .. In coping with identity crisis, what counts for people are
blood and belief, faith and family. People rally to those with similar ancestry,
religion, language, values, and institutions and distance themselves from those
with different ones. [Huntington, 1997:21, 126]
Since the instantly visible mark of Afrikan ancestry and historical experience is the
black skin, it would be unscientific to exclude it from the factors for defining
Afrikanness.
Furthermore, just as it is the indigenous Chinese who define who are Chinese,
and the indigenous Arabs who define who are Arabs, and the indigenous Europeans
who define who are Europeans, so too do we indigenous Africans, a.k.a. Afrikans,
have the right and duty to define who are Africans. And if it is in our interest to
include a phenotype factor, black skin, in our definition, we must do so, regardless
what anybody else thinks. In this regard, we need to note the Chinese example:
To the Chinese government, people of Chinese descent, even if citizens of
another country, are members of the Chinese community and hence in some
measure subject to the authority of the Chinese government. Chinese identity
comes to be defined in racial terms. Chinese are those of the same “race,
blood, and culture,” as one PRC scholar put it. In the mid-1990s, this theme
was increasingly heard from governmental and private Chinese sources. For
Chinese and those of Chinese descent living in non-Chinese societies, the
11
“mirror test” thus becomes the test of who they are: “Go look in the mirror,” is
the admonition of Beijing-oriented Chinese to those of Chinese descent trying
to assimilate into foreign societies. [Huntington, 1997:169]
We might, likewise, tell those of black African ancestry who claim to be Arabs or
Europeans, as well as those Arabs and Europeans who claim to be Africans, to “Go
look in the mirror!”
We could all learn from what our Afrikan-American brother, Runoko Rashidi,
said on a Johannesburg radio program recently:
The hosts asked me my positions on global African unity.
I responded, and the phone lines lit up!
The first caller was a white man who said what a "racist" I was
and how offended he was. I let him have it!!! He said that he
was an African and that I was not. I said that I was an
African and that he was not. I told him that you can teach a
parrot to speak but that in the end it was still a bird. I
told him that you can dress a monkey in a suit but in the end
it was still an ape. I told him that his ancestors came to
Africa uninvited, without passport or visa, stole the land,
near exterminated whole groups of people, and enslaved and
colonized the rest. And now, he wants to be an African!
I told him that his pedigree was European, his history
was European, his lineage was European, his culture was
European, and that he was a European! I guess that you could
say that I effectively silenced him, and every other call that
I received on both programs, from African and European alike,
was extremely favorable! You would have been proud.
Yes indeed! Arabs and Europeans may be settled in Africa, but that doesn’t make
them Afrikans! Just because a snake has crawled into your bedroom and settled
down to rear its young doesn’t mean you should now count and embrace it as a
member of your family. It would be extremely irrational and Afrocidal for Afrikans to
accept a non-racial, continentalist concept of their identity.
Incidentally, we must note that in contrast to the European settlers in South
Africa, the Arab settlers in North Africa do not normally claim to be Africans. They
insist on their Arab identity and speak, at the most, of belonging to both the Arab and
African regions of the world. The amazing anomaly is that Black African leaders,
such as Nkrumah and Diop, have insisted on foisting African identity on them!
3. African Unity: unity of what, for what and against what?
African unity has been the major mantra of Pan Africanism for the past 50years.
Unfortunately, the purpose of the advocated unity has been so vague and unspecified
as to leave the impression that it is nothing more than unity for unity’s sake. Worse
still, the uncritical welcoming of the Arabist-Imperialist AU suggests that even a unity
in an enemy dungeon has become acceptable to Pan Africanism. Since a union in the
prison of Imperialism or Arabism is contrary to the Afrikan interest, the concept of
African unity has to be re-examined, and its purposes clarified and made consistent
with the interest of Afrikans. We need to bear in mind that people do not unite for
nothing or against nothing. Our experience in the past 2 millennia suggests that Pan
12
Afrika should be uniting against white domination, by Arabs no less than by
Europeans.
