AFRICAN UNION

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FIRST CONFERENCE OF INTELLECTUALS OF AFRICA AND ITS DIASPORA

Dakar, 6 - 9 October 2004

Theme 1: Pan-Africanism in the 21st Century

Elikia M'Bokolo

Clearly, Pan-Africanism has been, and remains the most ambitious and the most inclusive ideology that Africa devised for itself since the 19th Century. At the height of its resonance in the 50s and 60s, observers and analysts alike were all too imbued with the erstwhile generalised meaning of the term whereby the only ideologies worth the salt were those with universalist vocation born and nurtured in the West, ideologies like liberalism in particular which was associated with the capitalist economy, and communism whose mission was to build the socialist economy. African leaders themselves, in their large numbers, were so deeply immersed in that idea that, even while peddling their firm commitment to Pan-Africanism, they vociferously demonstrated their attachment to one or the other of these two ideologies. However, judging from the sayings of Pan-Africanists about Pan-Africanism itself and the endless string of actions they initiated in the name of Pan-Africanism, it is obvious that, during that era, Pan-Africanism was also, and remains today, in the full meaning of the concept, an ideology that is, a system of ideas, perceptions and social concepts which expresses the interest of certain social groups and classes, provides a global interpretation of the world as currently organized and takes on board viewpoints, standards of behaviour and guidelines for action. At this threshold of the 21st Century, revisiting Pan-Africanisms intellectual and political journey in time, its nature and the meaning of its numerous struggles, the reality of its impact on African societies; revisiting both its successes and failures in their varying dimensions and magnitude and its relevance in relation to the stakes facing contemporary Africa all that raises problems of method and substance. As matter of fact, studies on the history of Pan-Africanism are constantly being influenced by two schools of thought which it has today become convenient to discard. The first holds that the statements credited to some of the founders of Pan-Africanism contain, not a point of view, but rather a history of Pan-Africanism, a history accomplished, unquestionable and definitive. The other school of thought represents the growing consensus which has it that unity and continuity have been the hallmarks of the Pan-Africanist movement since its initial manifestation up to attainment of independence, and even up to the present day. The fact that the recognized and respected founders of Pan-Africanism not the least of whom are W.E.B. Du Bois, George Padmore, Ras Makonnen and Kwame Nkrumah had written so much about the history of the movement, has led many research persons to simply reproduce these writings as representing the history of Pan-Africanism. However, whatever the intentions of their authors, the said writings were of a special genre, combining pro domo advocacy with the skill to set up oneself as founder and to be implanted in the pantheon of the heros of Pan-Africanism. With regard to method, the historian should not take what these players have written or said about their own deeds and accomplishments on their face value. As for substance, one can say that those written texts have frozen the meaning of Pan-Africanism whose recent and current productions are becoming increasingly lopsided and, indeed,

2 incorrect. The contents of these texts may, in substance, be summarized in the clearly definitive argumentation of Kwame Nkrumah: Pan-Africanism has its beginning in the liberation struggle of AfricanAmericans, expressing the aspirations of Africans and peoples of African descent. From the first Pan-African Conference, held in London in 1900, until the fifth and last Conference held in Manchester in 1945, AfricanAmericans provided the main driving power in the movement. PanAfricanism then moved to Africa, its true home, with the holding of the First Conference of Independent African States in Accra in April 1958, and the All-African Peoples Conference in December of the same year. (Krumah, K. The Spectre of Black Power, in The Struggle Continues, Londres, Panaf, 1980, p.34) Moreover, by emphasizing ideological and programme oriented discourse, and the political activities and successes of Pan-Africanists, the dominant trend in the historiography of Pan-Africanism reduced it to a matter for the elite, intellectuals and politicians without asking whether the very persistence of Pan-Africanism and its ever growing popularity both in Africa and in the African Diaspora, are not sufficient indications of the magnitude and depth of its inroads in the society. The history of Pan-Africanism is complex, and should not be limited to an intellectual and political history. Rather, it should delve into the social fabric; explore the linkages between Pan-Africanism and economic issues and evaluate its relations with cultural practices. The 21st Century Pan-Africanism is first and foremost a response to the material rape, economic exploitation, political and cultural domination and racism of which Africans have been victims every where not only in the erstwhile colonized territories of Africa and in the colonial metropoles but also in the former colonies of the New World, now independent and reputedly democratic states. Having partially responded to these challenges and still bearing the burden thereof, Pan-Africanism is currently faced with the contradictions inherent in independent Africa and in a world that has been experiencing breath-taking changes since the closing decades of the 20th Century with mixed results: so many successes and so many failures. This paper will trace the progress of Pan-Africanism in the past century with focus on the problematic junctures of this history, evaluate the successes and failures of Pan-Africanism whenever its ideology crystallized into concrete action and analyse the current rebirth of this ideology and the prerequisites for its success in the years ahead. I. Ideological Pan-Africanism: A History to be Revisited

The conventional approach to the history of Pan-Africanism has its roots mainly in George Padmore (1956) who, himself, drew inspiration not only from his own experience but also, and very much so, from the writings of Du Bois

3 particularly Dusk of Dawn (1940) and The World and Africa (1947). In the first place, this approach reduced the history of nascent Pan-Africanism (1900 1945) to the series of five Pan-African Congresses (Du Bois, W.E.B., 1947). The approach then confined that history to a very narrow social and intellectual trans-Atlantic Space which would later take the form of a trans-Atlantic triangle (I. Geiss), the three points of which represent, firstly, the Black Communities of the United States and the British West Indies; then, the Black people of the United Kingdom; and lastly, the British West and Southern Africa. This approach put in place a genealogy for Pan-Africanism and, within it, relations that have apparently become indissoluble in the eyes of many. These relations are not without problems now a days. Genealogy: The Question of Relations First, there is the question of relations and the founding figures within the Anglophone triangle described above. The philosopher Anthony Appiah very well captured this dominant viewpoint on this issue when he wrote: PanAfricanism took philosophical form in the period leading up to Padmores work, and its major theoretical works are those of Padmore and Du Bois. (Appiah, A.K. and Gates, H.L., 1999, p.1486). However, it is evident that, well before Du Bois and Padmore, there was what may be described as the pre-history of Pan-Africanism; but this was more than pre-history, as it encapsulated the very birth of the movement and the emergence of the initial nuclei of its ideology. George Padmores, and then Sylvester Williams biographer, James R. Hooker, underscored this point so beautifully in the following words: Students of Pan-Africanism have tended either to overlook him (Sylvester Williams), or to satisfy themselves with a cursory reference, and all have credited the American, W.E.B. Du Bois, with true paternity of this concept. (It can be) proved that Du Bois was the St. Paul of the movement, just as Padmore was its Luther. (Hooker, J.R., 1975 p.3). In fact, in contrast to W.E.B. Du Bois who, hitherto had only spoken about Pan-Negroism, Sylvester Williams was not just the first person to establish an African Association (1897). As against earlier gatherings in which only Blacks from the United States participated, he also came up with the idea of a Pan-African Conference intended to bring together representatives of the African race from all over the world. The word Pan-Africanism was then born; and as a matter of fact, that era witnessed in London a meeting of not only Black people from the United States and the English Speaking West Indies but also Africans from the African Continent. If participants at that meeting refrained from directly raising political issues such as autonomy, and independence for that matter, they were however quite critical of the form that colonization was then taking in southern Africa particularly the forced labour which they saw as akin to a new form of slavery, land expropriation, legal and residential segregation, absence of recognized rights, etc. For the first time, the

4 Congress would use the concept self development as a guarantee for a promising future. It is in this context that one can perceive more vividly the role of W.E.B. Du Bois who, as rightly suggested in James R. Hookers metaphore, placed in the service of Pan-Africanism, his talents as a propagandist, his exceptional capacity for intellectual work and all his energy, to the extent that his long life (1868-1963) became identified with all stages of Pan-Africanist struggle. He was already in the limelight as far back as the 1900 Congress which, it is recalled, adopted the famous call To the Nations of the World crafted by himself a call which contained the prophetic phrase, worth an entire programme: The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line, the question as to how far differences of race, which show themselves chiefly in the colour of the skin and the texture of the hair, are going to be made, hereafter, the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing, to their utmost ability, the opportunities and privileges of modern mankind. Herein, however lies another difficulty over which the pioneers of Pan-Africanism have remained divided, and specialists have continued to trade polemics. In the formulation of the ideological content of Pan-Africanism and in the dissemination of its message to the largest possible number of people beyond the narrow circle of members of the middle class who gathered in London in 1900, should the credit be given to W.E.B. Du Bois or to any other individual; in other words, to Marcus Garvey whose UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) constituted, both in America and Africa, a crucial stage in building awareness over the situation of Blacks, and over both the need and the means to move out of this situation? As a matter of fact, in the 20s, the two men fiercely contested leadership of the Pan-Africanist movement to the point of publicly displaying their mutual hatred. Marcus Garvey is, without doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world. He is either a lunatic or a traitor, declared Du Bois to whom Garvey promptly fired the following rejoinder: This one-third Dutchman, who assumes the right to dictate to the Negro People what they should do and should not do, has become so brazen and impertinent that it leaves me no other course than to deal with him as he deserves. In certain society, when we meet individuals of this kind, we do not waste time arguing with them, but give them a good horse whipping. Du Bois is speculating as to whether Garvey is a lunatic or a traitor. Garvey has no such speculation about Du Bois. He is positive that he is a traitor.1 For C.L.R. James comrade-in-arms of both George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah, whose role in Pan-Africanism is still being played down a great deal, the crown clearly belongs first to Garvey, and then to George Padmore: Dipping their pen into the ink of Negritude, two Black West Indians had their foot marks indelibly imprinted in the initial pages of our contemporary history. First on the front line is Marcus Garvey () Within the space of just over five years, he placed (the cause of Africans) firmly in the political conscience of the world (). The other West Indian is George Padmore. Also English speaking, he hailed from Trinidad. Early in
Du Bois in The Crisis (May 1924), Garvey in The Negro World (May 10, 1924) quoted by Tony Martin, 1986, p. 273.
1

5 the 20s, he shook off the dusty shackles of the small world of the West Indies and proceeded to the United States. When he died in 1959, eight countries sent delegations to his funeral in London. However, it was in Ghana that his ashes would be buried, and every one affirmed-that, this country renowned for its political activism had never seen such a huge event as that marking the burial of Padmore. It was the belief that even peasants from remote areas of the country, peasants who had hitherto never heard about that name, made their way to Accra to pay their last respects to this West Indian who spent all his life serving them.(James, C.L.R., 1938, trad. Fr. Pp. 240 242). As for Padmore, he willingly credited to Garvey the honour of having Led the American Black to gain awareness of their African origin and to create, for the first time, a feeling of international solidarity in Africans and in people of African descent (Padmore, G., 1956, p.22). He however strongly condemned Balck Zionism of which he accused Garvey: This dangerous ideology which does not contain any iota of democracy and flirts with the aristocratic attributes of a non-existent Black Kingdom, should be firmly resisted; for it does not in any way help, but rather, impedes the collective struggle of Black people for liberation from American imperialism. This debate raged on until joined by Kwame Nkrumah who, during his exile in Guinea (1966 1972) continued to ponder over the merits and roles of the advocates of either position. His training by Kwegyir Aggrey, his temperament and ideas turned him into an ardent anti-racist. In his Autobiography however, he acknowledged that Marcus Garvey had been one of the men who impressed him most. While rejecting what he saw as Garveys racism, Nkrumah drove home his point by borrowing the UNIA black star and making it one of the symbols of independent Ghana, placing the black star at the centre of Ghanas flag and turning the Black Star which gave its name to several sites and locations in Ghanaian cities as well as numerous institutions (the national maritime company, the national football team, etc) into a veritable memorabilia of the first Black Africas independent State. Moreover, Nkrumah was also the one to receive the grand old man, a treasured part of Africas history (Africa Must Unite, pp. 132133, 135; Revolutionary Path, pp. 42-43) in Accra where he died; and his last abode became a focal point for intense PanAfricanist reflection. Nkrumah was no less critical of W.E.B. Du Bois and the intellectual viewpoint he represented: My Opinion of the Book (Du Bois Autobiography) is very mixed. Here is an intellectual aristocrat born in 1868; and here is the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engel published in 1848, and this man never became a communist not even a socialist until the last evenings of his life. His philosophy for the Talented Tenth and his fight with Booker Washington, and later with Marcus Garvey, put me off him when I was a student in the United States. () There are a lot of things Du Bois did which have put a brake to the revolving machine of African Revolution. Dr. Du Bois lived behind a veil which he was afraid to tear open. He was an intellectual but not a revolutionary. If Dr. Du Bois had supported Marcus Garvey, the course of AfroAmerican history might be different now. But I loved him and respected him just the same. (Letter to Reba Lewis, 12/05/1968 and 03/06/1968, in Nkrumah, K., 1990, pp. 234 and 238).

6 However critical they were in relation to history, these debates did not in any way close the question of Pan-Africanisms pioneering connections. As a matter of fact, the famous triangle turned out to be incomplete. If this triangle was all that existed, it would have been impossible to learn about the very early dissemination, across Africa and of the key demands of PanAfricanism. There were, indeed, in existence other Pan-African triangles with links to imperial groupings other than British, and incidental to the struggles which these groupings generated. Within these spaces which, for want of a better term and considering the colonial context, we can describe as francophone and Lusophone. There also existed intellectual and political undercurrents which not only developed along the lines of Pan-Africanism, but also added new dimensions to its original and essentially political leanings. It is further vital to point out that, while preserving their intrinsic profile, these undercurrents on several occasions intermingled and cross-fertilized with those of the Anglophone triangle. In regard to Pan-Africanism in the strict sense of the word, the francophone triangle was also as precocious as its Anglophone equivalent that originated from the United States of America and the territories under British domination. This clearly belies the hitherto tenaciously held belief according to which Blacks from French colonies joined in the Pan-African movement only in 1919 on the occasion of the Pan-African congress in Paris, and indeed after Nkrumahs trips to Paris following the Manchester Congress of 1945. The most remarkable features of this Pan-Africanism reside in its special focus on intellectual and cultural issues, though there was no shortage of interest in political matters. The major hub of this triangle was the Republic of Hati. It is however needful to move away from yet another deep-rooted myth prevalent in the 80s particularly among the most ardent admirers of the Hatian revolution. For instance, for C.L.R. James, for over a century after independence, the people of Hati sought to craft in the West Indies a carbon copy of the European civilization, that is the French civilization (). For generations, the best children of the Hatian elite were educated in Paris and distinguished themselves in French intellectual circles. The glowing pre-independence racial hatred had evaporated. (James, C.L.R., 1938, trad. Fr. Pp.337-338). This is however the direct opposite of the indications contained in the most recent publications.2 Beyond the pioneering, exemplary and rousing nature of its independence, and the legitimate pride the people took in their long and victorious resistance to slavery, Hati was constantly faced with attempts to undermine this independence especially by France, the former colonial power, and by its over-bearing neighbour the United States of America. From the 1860s, this state of affairs was compounded by the European colonial ambitions in Africa and, above all, by the racists discourse employed by European States to legitimise colonization in Africa. As a matter of fact, that racism also directly targeted Hati which the theorists of inequality of the human races and European journalists revelled in describing in the most negative manner, not only to justify possible decolonisation, but also to deny
2

I am referring here to Oruna bara, my own on-going research and to several unpublished theses and memories.

7 Africans and their descendants outside the Continents any reason to defend or demand the right to manage their own affairs. Whether trained or residing in France one of the most active hotbeds of this racism Hatian intellectuals became the defenders of the black race against the detractors of the black race. For them all , Hati represented the Mecca, the Judea of the black race, the country () to which every black person with African blood flowing in his veins should go on pilgrimage at least once in his life time; because, it was there that the black person made himself into a person; it was there that, breaking his shackles, he irrevocably condemned slavery. (Prince, Hannibal, 1990, p. 698). Hatians from Louis-Joseph (1855-1911) to Jean-Price Mars (1876-1969) persistently explained that their country had also been an embodiment of the irresistible force of a united Africa in the struggle against oppression and domination: It is appropriate to emphasize the huge paradox in the fact that hundreds of thousands of men taken away from Africa to Santa Domingo to work as slaves in plantations the soil of which they had prepared, triggered the most phenomenal prosperity of the time and after mingling their blood with that of their oppressors, reversed their role, taking the place of their erstwhile masters; and in that corner of the Americas, built a new fatherland for the black person. However, this fantastic metamorphosis contained difficulties inherent in the very process of the phenomenon. It is obvious that the assorted origins of the components of the new community drawn as they were from across the Western Coast of Africa, from Cap Blanc to the Cape of Good Hope, people specially recruited from eternally diverse and deliberately disparate tribes, in a way to ensure that their heterogeneity provided a guarantee against possible revolt; it is apparent that all these precautions had been taken with the design to perpetuate slavery. However, in the end, these precautions could not at the fateful hour of destiny prevent the rallying and indeed the welding together of oppressed people, culminating in the creation of a Black State in the basin of the West Indies (Price-Mars, J., 1960, De Saint Domingue, pp. 14-15). The abiding contribution of Hatians to Pan-Africanism was manifested in a fierce intellectual struggle against racism. The flag bearer of this struggle was undoubtedly the monumental essay published by Antnor Firmin in Paris De lgalit des races humaines. Anthoropologie positive (1885, XIX 667 pages) written in response to Arthur de Gobineau (whose Essai sur lingalit des races humanaines was re-edited in 1884) and his colleagues. This anti-racism struggle engaged the energies of the people of Hati in the 1860s up to 1912 as illustrated by the works of a whole host of Polemist and intellectual stars who also turned Paris into the bastion of African anti-racism campaign in opposition to European racism. Delorme (Demesvar) Etudes sur lAmrique. La democratic et le prjug de couleur aux Etats Unis dAmrique. Les nationalits amricaines et le systme Monro (1966) America Studies. Democracy and the colour prejudice in the United States of America. American nationalities and the Monroe doctrine (1966);