Leaving aside the question of the vague purpose of African unification, and
the question of whether the unification domain should be continental or sub-
continental in scope, Pan Africanism has failed to examine the question of the
character of the entities that it sought to unite. Nkrumah, for all his anti-colonial
fervor, was the head of a neo-colonial Bantustan, and was seeking to unite a bunch of
such neo-colonial Bantustans. If Pan Africanism has not abandoned its original anti-
imperialist purpose, it is rather strange that it has not focused on the task of changing
the neo-colonial character of these states it was attempting to unify. Diop touches on
this when he said in his 1976 interview: “The neo-colonial character of such regimes
is therefore an objective factor in the way of constituting a continental federation.”
[Moore, 1986:262]
But even Diop failed to give the matter the type of examination it required. He
saw it merely as an obstacle to federating, rather than a basic obstacle to such states
ever saving Afrikans from imperialism, even when federated, —and, therefore, an
obstacle that should be removed while, or even before, uniting them. After all, will
individual armed robbers, if they form a gang, stop their armed robbery or get more
effective at it? But continentalist Pan Africanism has been so obsessed with
unification that it doesn’t seem to have given this crucial aspect the attention it
deserves.
As the example of Cuba makes clear, continental union government, in Africa
or anywhere else, is neither necessary nor sufficient, and so is irrelevant for defeating
a global neo-colonialism. Castro’s little Cuba, right there at the doorstep of the USA,
has proved that you don’t need a union government of a continent to defeat
imperialism locally; all you need is a resolute and clever anti- imperialist leadership,
plus protection by a nuclear megastate/superpower. After he defeated Batista, Castro
dismantled the neo-colonial state in Cuba and built an anti- imperialist state to lead the
anti- imperialist reorganisation of Cuban society and economy. So, even little Ghana,
had the CPP leadership been so minded, might have become an African Cuba.
Instead, it remained a neo-colonial state and society while Nkrumah pursued the false
and delusional project of continental union government in Africa.
Given the character of these Bantustans, is it any wonder that their OAU/AU
has been a union of Bantustan bureaucrats and an anti-Afrikan agency of imperialism?
After all, an AU of neo-colonial Bantustans can only be a much bigger neo-colonial
Bantustan than its members. The neo- liberal IMF framework of the economic
programs of its NEPAD can only make one wonder: By what devious route, by what
subtle betrayals and mutations, has the anti- imperialist Pan Africanism of Du Bois
and Nkrumah achieved the precise ends sought by the white-supremacist Pan
Africanism of Jan Smuts that Du Bois and Nkrumah had pointedly opposed, namely
an “African continent (ruled) in the interest of its white investors and exploiters”. [Du
Bois, 1970:178; Nkrumah, 1973: 17]
13
Obviously, continentalist Pan Africanism long ago abandoned the anti-
imperialism that inspired it. Not only has it, from its inception, been an accomplice of
Arab expansionism, it also now serves whatever “partner” [read: paymaster] funds its
lavish jamborees –be it Washington, London, Brussels or Tripoli.
Because unification had become an end- in-itself, had become the supreme
goal, it was not asked what precise kind of unity was required as a means to the
original, but long since forgotten, anti- imperialist aims of Pan Africanism.
Reconfiguring the concept of African Unity so it does not yield a union of
neo-colonial Bantustans, but a union of anti- imperialist and anti-Arabist states plus
other organs that will serve the Afrikan people is, thus, an important task of self-
reparation waiting to be done on Pan Africanism.
4. Afrikan Collective Security: The Black World League
One of the glaring omissions from Pan Africanist thinking has been the idea of
collective Afrikan security—the concept, the aims as well as the organs for effecting
it. For a people whose calamities have resulted from millennia of failure of collective
security, this is a most self-damaging omission. Addressing it is a vital act of self-
reparation. It probably requires us to insist that each Afrikan state should explicitly
declare that the security it exists to ensure is the security of its population, territory,
society and cultures from Imperialism and Arabism. Presently, our comprador-
colonial Bantustans operationally define security as “internal security” – the security
of the neocolonial state apparatus from its victim Afrikan population. This is a crazy
14
carry over from the era of expatriate European colonialism when these states were
local agencies of subjugation for their imperialist founders. That needs now to be
changed. And having redefined security Afrocentrically, we need to invent organs for
implementing it. Since neither the AU nor the UN can ever function as an organ of
Afrikan collective security from both Imperialism and Arabism, it is imperative that
we organize a Black World League/Afrikan League to do that job for us.