8 August (Jules), Deni (Clment), Bowler (Arthur), Dvost (Justin) et Janvier (Louis Joseph): Les dtracteurs de la race noire et de la Rpublique dHati. Rponses M. Lo Quesnel, Prcdes de letters de M. Schoelcher et de Mr. le Dr. Btancs (1882) The detractors of the Black Race and the Republic of Hati. Response to Mr. Lo Quesnel, preceded by letters from Mr. Schoelchner and Dr. Btancs (1882). Janvier (Louis Joseph): A black people in relation to the white peoples. A comparative Political and Sociological study: the Republic of Hati and its Visitors (1840 1882). Response to Mr. Victor Cochinat of Petite Presse and other writers (1883); Equality of the Races (1884) Un peuple noir devant les peuples blancs. Etude de politique et de sociologie compare: la Rpublique dHati et ses visiteurs (18401882). Rponses M. Victor Cochinat, de la Petite Presse et quelques autres crivains (1883); Lgalit des races (1884). Bower (Arthur): A Conference on Hati. In response to the detractors of my race, notably Sir Spenser St-John, Mexican Minister of S.M.B. (1888). - Une conference sur Hati. En rponse aux dtracteurs de ma race, notamment Sir Spenser St-John, Ministre de S.M.B. au Mexique (1888); Sylvain (Benito): Lvolution de la race noire Les Confrences antiesclavagistes libres donnes un Palais des Acadmies de Bruxelles les 28, 29 et 30 avril 1891 (1892); La Fraternit organ de dfense d Hati et de la Race noire (Fonde en 1893). Etude sur le traitement des indigenes dans les colonies d exploitation (1899); Development of the Black Race Free Anti-Slavery Conferences held at the Palais des Acadmies de Bruxelles on 28, 29 and 30 April 1891 (1892); Fraternity, defensive tool of Hati and the Black Race (founded in 1893); Study on the Treatment of indigenous people in the plantation colonies (1897); Price (Hannibal): De la rehabilitation de la race noire par la Rpublique d Hati (1900); - Rehabilitation of the Black Race by the Republic of Hati (1900); Vaval (Duracin): Le Prjug de race et M. Jean Finot (1900). - Racial prejudice and Mr. Hean Finot (1900)3
3 In 1905 Jean Finot published a study titled Le Prjug des races (Racial prejudice). Vers lunit de lhuman (Towards Human Unity). Lanthropo-psychologie et lanthropo-sociologie (Anthropology-Psychology and Anthropology Sociology). Les origines mystrieuses on incertaines des peuples et des races (The mysterious or uncertain origins of peoples and races). Le roman de la race franaise. (Novel of the French race). Y a-t-in des peoples condamns rester ternellement infricurs aux autres? (Are there a people condemned to be eternally inferior to others?) Paris, Flix Alcan.

Alongside this huge intellectual work which today, needs to be rediscovered and brought to the knowledge of a greater number of people, it is also recalled that Hati was the origin of the initial concrete initiatives to back Ethiopia in its bid to preserve its independence in the face of encroachment on its territory by France and the U.K.; and in particular, the aggression of Italian imperialism. The mastermind of these initiatives was Bnito Sylvain (18681915, a fervent activist overflowing with ideas, who, mesmerized by the Ethiopian victory at Adwa (1896), on five different occasions visited the empire of Menelik II between 1897 and 1906. On the occasion of the centenary of the independence of Hati (1904), Bnito Sylvain exerted his best efforts and succeeded in getting the two truly black independent States into association. Menelik II and the leaders of Hati exchanged letters whereby they established diplomatic relations and set in motion common actions to ensure that the freedom of the African people is safeguarded and that, under the protection of the (Ethiopian) empire, these people should progress not only in terms of material well-being, but also intellectually and morally. Concurrently, Hati the flag bearer of the Black Race in America officially laid claim, before the entire civilized world, to its proper role in the global development of its fellow humans in Africa, a role which it saw as the major raison deter for its international presence Driven by this activism, Bnito Sylvain, in agreement with Antnor Firmin, thought about organizing, on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition slated for Paris in 1900, an intellectual congress of learned people with the objective of using modern science to obtain a revisit of this huge procedure whereby to assuage the conscience of pro-slavery Europe, some learned people had in the past propounded the dogma of the natural inferiority of blacks. However, Bnito Sylvain met Booker T. Washington in 1897, and decided to participate in the African Association which had just been created in London. In 1900 he actively participated in the Pan-African Conference in London in the dual capacity as delegate of Hati and personal representative of Negus Menelik. It would also appear that it was he that convinced the Blacks of the United States not to send volunteer soldiers to South Africa to fight the Boers alongside the British. On the other hand, he devoted his best energies in organizing the return to Congo, then the property of the Belgian King Leopold II, of some 1,000 or 2,000 former slaves taken to Cuba from Congo, who wanted to return to their country of origin an initiative that failed owing to lack of resources. Clearly, therefore, there were very many and striking similarities and points of convergence in the two (Anglophone and Francophone) undercurrents in the nascent Pan-Africanism. The American occupation of Hati (1915-1934) would again, directly and indirectly, affect the thrust of the discourse within the Francophone triangle. Firstly, it diverted to and focalised on Hati, intellectual reflections which had hitherto situated the debate of ideas and the political struggle at the universal level of the black race as a whole.

10 In Hati itself, the occupation triggered national consciousness, patriotic fervor and resistance, leading the intellectuals to come to the people to teach and educate them, and also to discover in them and learn from them the true values of Hati, that is, the African values of Hati. The intellectuals thus discovered stories, customs, beliefs; social practices and forms of sociability of which many of teem from the privileged class hitherto hardly had any idea. Every one was aware that this return to the people driven by significantly titled magazines (La Nouvelle Ronde, La Revue Indigne, Revue des Griots) would produce a remarkable literary rebirth, that would reach its peak of development in Ainsi parla loncle of Jean Price-Mars (1928). On the occupation of the Island by the United States, Auguste Viatte said: What they created without knowing it, was a return to Africa (Viatte, A., 1954, p.439). As a matter of fact, as Jean Price-Mars explained, we shall have the opportunity to become ourselves only if we do not repudiate any part of the uncestral heritage. And, this heritage is 80% a gift from Africa (Prince-Mars, J., 1928, p. 214). This literary rebirth, as we are now aware, would still generate in the 1930s, on other side of the Atlantic and at the other point of the triangle, that cultural radicalism that rejected European racism while boasting innovation in its writings. Born in Paris and then radiating to other parts of the black world, this cultural radicalism, namely, the Negritude Movement was the heir both of the Hatian literary rebirth and the Harlem Negro renaissance4. Moreover, the political dimension of Pan-Africanism which had been largely absent in the discourse of the Francophone triangle, began to attract many followers in the period between the two World Wars. One of the paradoxes of Hatian anti-racism had indeed been its indifference to colonialism or, more precisely, its condemnation of Anglo-Saxon colonialism and some kind of sympathy for French colonialism an attitude noticed very vividly in Bnito Sylvain whose law thesis (1899) ended with a comparison of the two colonialisms a comparison quite favourable to France. Sylvain also remained an admirer of the Belgian King Leopold II and his deceitful discourse on his socalled will to civilize Africa. The long period of withdrawal by Hatians into themselves somehow threw up French speaking Black activists who not only radicalised their viewpoints and discourse by associating them with communism, but also, and above all, discovered the Pan-Africanism of the Anglophone triangle at a time when it was experiencing profound renovation. The history of that radicalisation and of that linkage with the Blacks of the Anglo-Saxon world is only beginning to be known. At this juncture, we shall content ourselves with recalling the three most important and most significant personalities and moments that are now of common knowledge. The first of these personalities is Marc Kojo Tovalou Hounou, citizen of Dahomey (18871936). After having been a moderate intellectual, Tovalou Hounou turned into a Pan-Negro activist with strong links to Marcus Gaveys UNIA, while at the same time remaining close to French communists (Derlin Zinsou, E. et
In contrast, Lopold Sdar Senghor had no knowledge of Edward W. Blyden whom he discovered only after 1967 while reading Blydens Biography by Hollis R. Lynch. He then admitted that all Negritude was to be found in Blyden (exchange of views between Elikia MBokolo and Hollis R. Lynch, October 1977).
4

11 Zoumnou, L. 2004, pp. 111-191). On behalf of the Universal League for the Defense of the Black Race (LUDRN), which he just founded in 1924, he participated in the UNIA Congress in New York at which Marcus Garvey himself introduced him to an enthusiastic audience of nearly 5,000 people. LUDRN however soon entered into conflict with Blaise Diagne, Senegalese deputy and former State Secretary in the French Government, whom the League accused of being a tool of French imperialism. That conflict was incomprehensible to many United States Pan-Africanists who, in contrast, saw in Blaise Diagne, the model of a successful integration. The forced retreat of Tovalou Hounou facilitated the emergence of Lamine Senghor a Senegalese World War II exserviceman who had participated in the LUDRN adventure and in 1926 established the Committee for the Defense of the Black Race (CDRN) with its leaders drawn largely from across French West Africa. The CDRN press (particularly La Voix des Ngres et La Race Ngre) The Voice of the Black and Negro Race) gave a lot of space to the struggle of Blacks in the United States and the Caribbean. Having died prematurely in 1927, Lamine Senghor left the scene to another personality Timoko Garan Kouyate whose League for the Defense of the Black Race quite active between 1928 and 1931 got into relationship with George Padmore and, through him, with W.E.B. Du Bois; and using his media outfit, he disseminated the most rousing information on the status of Blacks in Great Britain. The establishment of the African Cultural Society (Socit Africain de Culture) and the magazine Prsence Africaine in Paris in 1947, marked the high point of the two different trends the Francophone trend which was very attached to cultural and intellectual issues, and the Anglophone trend exemplified by its contribution to the political debate on the future of Africa. It was also thanks to Prsence Africaine that the nationalist movements and Pan-African manifestations in parts of Africa under Portuguese domination were discovered. The testimonies of freedom fighters in Portuguese colonies would appear to confirm the defining role played by Portuguese speaking African students and young intellectuals residing in Portugal after the Second World War. Virtually all of them assembled at the Casa dos Estudantes do Imprio (House of the students of the Empire) in Lisbon founded in 1944, and declared themselves avid readers of the Pan-African magazine published by Alioune Diop in Paris. The publications of the House of the Students of the Empire (CET) Mensagem and Boletim in Lisbon; Meridiano in Coimbra deliberately portrayed literary and artistic focus, very akin to the magazine published in Paris. Furthermore, several young talents made inputs to the special edition of Prsence Africain titled Black Students Speak Out (Les tudiants nois parlent) 1953. These young talents included Mario de Andrade, Amilcar Cabral, Alda Espirito Santo, Agostino Neto and F. Tenreiro. Almost all the leaders of the liberation struggle in Portuguese colonies and in Portuguese States admit having passed through the CEI, and having conceived therein the parties and forms of struggle that eventually led to indpendence (Borges, P., Freudenthal, A., 1997). The idea of publishing the compendia of Poetry of Portuguese-speaking Blacks (Poesia negra de expresso portuguesa)

12 came to F.J. Tenreiro and Mario Pinto de Andrade following a perusal of Leopold Sdar Senghors Anthologie de la nouvelle posie ngre et malgache 1948 (Anthology of the new Negro and Malagasy poetry). However, they also got associated both with the Anglophone triangle and the Francophone triangle through the African Cultural Society. As a matter of fact, all the lusophone writers between the 1940s and the 1970s who similarly held themselves up as freedom fighter, intimated that they had been greatly influenced by these two trends of Pan-Africanism and, from the literary stand point especially, by the Harlem Black Renaissance (Renaissance Noire de Harlem). The above concise chronology is however inadequate and very incomplete. It would appear that the Pan-Africanist movement approach in Portuguese Africa and in the lusophone world at large suffered a great deal from the impact of the historiography which, for long, had propounded the thesis whereby the Portuguese colonialism was a non-economic imperialism, and had apparently accepted the ideas of Luso-tropicalism based on the absence of racism in Portuguese colonization. In reality, we have in the present work been able to trace the main features of a lusophone triangle which is almost as old as the other two, is imbued with the same intellectual and ideological content.5 Firstly, in the 19th Century, there were numerous forward and backward movements (Pierre Verger) between Bahia de Todos Os Santos in Brazil on the one hand, and the Gulf of Guinea and Angola, on the other. The direct links established as a result are yet to be fully studied. From all indications, these links created a feeling of trans-Atlantic identity anchored on the Portuguese language and on the common reference positive or negative as the case may be to Portuguese colonization. Nevertheless, there were, above all, response by intellectuals and activists to the new forms assumed by this colonization at the end of the 19th Century. This movement affected mostly the colonies located along the Atlantic coastline (Guinea Bissau, Cape Verd, Sao Tome and Principe, Angola) as against Mozambique with close economic links with the Union of South Africa. It was in fact through South Africa that Marcus Garveys UNIA penetrated into Mozambique. From the Atlantic coast, the mad rush prompted the Portuguese to penetrate much deeper into the African soil, taking effective possession of their territory in the face of resolute resistance. Following the slave trade and the deceitful interlude of lawful trade, the colonial occupation assumed the extreme forms found elsewhere in the Continent, namely: economic marginalization of Africans who were increasingly excluded from participation in the management of their affairs; application of the ideology of superior civilization vis--vis the backward races; refusal to mix with the Blacks and mixed race people in the name of purity of blood, strict control of Portuguese immigration to avoid the influx of poor settlers and the infidelization of whites. However, in a movement similar to that in other colonies, African students gathering in Portugal, though not in large numbers,
See in particular Elisabetta Maino The Identity Kaleidoscopy. Historical Anthropology of So Tom and Principe (Le Kalidoscope indentitaire. Anthropologie historique de So Tom Principe).
5

13 came together to organize the response. Concurrently, a relatively heavy emigration of Cape Verdians to the United States of America and to Trinidad and Tobago (the home of Sylvester Williams, George Padmore, C.L.R. James and others including Eric Williams) created a new bridge between the activists of Portuguese Africa and Black America. From this rich and complex history, we can retain, firstly, a number of impressive movements established at the end of the 19th Century and the 1930s by those who, in Angola, proudly described themselves as sons of the soil (filhos da terra). The most prominent of these movements were based in Portugal with branches in African territories: The Association of Black Students which seemed to have been inspired by the Association of Black Youths in Paris founded by Bnito Sylvain in 1898, and which later became The International Black Academic League (Ligue Acadmique Internationale des Ngros) perhaps along the lines of Merican Negro Academy; the Colonial League (Liga Colonial) 1911) which later became the Liga Ultramarina dedicated to the fraternal union of all colonies; the Liga dos Interesses indigenas (19101911) devoted to the promotion of education as well as the material and social progress of Africans; the Junta de Defesa dos Direitos de Africa (Association for the Defense of the Rights of Africa (1912) to which two magazines A VOZ d Africa 1920 (The Voice of Africa) and the Tribuna d Africa Africa Tribune were associated. The Association gave birth to two movements: the Liga Africa (1920) organ of Correio d Africa and the Partido Nacionalista Africano (African Nationalist Party) 1921, which advocated the union of African peoples whom it saw as brothers/sisters of one large family. The coup dtat of 1926, the advent of the New Salazarist State and the ban on political parties resulted in the existence of only the African Nationalist Movement 1931 which presented itself as civic movement. These various groups which contained political divisions and personal strategies, had specific demands corresponding with the actual situation on ground, the best expression of which was, no doubt, the pamphlet denouncing Portuguese abuses, published in Lisbon in 1901 under the title Voz de Angola Clamando No Deserto Oferecida Aos Amigos Da Verdade Pelos Naturais (The Voice of Angola Crying in the Desert, Offered to Friends of the Truth by the Indigenes). However, these groupings were also part of the overall development and rise of the Pan-African movement. For instance, the magazine The Negro (1911) of the International Black Academic League was, in turn, dedicated to applying to Africa the formula used by the American President James Monroe, in line with the thoughts of Edward W. Blyden who, for the first time, had spoken of Africa for Africans. The magazine also made explicit references to Booker T. Washington, W. Monroe Trotter and W.E.B. Du Bois. Similarly, O Correio de Africa (Letter from Africa) made references to the Senegalese Deputy Blaise Diagne, the West Indian commander Mortenol and the activist Paul Panda Farnana who claimed to have correspondents all over the Black world and strongly condemned the Italian fascist aggression against Ethiopia. On the other hand, the magazine of the African Nationalist Movement A Mocidade Africana (The African Youth) (1930-1932) announced the project which

14 remained unfulfilled, to organize as Pan-African Congress in Lisbon with the support of Timoko Gasan Kouyate. However, like in the other trends in the Pan-Africanism movement, most of the groups remained moderate, not daring to openly condemn colonialism, and demand autonomy or independence, for that matter. Here, like elsewhere, the radicalisation of Pan-Africanism was the work of a minority. Diachrony: Radicalisation of Pan-Africanism One of the major characteristics of the history of Pan-Africanism was, indeed, the existence within its ranks of a group serving as a driving force and bent on disseminating its ideas. This group which was not content with ventilating ideas and issuing slogans, was adept in organizing its followers in a way to achieve decisive victories over colonialism and stimulating movements for the unification of Africa. It was from within this group that Pan-Africanism became radicalised both for its benefit and to its disadvantage: for its benefit, because this radicalisation was a prerequisite for political emancipation; and to its disadvantage, because the radicalisation generated, within the ranks of PanAfricanism, divisions and rifts which were to weigh heavily against the process and the agenda of African Unity. What matters, for now, is to determine the context, factors and modalities of the radicalisation. Firstly, this radicalisation no doubt had linkages with Marxism, the communist ideology, the international communist system and with the communist parties of the big powers. It surely did not fall into the anticommunist hysteria, particularly virulent in the 1920s and during the cold war, which saw the champions of African emancipation as mere tools in the malicious hands of Komintern, the Kominform and the KGB!6 The reality was that all the radicals of Pan-Africanism from the most prominent to the least known, sooner or latter flirted with Marxism or communism. More still, they often took sides with communism, but either broke with it or distanced themselves from it, as convenient. This was the case with the most prominent figures such as George Padmore, Cyril L.R. James, Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marc Kojo Tovalu Hounou, Lamine Senghor, Timoko Garan Kouyat, Aim Csaire, Leopold Sdar Senghor, Amilcar Cabral, Agostino Neto, etc. This linkage was equally evidenced by the personalities that were relatively neglected by the contemporary historiography of Pan-Africanism especially the youth and students. To cite but two best informed cases, it was clear that after World War II, Francophone students meeting in the FEANF (Federation of Black African Students in France) and their Lusphone opposite numbers in the Casa dos Estudentes do Imprco) maintained very close relations with communism, as proven by their magazines, collective writings and individual publications. Apart from hard-core Marxists, communism generally had an
See, for example, Gautherot, G. Le Bolchvisme aux colonies et limprialisme rouge (Bolishevism in the Colonies and the Red Imperialism) Paris, Librairie de la Revue Franaises, Alexis Redier Editor, Q30.
6