5. Afrikan solidarity
Why is Afrikan solidarity so weak nowadays? And what is needed to make it a strong,
and automatic reflex yet again? In 1935, when Nkrumah, who was passing through
London to the USA to study, saw a poster that read “MUSSOLINI INVADES
ETHIOPIA,” he was overwhelmed by emotion. In his own remarkable words: “At
that time, it was almost as if the whole of London had suddenly declared war on me
personally.” The West African press reacted in a similar manner. One newspaper, for
example, declared that “that war with Abyssinia is our war”. Ethiopian Defense
Committees sprang up in various parts of West Africa and the Americas. Garvey and
many other diaspora leaders organized help for Ethiopia. Some Afrikan-Americans,
defying the US government’s “neutrality”, even went to fight in defense of Ethiopia.
[Esedebe, 1980:117-121; Harris, 1993:708-713]
Why do we not react to Darfur, Mauritania, South Sudan etc with the
exemplary indignation that Nkrumah experienced when he heard that Italy had
attacked Ethiopia? For 50 years we have had the strange spectacle of Pan
Africanists who show passionate solidarity with Palestinian Arabs but not with the
black South Sudanese or Darfurian victims of Arabs! What does it take to imbue
hundreds of millions of people with an active solidarity and the militant enthusiasm to
defend their group at whatever cost to the individual? We must discover and apply
such remedies to ourselves.
Having Afrocentrically and scientifically defined Afrikans—as well as non-
Afrikans-- for ourselves and in our interest, with passing the “mirror test” as a
necessary criterion; and having highlighted Pan Africanism’s weaknesses in the
matters of Afrikan Unity, Collective Afrikan Security and Afrikan Solidarity, we can
get on to working out a correct Pan Afrikanist position on Sudan and the Afro-Arab
borderlands.
6. Sudan
By 1945, the agenda of Pan Africanism had crystallized as follows: to end colonialism
and color discrimination in Pan Afrika. But quite surprisingly, the questions of Arab
domination and anti-Black discrimination were not placed on the Pan Africanist
agenda. The issue of Arab domination, surprisingly, did not attract continentalist Pan
Africanist thinkers and leaders even during the Anya Anya war in Sudan (1955-1972).
Whatever the reasons for that neglect, the project of ending Arab domination and
expansionism in Africa needs to be now placed at the top of the Pan Afrikan agenda,
in light of Afrikan experience in the Afro-Arab borderlands in the last 50 years. In the
50 years of continentalist Pan Africanism, with the sole exception of Zanzibar, Pan
Afrika did not release any Afrikan territory or people from Arab domination or
enslavement. Rather, more Afrikan lands and peoples have fallen under Arab rule and
enslavement.
15
Before 1970, for lack of Biko’s insight, Nkrumah and Co. threw Afrikans into
an Arab embrace that inhibited Afrikans from defending themselves against Arab
hegemonists. Since then, by failing to use Biko’s insight to clear their confusions and
complexes away, the black governments in the OAU/AU have become, as shown in
Dar Fur, like the black father who holds his own daughter down to be raped and
battered by his Arab business partner and ‘friend’. That is the role played by the
spineless AU presidents who met in Khartoum and Banjul this year without expelling
the Arabist government of Sudan from the AU for its crimes of ethnic cleansing and
genocide, and without doing enough to precipitate UN intervention to end the
scandalous raping and killing and enslavement of black Africans in Dar Fur.
In atonement for all that, Pan Afrika needs to acknowledge that Sudan is not
an Arab family affair; that it is a theatre of the Afro-Arab Race War, and that the
hegemonic Arab aggressors are the great enemy of Pan Afrika. Pan Afrika must,
therefore, in contrite solidarity and for collective security, vigorously mobilize
support—financial, military, diplomatic, ideological, propaganda etc-- for the victims
of Arabist attacks in Dar Fur and elsewhere in Sudan. We must also mobilize support
for South Sudan to attain its independence in 2011. That is our task of self-reparation.
In fact, Sudan is a serious test of our willingness to undertake self- reparation.
7. Pan Africanism’s ideological deficiency
The ideological deficiency, not to say the total lack of ideology, on the
part of the national liberation movements . . . constitutes one of the
greatest weaknesses, if not the greatest weakness, of our struggle
against imperialism.