15 abiding attraction for the youth who saw in it a precious counter weight to colonial imperialism. On his way to the Gold Coast in 1953, the writer Richard Wright, a former communist, met with young students whose viewpoint may be condensed as follows: Russia is always fussing! I am not for or against it! Leave the West to be harassed! Why are the British treating us a bit better? They are scared stiff to see us move with the Russians; thats all. But, with the cold war which is now raging, when even an Englishman crosses your way, he wastes no time to greet you Good day! (Wright, R., 1954, pp. 28-29). As for hard-core Marxists, it is remarkable that many of them broke, often dramatically, with communists as was the case with George Padmore. Those who continued to describe themselves as Marxists, like Nkrumah and C.L.R. James for instance, had to redefine their marxit stance. The association with communism led the Pan-Africanist radicals to clarify the nature of their struggle and to propound the thesis of the peculiarity of the Black problem. As far back as 1939 in Mexico, this thesis, during famous talks, set C.L.R. James and his mentor Lon Trotsky apart; the former, refusing to regard the issue of the emancipation of Blacks as a mere specific case of the problem of global emancipation of the proletariat. In his Pan-Africanism or Communism, Padmore repeated this same thesis incorporating therein the accusation levelled against the USSR for using the Black movements as a tool to promote the exigencies of its external policy. Lastly, it was no doubt Aim Csaire who, in his Lettre Maurice Thorez (1956) more forcefully reaffirmed the need for Blacks to radically set their struggle for emancipation apart from Communism: one fact that is pivotal, in my view, is this: that we coloured people, at this specific juncture in history, have in our conscience taken on hand the entire field of our peculiarity, and that we are prepared, at all fronts and in all areas, to take on the responsibilities arising from this awareness; peculiarity of our status in the world which does not correspond with any other; peculiarity of our problems which do not relate to any other problem; peculiarity of our history interspersed by terrible events which related only to this peculiarity; peculiarity of our culture which we want to live in a manner increasingly consistent with reality. What is the result of this, if not that our path to the future, and all our paths for that matter, both political and economic, are not a closed circuit; they are there to be discovered, and whose responsibility is it to undertake this discovey, but ours? This is to say in clear terms that we are convinced that our problems, or the colonial issue to put it differently, cannot be treated as a part of a more important whole, a part over which others could come to terms or reach such compromise as they deem fit, given the global situation which only they themselves would have analysed. ( Csaire, A. Oeuvres complete 3 Oeuvre historic et politique. Discous et communications, Paris, Edition Dsormeaux, 1976, pp. 465-466 (Csaire, A., Complete Works 3 Historical and Political Statements and Presentations). Here, we would like to point out, and later come back to this point under economic options, that the need for vigilance and intransigence advocated by the radicals in regard to communism had no comparison on the side of the moderates vis--vis capitalism and liberalism. Secondly, this radicalisation also found inspiration and justification in the discovery of history of Black

16 people, or rather in the new interpretation of that history. At least, since the pioneering books of Edward W. Blyden, all Pan-Africanists shared the same viewpoint on history, a kind minimal agreement of which Cheikh Anta Diop turned himself into the most convincing spokesperson: In the existence of a people, the role of history is vital: history is one of the factors which brings about cohesion in the different elements that constitute a collectivity, a sort of social cement. Without an awareness of history, people cannot be called to great destinies.7 Yes, but what history? It is known that Cheikh Anta Diop replied by establishing precedence of African civilizations, the depth of their unity and the continuity of the history of the African Continent. However, there was also another Pan-Africanist and radical approach to history which was first conceived in clear terms as far back as 1938, in C.L.R. James publication The Balck Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the San Domingo Revolution: I am feed up with reading or listening to what people have been writing or saying about Africans being persecuted and oppressed in Africa, on the Atlantic, the United States and all over the Caribbeans. I decided to write a book in which Africans or their descendents in the New Wrold rather than being constantly subjected to exploitation and the ferocity of other people would get down to large scale action and build their destiny and that of other peoples, in keeping with their own needs. By getting the world to relive the greatness of the West Indian people, rather than their decadence, it is Africa and Africas emancipation that I had in mind. James, C.R.L., 1938 p. XI). For these radicals, the African history they discovered, which strengthened them in their endeavour, was the history of a combatant Africa, the history of African resistance against foreign domination and exploitation as well as the history of African deported against their will and perpetually engaged in combat (Stolen from Africa, brought to America, Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival, as was later sung by Bob Marley). It is remarkable that the history of Pan-Africanism is marked by a long series of all types of texts historical studies, essays, plays- devoted to the Santo Domingo revolution, the first and only uprising by slaves which destroyed the system of slavery once and for all, and to the heroes of this revolution. Besides historical studies (The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James in 1938; Aim Csaires Toussaint LOuverture, La revolution franaise et le problme colonial (1962), there are many plays which were all well acclaimed by the public from Africa and of African origin; La Marseillaise de la libert by Jean-Franois Brire (1934), Toussaint LOuverture by C.L. James (1937, a play performed in London, with Paul Robeson as the leading actor), Haiti by W.E.B. Du Bois (written between 1935 and 1940), Mr. Toussaint by Edouard Glissant (1961), La tragdie du roi Christophe by Aim Csaire (1964), and Iles de tempte by Bernard B. Dadi 1971). This passion for Haitian history is due not only to the desire to portray situations and characters which Blacks can proudly claim as their heritage, it also stems from the issue of the peculiarity of Black emancipation which pitted Pan-Africanists against communists, as clearly explained by Aim Csaire:
7

Diop, C.A. A Continent in search of its history Horizons. Revue de la Paix, No. 74-75, July August 1957.

17 In Martinique, Haiti had a very bad reputation. Natives of Martinique had the image of Haiti put across by the French. Okay. But when I arrived in Haiti, I was immediately struck by the beauty of the country as well as the intelligence and artistic sense of the people. First of all, I discovered that they were West Indians just like us, there was no major difference, except that compared to Martinique alone, Haiti was much bigger. They had also managed to preserve a number of values which were already threatened in Martinique. Therefore, a West Indian Island where it had been possible to safeguard the values of negritude and to make great strides in the cultural domain. For me, it was the most beautiful, the greatest of the West Indian islands, and even greater when one remembers the epic saga Haitian history represents. For one should not forget that Haiti does not enjoy freedom that was granted to it, that Haitis freedom was hard won. Haitians won their freedom after a tough battle. They won it for blacks throughout the world, and for us, first and foremost. I am convinced that if there had been no revolt in Haiti, if there had been no Toussaint Louverture, if there had been no Dessalines, if there had had been no Haitian independence, the abolitionist idea which triumphed in France in 1848 would not necessarily have prevailed in 1848 when it is recalled that in Brazil for instance, the slave trade continued until 1880. Haiti did not win freedom for itself alone, but for all men of colour, perhaps for the entire Continent.8 In the eyes of the radical Pan-Africanists, the history of African emancipation bears all the elements that proved effective during the Santo Domingo revolution. C.L.R. James constantly compares Ghanas independence and its possible effect in Africa with Haitis independence and its impact on the Americas. On the contrary, Aim Csaire compares the case of Haiti with the independence of Guinea: During the good times of the not so ancient Empires, Black Africa was a peaceful entity. No national movement, no demands for self-government, judiciously refined traditional frameworks, an attentive paternalism, according to experts, to the extent that a century of peace was predicted without fear for European tutelage. However, the fact remains that the African scene which we are witnessing today, is that of a continent on the move, committed to a historic struggle to definitely eliminate colonialism and with the ardent desire to make up for a decade of political retardation accumulated over the centuries. Is there any cause to be surprised? Experts are wont to such shortsightedness. I do not know if there are still many people who read Raynal, but in any case, those who did may recall a rather astonishing analysis, according to which West Indian blacks, whose energy was sapped by the island climate, were incapable of any warring endeavour. A mere coincidence? Less than thirty years later, Haitian West Indians gave France its first taste of Dien-Bien Phu. This is eloquent proof that colonial history is made up of these mutations and that Africa is crossing a stage of a well-trodden path. Csaire, A. Preface to Skou Tour Exprience Guinenne et unite africaine, Paris, Prsence Africaine, 1959, p.5).
8

Les Voix de lcriture. Aim Csaire, Paris, Radio France International, 1996.

18 Lastly, the radicalisation of Pan-Africanism is a head-on riposte to the persistent imperialism of the major powers. If Haiti was a strong historical benchmark for Pan-Africanists, it was also considered from the perspective of two other vivid references in Africa Liberia and Ethiopia whose future spurred them to further vigilance, this time with regard to colonizing powers. From Edward W. Blyden to Kwame Nkrumah, Liberia was regarded as a model by Pan-Africanists in that it was a living example of Africans capacity for self rule. Blyden, who settled in Liberia in 1851, was able to observe at leisure, the shortcomings of the new States, which he did not fail to comment on publicly: but at the same time, he became the champion of Liberian independence whose legitimacy and symbolic nature he always defended (The Significance of Liberia, 1906); the spectacle of Blacks, barely out of slavery and oppression, taking complete charge of themselves motivated him to implement his advocacy for the black race (A Voice for Bleeding Africa, 1856; A Vindication of the Negro Race, 1857). In 1953, Nkrumah, then Head of Government of the colonial Gold Coast, chose Monrovia as the venue of his first major speech abroad, The Vision I See: drawing inspiration from the Liberian precedent and the situation in his country, he extolled the capacity to overcome the greatest misfortunes such as the slave trade, demonstrated by Africans in the course of their history and announced that the rapidity of African liberation would have the same surprise effect on the world as a hurricane. However, this small independent State was subjected to incessant harassment from the colonial powers, led by France and the United Kingdom. Consequently, in 1930, several European delegates attacked Liberia at the League of Nations, under the pretext that its authorities were tolerating the practice of slave trade; some requested that Liberia be placed under European administration, while at the same time, France did not hesitate to send a black person, the Senegalese Deputy, Blaise Diagne, to defend forced labour at this same League of Nations9. As a result, Africans adopted the principle that the right to independence was non-negotiable and could not be subject to any supervision, the right to manage or mismanage our own affairs, to borrow the words of Nkrumah. Concerning Ethiopia, the longevity of its State structures had made it a veritable legend, a source of hope and ferment, mobilizing all Africans. The victory of Menelik II over the Italians enhanced the empires aura of glory. For the militant Pan-Africanism generation, which was also that of the fathers of independence, the fascist Italian aggression in 1935-1936 was one of the key events behind their awakening, due to the multiple significances of this event. First of all, it portrayed the hypocrisy of the major powers, which, although verbally condemning Italy, did not respect the oil embargo decided by the League of Nations. It also attested to the non-existence of democratic government at global level. Finally, it was an opportunity for Africans from the Continent and the Diaspora, to broach the need to establish a Pan-African army capable of tackling the aggressions and difficulties African countries could
9

On this occasion, Nnamdi Azikiwe published his first book, Liberia in World Politics (1934).