--[Amilcar Cabral, 1980:122]
In the light of the weaknesses I have pointed to above, we need to take serious note of
Cabral’s observation and, therefore, assemble and test all the ideas of Pan Africanism
to see if they amount to a coherent ideology for Afrikan liberation. And if they do not,
it is our self- reparation obligation to elaborate them into an ideology with a
transformative program for breeding the kind of Black Consciousness activists who
can champion the interests and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of Afrikans
on this earth. Only by so doing can Pan Africanism be revitalized; re-emerge, as Pan
Afrikanism, from its doldrums; and gain popular following.
With these examples, let me leave the weaknesses of Pan Africanism and draw
attention to the larger area of our
8. Afrocidal traits:
These include our Europhilia, Arabophilia and Afrophobia; also the idiotic
individua lism, oblivious of collective interests, of our black comprador elites who are
obsessed with personal power and conspicuous consumania rather than the security
and prosperity of their countries. Another Afrocidal trait is a fatalistic patience,
especially under misrule, which General Jan Smuts, that white supremacist promoter
of imperialist Pan Africanism, described in 1930 as “one of the world’s marvels,
second only to the ass’s”. Yet another is our callous indifference to the plight of other
blacks.
Any shortlist of our Afrocidal weaknesses must include what Nkrumah
described as “a lack of malice, an absence of the desire for vengeance for our
16
wrongs”. [Nkrumah, 1973:114]. Though Nkrumah lists this among the admirable
traits of the African Personality, we need to take a critical look at it, for it is, in fact,
Afrocidal.
Other observers have described it more candidly and in more revealing detail.
For example, an American reporter, David Lamb, after 5 years travelling and
observing Africans in 48 countries during the late 1970s, said:
Given all he has had to endure from the beginning of slavery to the end of
colonialism, the African displays a racial tolerance that is nothing short of
amazing. He holds no apparent grudge against the European as an individual,
and it is rare indeed for any white person to experience even the slightest
indignity because of his color. . . . The African has forgiven, if not forgotten.
As a white settler in Kenya, a former hunter of Mau Mau freedom fighters, explained
to Lamb:
“Why has it been forgotten? Well, partly I think, because the African isn’t
capable of the depth of emotion that the European has. He doesn’t love his
women or hate his enemies with the same intensity. You look at a good solid
white hatred and it can last for generations. Africans don’t hate that way.”
But, on the other hand, Lamb notes:
For a people who have had to tolerate so many injustices over the centuries,
yet have remained basically gentle, polite and racially equitable, I was
constantly shocked to see the cruelty, even sadism, that Africans inflict on one
another so willingly.
And he wondered what makes the African “a fatalist, intent on his own survival but
caring little for those who are less fortunate.”
--[Lamb, 1985:161-162,164, 235,236]
Likewise, from Canada in the 1980s, another investigator, O. McKague, reported:
As one female member of the Nationalist party told me, one can treat blacks
like dirt for years, cease such treatment, and almost immediately they are
willing to be your best friends. This, she explained, is because blacks do not
have the capacity either to feel injustices or to remember them. Jews, she
stated, are quite [a different matter].
–- [McKague 1991:93]
This obscene rush to forgive and forget even the most grievous wrong done to us by
the white enemy was most publicly exhibited in Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth
and Reconciliation Commission which, quite sacrilegiously, placed on the same moral
level both the violence of the Apartheid oppressors and the counter violence of those
who fought their oppressors! The armed aggressor violence of the Apartheid state
criminals who inflicted the Sharpeville and other massacres and who murdered Steve
Biko was treated as no different morally from the unarmed, defensive counter
violence of the children of the Soweto uprising. Tutu’s approach is as obscene as
17
condemning equally for violence the soldier’s hand that is strangling an infant and
the milk teeth by which the infant tries to bite off the strangler’s hand!
9. “Black racism”
One final trait on this shortlist. An Afrocidal trait that seems to have emerged in the
20th century is our defensive sensitivity to any imputation of “exclusivism/black
racism”. You can whitemail even the most intelligent and self-assured Afrikan to
submit to any foolishness by the slightest hint that not to submit might be seen as
“exclusivism”/“reverse racism”/“black racism”. You can even get him to commit
suicide or rape his mother by playing on that sensitivity! That was how even Nkrumah
and Diop were whitemailed, or whitemailed themselves, into the Continentalist
superstition. That even Diop-- our formidable authority on cultural identity and its
constituent (historical, linguistic and psychological) factors-- fell into the
Continentalist superstition, against the implications of his own cultural science, is an
indication of just how effective a scarecrow this “exclusivism/black racism” charge
can be. I would be surprised if the same whitemail is not a factor in the AU’s timidity
and complicity on Darfur! Luckily, Biko gave us the therapy, and we should all
dutifully take the treatment, and get rid of our fear of being accused of “black
racism”.
Biko made it clear that “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the
mind of the oppressed” and that we must rid our minds of “imprisoning notions which are the
legacy of the control of (our) minds by whites.” [Biko, 1987:68] Among such “imprisoning
notions” is the cluster of “black racism”, “exclusivism”, “inclusiveness”, “non- racialism”,
“multi-racialism” etc. We need to immunize ourselves against the false and crippling charge
of “black racism”. And to do that, we need to thoroughly study Steve Biko’s works and
apply them in our daily lives.
Conclusion
As these traits are among the weaknesses our white enemies have exploited for
millennia, I would invite Afrocentric psychologists, as a matter of urgency, to
investigate and find therapies for them. I might add that even the traits of the southern
cradle/sun cultures that Diop listed in his Two Cradles Theory, which some are
inclined to celebrate, need to be investigated-- and eliminated, if found to be
Afrocidal and to have contributed to our plight.
We must admit to ourselves that there are many things wrong with us,
including psychological, cultural and social weaknesses. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in
the mess in which we find ourselves, and certainly not for two whole millennia! And
we must have the honesty and courage to struggle against our profound weaknesses if
we wish to survive, let alone with any dignity and self-respect. But we must note that
the things wrong with us are not those harped on by enemy propaganda, namely, our
black skins and our so-called IQ. We have no cause for any inferiority complex on
account of those decoy issues.
Let me end by inviting all Pan Afrikanists, those who want Afrikans to survive
and prosper, and especially the academics and other intellectuals among them, to
follow Steve Biko’s example and develop a comprehensive list of our genuine
weaknesses and then focus on discovering and applying whatever remedies are
appropriate for them, regardless of white opinion.
18
References and suggested Readings
Bankie, F. and Mchombu, K. eds (2006) Pan Africanism, Windhoek: Gamsberg
Macmillan
Biko, Steve (1987) I Write What I Like, Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books
Cabral, Amilcar (1980) Unity and Struggle, London: Heinemann Educational Books
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1970) W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks, ed by Philip S. Foner, New York:
Pathfinder Press
Esedebe, P. O. (1980) Pan Africanism, Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers
Finch, Charles S. (1986) “Further Conversations with the Pharaoh” in Van Sertima,
Ivan ed. Great African Thinkers, Vol. I, New Brunswick: Transaction Books,
1986, pp. 227-237
Garvey, Amy Jacques ed. (1925) Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, New
York: Atheneum, 1992
Harris, Joseph E. (1993) “Africa and its diaspora since 1935” in Ali Mazrui, ed.
General History of Africa, Vol. VIII, Paris: UNESCO, 1993, pp.705-723
Huntington, Samuel P. (1997) The Clash of Civilizations, New York:
Touchstone /Simon & Schuster
Killens, John Oliver (1965) “The Black Writer Vis-à-vis His Country” in Addison
Gayle, Jr. ed. The Black Aesthetic, New York: Anchor Books, 1972,
pp.357-373
Lamb, David (1985) The Africans, New York: Vintage Books
McKague, O. ed (1991) Racism in Canada, Saskatoon: Fifth House
Moore, Carlos (1976) “Interviews with Cheikh Anta Diop” in Van Sertima, Ivan ed.
Great African Thinkers, Vol. I, New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1986,
pp.249-283
Nkrumah, Kwame (1973) Revolutionary Path, London: Panaf Books
Van Sertima, Ivan (1986) “Death Shall not find us thinking that we die” in Van
Sertima, Ivan ed. Great African Thinkers, Vol. I, New Brunswick: Transaction
Books, 1986, pp.7-16.
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