19 be faced with (Asante, S. K. B., 1977). Although the International Friends of Abyssinia movement did not succeed in mobilizing a real army, it became an International African Service Bureau, coordinated by George Padmore, who played a decisive role in preparing the 1945 Manchester Congress. Above all, the Ethiopian example directly aroused the suspicion of young African States with regard to international institutions and reinforced the idea, so dear to Blyden, of Africa for the Africans, as the only means of resolving African problems. This living experience of imperialism impacted significantly on the approach to African emancipation of some Pan-Africanists. Most of the fathers of independence were indeed nationalists, in the sense that they wished to build nations from the colonial territories, without necessarily being anticolonialists: some openly commended the work achieved by the colonizers. Others centred their nationalism on an anti-colonialism, which quite clearly saw the colonial enterprise as but dispossession, exploitation and humiliation. Others still, although very few, added to nationalism and anti-colonialism, an anti-imperialism which soon impelled them to warn African leaders against the risks of neo-colonialism although Nkrumah did not develop a theory based on this concept until 1965, an analysis of the dangers and realities of neocolonialism can be found in his writings prior to this date; clear warnings were given as early as 1956 by George Padmore, who paid close attention to British policy (give and keep), which consisted of giving independence while keeping the structures and economic interests of the colonial powers intact. Geography: the oscillation towards Africa and the comings and goings between Africa and the Diaspora. Beginning from 1945-1953, the Pan-African transfer towards Africa its real place, as operated by Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and other players of the movement, the Pan-Africanism of congresses was in the pipeline. One should rightly ask what happened before 9145. The theory here is that Pan-Africanism, as an ideology, or simply an aspiration to the active solidarity of Blacks and as a set of fraternal mutual aid practices, was agitating African societies before the recognized turning point of the Second World War. Little work has been devoted to the possibility of the dissemination in Africa, before 1945, of ideological Pan-Africanism, to the modalities of this dissemination and its networks. However, there are clear indications of this dissemination. On the one hand, after the 1914-1918 war, there was the return to French West and Equatorial Africa of many soldiers who had rubbed shoulders in the trenches in France with their black brothers in arms from the United States of America, some of whom had heard about or actively participated in the 1919 Pan-African Congress held in Paris precisely. Among the latter was Panda Farnana (1888-1930), who after the war deployed relentless efforts to change the Belgian colonial regime in Congo. On the other hand, police reports in the 20s and 30s constantly referred to the dissemination from France, of the Garveyist press and subversive newspapers containing

20 Pan-Africanist ideas, considered by the French colonizers as tantamount to Bolshevism due to their universal scope: the most frequently mentioned regions were the coastal towns of Dahomey and Togo, where Blacks who returned from Brazil had already introduced or nurtured seeds of cosmopolitanism. There is every reason to think that the penetration of PanAfricanism touched other parts of the African continent. South Africa is obviously a special case due to the early dissemination of Pan-African ideas: at religious level which there is all too often a tendency to neglect, Ethiopian churches spread a powerful message of liberating black peoples which deeply penetrated the middle class as well as the working class; at political level, on of the first leaders of the ANC was none other than Isaka Seme, who became popular because of the speech he made at Columbia University in 1906 on the regeneration of Africa, which won him an award for eloquence10. Furthermore, a reading of the autobiographies of Nnamdi Azikiwe (My Odyssey. An Autobiography, 1970) and Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana. The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, 1957) clearly shows to what extent the fermenting of the black society in America was known by and fascinated the youths of African schools in the 20s and the 30s: werent many dreaming of going to America in search of the Golden Fleece11? It is specifically known that in the case of the Gold Coast, two personalities contributed greatly to promoting Pan-Africanism. One is the educationalist J.E. Kwegyr Aggrey (1875-1927), who after training in the United States, returned to Accra in 1924 to teach at Achimota College, where according to the testimony of Nkrumah, who studied there during that period, he spoke to his pupils about Marcus Garvey and the reasons for his disagreement with Garveyism using the metaphor of black and white piano keys12. The other personality is Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996), who in 1934, came to Accra to begin his career as a journalist, where he constantly evoked Black America, as well as the themes of the book he wrote in Accra Renascent Africa before returning to Nigeria: his sudden departure for Nigeria was provoked by the harassment to which he was subjected by colonial justice after strongly condemning and accepting articles denouncing the fascist Italian aggression against Ethiopia in African Morning Post13. Furthermore, Kwegyr Aggrey, on behalf of the American Foundation, Phelps-Stokes, undertook a major tour of Africa to evaluate the possibilities of developing education: one can imagine that for the educationalist, this long journey was an opportunity to introduce his audiences to the themes of Pan-Africanism and acquaint them with the struggle of Blacks in the United States. In the Belgian Congo, the 20s
10

In opening the First International Congress of Africanists, meeting in Accra in December 1962, Kwame Nkrumah took pains to quote Isaka Semes speech in full in his own message: Africas Glorious Past, in Obeng, S. Selected Speeches of Kwame Nkrumah, Accra, Afram Publications, 1997, vol.3, pp161-166. 11 The expression, to which an entire chapter is devoted in Azikiwes autobiography (1970, pp.53-76), was commonly used in the press of the Convention Peoples Party, to refer to Nkrumahs stay, studies and activities in the United States. 12 To express to the damaging effects and powerlessness of racism to his pupils, he used to say that one can play any tune by playing the black or white keys, but to create harmony, both black and white keys must be played. (Nkrumah, L. Autobiography, p.28) 13 Apart from the tone and anti-colonialist content of the newspaper, the offending article was written by Isaac T. Akunna Wallace Johnson Has the African a God? which took the Christian religion, accused of justifying the oppression of Africans by Europeans, to task.

21 and 30s witnessed the spread, to the great concern of the colonial authorities, of many versions of this unique and strange legend whereby black brothers in the United States, taken forcibly into slavery, had turned the tables in their favour by learning the secrets of the Whites and would soon come back to free the Congolese from the colonial yoke. Was this the result of the penetration of Garveyism, the effects of American missionary teachings and the penetration of religious movements from the United States, or even the remote and indirect consequence of the presence of Black Americans in The Congo of Leopold II? The fact remains that the colonial authorities were so worried that during the Second World War, they opposed the stationing of Black American soldiers in Congolese territory. Beyond the ideological Pan-Africanism, that of the elite, the multiple Pan-African practices also at work in African societies should be taken into account. Firstly, there were those that derived their force from sometimes very ancient forms of integration, at the level of States and pre-colonial exchanges, that were quite well-known in West Africa (Barry, B., 1988), that could also be found at variable chronological depths in the central, southern and eastern regions of the Continent. Some of them derived from prophetic religions fashioned after breaking off from missionary Christianism. Be it Prophet Harris in Liberia and Cte dIvoire, Prophet Simon Kimbangu in the Belgian Congo or even the politico-religious message of Andr Matsoua in the French Congo, all these religions clearly ushered in the liberation of Blacks in general and not the liberation of specific territories or ethnic groups. There were also the new forms of anti-colonial resistance such as the kongo wara movement in Oubangui-Chari, which spilled over ethnic borders and that of the colonial territories, still with the same objective of the general liberation of Blacks. French Africa was still experiencing a special situation linked to the Jacobinism of the colonial power. Indeed, France endowed its two major federations, the AOF and the AEF, with a centralized administration whose officials, both black and white, were subject to stringent rules of rotation between territories without consideration of their origins. In addition, the highest ranking officials were recruited based on a competitive examination, from the classes of Ecole Normale William Ponty, established in Senegal, which served as the melting pot for all Africas administrative, intellectual and political elite in the 40s and 50s. It was not a coincidence that French Africas greatest Pan-African party, the RDA (Rassemblement Dmocratic Africain), established in Bamako on 1946, included a majority of former William Ponty students, won over to the federalist idea, before being diverted by the insidious manoeuvres of the colonial powers. Due to Jacobinism, colonial France brought many black officials from the Caribbean and Guyana to Africa, many of whom, like Ren Maran (Batouala, veritable roman ngre, 1921) and Gabriel Lisette, took up the African cause. British Africa did not have a similar system of administration. However, the regional educational institutions such as Fourah Bay College for West Africa, founded as far back as 1827 and given university status in 1876, and Makerere College for East Africa, established in 1922, were real melting pots just like the African students associations in Great Britain, particularly WASU (West African Students Union) and ASA (African Student Association of

22 the United States and Canada) in the United States. The never-ending quarrel between Continentalists, supporters of Africas continental unity and Regionalists, advocates of several regional groupings, originated partly from this juxtaposition between the universalistic Pan-Africanism of ideologists and the more limited practices of solidarity experimented by the future senior executives trained in these institutions. The Second World War also influenced this transborder and universal awakening: as early as 1940, Free France recruited its troops mainly in African territories, and black soldiers discovered the identity of their situation as colonized subjects, as Africans and Blacks, transcending their different origins, in the war against fascism; similarly, soldiers from British Africa, in which battalions from the Belgian Congo were mixed, went through the same experience in Burma. The presence of Black American soldiers on African soil, even in small numbers, contributed to the same awakening. The history of the nascent Pan-Africanism was therefore not an affair restricted to closed circles of intellectual and political elite: it also did not fit in with the model to which this elite referred, of intellectuals coming to enlighten and educate the masses. The African initiatives of personalities such as Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore from 1945 to 1947 therefore fell on fertile soil in transborder, panegyrist and Pan-African practices, which were in line with the ideas developed overseas by the elite. There is still a point of great uncertainty in this founding phase with regard to North Africa. If one goes according to the words of the players, it is only much later, after 1945, or even after 1958, that North Africa was swept into the Pan-African momentum. Such an assertion is only true if to some extent, one is restricted to the political and intellectual elite. In Accra in 1958, Nkrumah stated that the Saharan barrier which had divided us for centuries would no longer be an obstacle between us. On the North African side, it was not until 1963, with the launch in Algiers of the journal Rvolution Africaine, that political officials fully assumed their Africanity: the journal stated that one third of Africa, our motherland, was under foreign domination. However, the facts were in reality much more complex. Admittedly, colonization continued to multiply the barriers not only from legal, administrative and economic standpoints, but also, in the special case of France, by using troops of black forces against the north African nationalists, particularly during the Riff War (1924-1926) and the Algerian War (1954-1962). The first panegyrist texts were also perturbed by the trans-Saharan and Indo-Oceanic slave trade and by the existence of black communities in North Africa and the Middle East. At the same time, there were many long-standing relations in the areas of trade, movement of persons and intellectual and religious networks. Thanks to Islam, to the pilgrimage routes to holy places or to the spiritual centres of the Maghreb, the practise of the Arabic language and the use of Arabic script, these relations continued, one could say, under the very nose of the colonizers. From the viewpoint of Pan-Africanism per se, two observations should be made.

23 The first concerns a sort of doxa which, in opposing Islam presented as educating and civilizing and Christianity, alleged to be destructive, was the very basis of this ideology and whose most radical aspect could be found in E.W. Blydens statement: Wherever the Negro is found in Christian lands, his leading trait is not docility, as has been often alleged, but servility. He is slow and unprogressive. Individuals here and there may be found of extraordinary intelligence, enterprise and energy, but there is no Christian community of Negroes anywhere which is self-reliant and independent. () On the other hand, there are numerous Negro Mohammedan communities and states in Africa which are self reliant, productive, independent and dominant, supporting, without the countenance or the patronage of the parent country, Arabia, whence they derived them, their political, literary and ecclesiastical institutions. () When the religion was first introduced it found the people possessing all the elements and enjoying all the privileges of an untrammelled manhood. They received it as giving them additional power to exert an influence in the world. It sent them forth as the guides and instructors of their less favoured neighbours, and endowed them with the self respect which men feel who acknowledge no superior. () Christianity, on the other hand, came to the Negro as a slave, or at least as a subject race in a foreign land. Along with the Christian teaching, he and his children received lessons of their utter and permanent inferiority and subordination to their instructors, to whom they stood in the relation of chattels. (Blyden, E.W., 1887, pp. 10-12). The second observation concerns the intersections between the nascent Pan-Africanism and the new North African nationalist movements. Like their sub-Saharan African counterparts, the former originated/were based on territorial references linked to colonization and much wider references- the Arab nation and the Muslim community. Therefore, the Maghreb Diaspora in France, made up essentially of Algerians, followed a similar path to that of the Black Diaspora in the same country, the two recruiting their members from the working class: anti-colonialism; association with communism, within the framework of the Union Intercoloniale founded in 1921, which brought together Indo-Chinese, Malagasy, Maghrebians, West Indians and Blacks from subSaharan Africa; militant regional solidarity. In 1927, during the inaugural congress of the Ligue contre limprialisme et loppression coloniale, meeting in Brussels (107 countries represented, including 37 colonial), the Etoile Nord Africaine, representing the interests of the working populations of North Africa, found itself side by side with members of the Comit de Dfense de la Race Ngre. The ENA, in turn, was to experience difficult relations with communism. Although this history includes many grey areas, these parallels and intersections continued beyond the 20s and its is not by chance that we find an echo thirty years later, particularly in the manifests of the MPM (Mouvement Populaire Marocain), established in 1959 and calling for a national rally, an indispensable stage on North Africas road to attaining African federation, and in the words of Mehdi Ben Barka who, in 1962, declared at the second UNFP

24 (Union Nationale des Forces Populaires) that they were an integral part of the revolutionary movement of the masses across the African Continent. II Pan-Africanism in Acts: Performance and Shortcomings. The oscillation of the centre of gravity of Pan-Africanism towards Africa was not only a geographical shift, it also marked an irreversible ideological and political turning point. The militant solidarity of Africans hereafter focused on practical objectives to be achieved on an agenda which was sufficiently brief to correspond with the aspirations of the African peoples and mobilize the creative enthusiasm of activists. In some ways, the Panegyrist current lost out in this shift, because the new solidarity stopped referring exclusively to Blacks. Firstly, it was related specifically to the African continent as a whole, including the supposedly white Africa: this turning point, of which Kwame Nkrumah was the principal instigator on the ground, was to have decisive consequences on the history of the Continent, for not only did it foil external attempts at division, but it also contributed to restoring to the Continent this unity that the Sahara represented, as an internal sea crisscrossed by intensive movement of goods, persons, beliefs and ideas, which was only broken at the end of the 19th century by the colonial sharing. Furthermore, this solidarity was also connected with all people of colour colonized by Europeans: indeed, well before the Bandung Conference, Pan-Africanists meeting in Manchester referred to events in Africa as well as in Asia in the post-war years as the most promising signs of a changing world (Padmore, G., 1956, p.23). In seeking to involve all men of colour, this new solidarity lent credence to W. E. B. Du Bois, who as far back as 1915 had written: There is slowly arising not only a curiously strong brotherhood of Negro blood throughout the world, but the common cause of the darker races against the intolerable assumptions and insults of Europeans has already found expression. Most men in the world are colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The future world will, in all reasonable probability, be what colored men make of it. (The Negro, in Lewis, D. L., 1995, p.52; Padmore, G., 1956, p.28). However, this by no means implied the disappearance of the Panegyrist current, whose thesis would reemerge in more or less renewed forms, as continental Pan-Africanism multiplied its faux pas and shortcomings. Pan-Africanism in actuality was therefore a much more complex movement than is generally believed. Firstly, it deployed its own momentum geared henceforth towards the complete political, cultural and economic liberation of the entire Continent. Secondly, in sub-Saharan Africa, it continued to be linked to Panegyrism in terms of its constantly reaffirmed solidarity with Blacks in the Diaspora and in several integration strategies, such as, among others, that of Cheikh Anta Diop (Diop, C.A., 1960). It still had to arbitrate between major transborder movements and what was soon to be called micro-nationalism, the nationalism born and bred in the former colonial territories. Lastly, it was able to fit in with larger liberation movements, born in Bandung, to which various leaders such as Habib Bourguiba, Kenneth

25 Kaunda, Patrice Lumumba, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Leopold Sdar Senghor referred explicitly. Strengths and Weaknesses of Political Pan-Africanism It was firstly at political level that political Pan-Africanism distinguished itself thanks to the energy, fervour and passion Kwame Nkrumah deployed in achieving his objectives (MBokolo, E., 2003 and 2004). However, it was also clear that after having been by far the principal architect of what he called the first revolution (political liberation with a view to attaining unity), he failed in the implementation of the second revolution (attainment of unity with a view to building a modern and independent African economy and giving the African personality substance, consistency and the capacity to act). From 1945 to 1047, Nkrumah made many trips across the United Kingdom and to France, striving hard to implement the project to establish, before the complete unification of the Continent, a Federation of West African States freed from the colonial yoke. However, according to the later testimonies of Peter Abrahams and Flix Houphout-Boigny, these efforts were in vain: his project of establishing a clandestine organization (The Circle), only aroused a mixture of perplexity and mockery from Blacks living in England such as Jomo Kenyatta; the newly elected African Members of Parliament in the French National Assembly looked down on this strange character, a backward student, with the appearance of a fanatical prophet and a professional revolutionary. (Grah Mel, F., 2003, pp. 686-704). Admittedly, since inception in 1946, the RDA (Rassemblement Dmocratique Africain) effectively organized, at the level of French colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa, the struggle against the most archaic forms of colonialism and for the rights of Africans on African soil and in French institutions. On returning to the Gold Coast in 1947, Nkrumah was caught up in the maelstrom he provoked in political and social life in his country. Pan-Africanism was still his goal as can be attested by many facts: his close political association with George and Dorothy Padmore; the surprisingly key position earmarked by his partys (CPP) press for African struggles in the United States, in South Africa against apartheid and in Kenya; the ties he wished to forge, once he became the Head of Government (1951) with Liberia; the Pan-African Congress he organized in Kumasi in 1953; the admiration his political action aroused in Black Americans such as Richard Wright (whose narrative Black Power (1954), contributed tremendously, with Padmores analysis The Gold Coast Revolution (1953), to making the black world aware of the true nature and immense scope of the struggle then embodied by Nkrumah) or the musician Louis Armstrong visiting the Gold Coast in 1956; finally, the impetus his victory in the 1951 polls and his action at the Head of Government gave to the rising generation of militant youths such as Julius Nyerere and to those already considered as seniors like Nnamdi Azikiwe, by showing that it was possible, that the colonizers could be driven back and forced to schedule the accession to sovereignty. However, this political activism also had its drawbacks, insofar as it was exploited by Nkrumahs opponents to spread the baseless allegation that his commitment to Pan-Africanism was due to self-

26 interest and aimed solely at making him the all-powerful head of a united Africa. For this reason, the glorious decade of African independence was also one of failures, disillusion and frustration with regard to the Pan-African project. Indeed, many facts are to be included in the most glorious chapters of African history. Proclaimed in 1957, Ghanas independence was the catalyst for the African hurricane (Kwame Nkrumah) which accelerated the Continents liberation, catching the colonial powers unprepared. It should not be forgotten that none of the latter had envisaged such a speedy liberation of Africa immediately after the Second World War, in which however African colonies and African soldiers had made a decisive contribution: as early as 1944, the Brazzaville Conference organized by the Free French had ruled out independence, or even autonomy for all of Frances African colonies; Salazarist Portugal was sinking further into the entrenched myth of indestructible historical unity with its overseas provinces; as for Belgium, the rough project in 1955-1956 by a handful of colonials to grant independence to The Congo after thirty years caused a scandal and was rejected as a disastrous adventure by Belgium and The Congo itself. At the same time, Blacks Americans were actively working to speed up Africas political liberation, particularly under the impetus of the Committee on African Affairs established in 1937, and above all, the Council on African Affairs, founded in 1941, benefiting from the prestige of its leaders such as Paul Robeson, and publishing an monthly magazine with the significant title New Africa. At the same time, students from Africa mobilized by founding the African Student Association of the United States and Canada, with Kwame Nkrumah as one of the coordinators. All these people, Black Americans and African intellectuals, deployed efforts to organize the conference Africa New Perspective (14 April 1944) whose participants, representing civic, religious, union, feminist and anti-colonial associations, undertook to work with Africans in order to attain the objectives of freedom and progress (Lynch, H. R., in Gifford, P. et Louis, W. L., 1982, pp. 57-86). Immediately after independence, Ghana organized successively in Accra the Conference of Independent African States (April 1958), the first concrete manifestation of continental unity, and the December 1958 African Peoples Conference, the first continental meeting of leaders of nationalist parties and political, social and cultural activists. In the light of the acceleration of the liberation process from 1958-1959 and comparing the list of guests invited to Accra and that of African political leaders in the 60s, there is no doubt that these meetings were the founding event. At the same time, these events clearly raised the issue of African unity in all nationalist movements: rarely did the political officials and African intellectuals discuss continental unity as much as during this period. Unity first, or independence first? The debate was particularly heated in French Africa where the Defferre Framework Law (1956) had sown the seeds of Balkanization (L.S. Senghor), which the radicals of the Parti Africain de lIndpendence and the federalists tried to oppose, organizing to this effect the congress of the Parti du Regroupement Africain in Cotonou (PRA, July 1958). Concurrently, Barthlemy Boganda, founder of MESAN

27 (Mouvement dEmancipation Sociale dAfrique Noire) launched the ambitious project of the union of AEF, Belgian Congo, Rwanda-Urundi and Angolan territories in a federation of Latin African States, which his sudden death (1959) strongly compromised. In East Africa, Julius Nyerere was also struggling in vain to obtain the common accession of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika to independence. The insidious manoeuvres of colonial powers, whose division policies could be seen particularly in The Congo and Nigeria, contributed as much to the Balkanization of the former colonial groupings as the short-sighted egoism of certain leaders, namely in Cte dIvoire, Gabon and Kenya. However, independence was won, giving African States the right and the means to regroup as they wished. This was promptly borne out with the advent of the short-lived Mali Federation (Senegal and the French Sudan, 19591960), the declaration of the Ghana-Guinea Union (1959) later joined by Mali (1960), and the merging of Tanganyika and Zanzibar into Tanzania (1964). That was the Belle poque of Pan-Africanism which witnessed an African State (Ghana) coming to the financial assistance of another African State (Guinea), plunged into serious difficulties by France, and the merging of three academic institutions in East Africa (Makerere, Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam) into the University of East Africa (1963)! The whole of Africa was celebrating the liberation of its territories to the rhythm of the Congolese cha-cha-cha (Indpendence Cha Cha by African Jazz, 1960) and rejoicing over the happy prospects of continental unity to the beat of Ghanaian highlife embodied by the maestro E.T. Mensah: Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union Has been done a strong foundation For redemption of Africa For which weve been strongly fighting Ghana, Guinea, Mali The nucleus of the great union Ghana, Guinea, Mali Africas strongest foundation Ghana, Guinea, Mali The nucleus of the great union Ghana, Guinea, Mali Has now once been laid for ever It was first Ghana-Guinea Later Ghana-Guinea-Mali Soon it will be all Africa Africa is now awaken This unity cannot sever All leaders of modern Africa Accord to join this great union The OAU was therefore born in the midst of the festive wave of the African independence years and this birth in a capital city charged with the

28 mythical symbols of the negus added to the happy atmosphere. Consequently, what in a maximalistic vision of the unification of Africa is currently presented as Kwame Nkrumahs failure, should be qualified: on the one hand, the tremendous success with which the presentation of Nkrumahs ideas was met is eloquent proof of the vitality of the Pan-African aspirations among political leaders and intellectuals, as well as the masses; on the other hand, Kwame Nkrumah embarked on a sort of fast-track journey into the future which left a lasting apprehension among his peers. His famous speech, warmly acclaimed, seemed to urge Heads of State and Government to subscribe to the formula everything is possible right now. In this speech, Nkrumah condemned regional unions and the gradualist approach to unity: The hour of history which has brought us to this assembly is a revolutionary hour. It is the hour of decision. For the first time, the economic imperialism which menaces us is itself challenged by the irresistible will of our people. The masses of Africa are crying for unity. The people of Africa call for the breaking down of the boundaries that keep them apart. They demand an end to the border disputes between sister African states disputes that arise out of the artificial barriers raised by colonialism. It was colonialisms purpose that left us with our border irredentism, that rejected our ethnic and cultural fusion. Our people call for unity so that they may not loose their patrimony in the perpetual service of neo-colonialism. In the fervent push for unity, they understand that only its realisation will give full meaning to their freedom and our African independence. It is popular determination that must move us on to a Union of African Independent States. In delay lies danger to our well-being, to our very existence as independent states. (Obeng, S. (ed.) Selected Speeches of Kwame Nkrumah, vol. 5, Accra, Afram Publications, 1997, pp. 41-42). In reality, the strategies he presented in Africa Must Unite, a book written for this conference, did not take into account the peoples Africa and only addressed the Africa of States: it was sufficiently qualified, firstly, to make the best of the OAU as it had just been established and any other more restricted grouping. Indeed, he explained that to begin with, we could have a constitution for States that agreed to form a nucleus, leaving the door open to all those who wished to join the federation or gain freedom to enable them to do so. This text could be amendable at any time the majority opinion deemed it necessary. Perhaps concrete expression could be given to our current ideas by establishing a continental parliament with two chambers, one of which would represent the people and discuss numerous issues facing Africa, while the other, which would ensure the equality of States, without consideration of size or population, each one sending the same number of delegates, would formulate a common policy in all areas on Africas security, defence and development. (Nkrumah, K., Africa Must Unite, p.253). The doors of a larger and more ambitious grouping therefore remained wide open, if one followed the second approach, more phased over time, described in Africa Must Unite. Today, at a time when so many Africans wish to follow the example of the European Union, it should be underscored that at the

29 time of the establishment of the OAU, there was no similar structure in the other continents. However, at the same time, the inventory of shortcomings and frustrations continued to mount. At the very centre of the great wave of independence, African States were faced with serious crises that rudely tested the capacities of the new Africa to react collectively. Firstly, as early as 1960, there was the crumbling of Congo Kinshasa, with the secession of Katanga and Kasai, the interference of the former colonial power, the conflict between the Head of State and the Prime Minister, and lastly, the assassination of the latter, Patrice Lumumba, a staunch believer in African unity. Faced with this situation, the new Africa divided up: the Casablanca Group States, formed in 1961 (Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco and the Algerian FLN), maintaining Patrice Lumumbas progressist line, to which they claimed to be ready to provide effective, diplomatic, political or military support, and a militant PanAfricanism close to Nkrumah; the Monrovia Group States, by far the largest in number, rejected such interventions, were against the political integration of sovereign African States and wished to entrust the UN with resolving the Congolese situation. This deep dividing line would further increase in 1965, during the Rhodesian crisis. When, in this colony with a population of 225,000 Whites opposed to 3,000,000 Africans in 1961, white extremist proclaimed the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, radical African States turned to the United Kingdom, the administrative power, requesting it to take up its responsibilities, or run the risk of African States breaking off diplomatic relations; however only nine African States actually broke off relations with the United Kingdom. These disputes reoccurred in the 70s, due to the apartheid regime and its hardening: initiated by Cte dIvoire in 1971, the practice of dialogue with South Africa was endorsed by many independent States (Dahomey, Gabon, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi and Mauritius). These three crises revealed and confirmed the profound divide within the OAU between States which trusted Pan-African institutions to resolve the Continents conflicts, and those that remained attached to the former colonial masters. Therefore, the Francophone States maintained very close relations with France or with French interests: meeting in Brazzaville right from December 1960, they comprised the main contingents of the Monrovia Group (established in May 1961), before meeting in Antananarivo in December 1961 to launch the UAM (Union Africaine et Malgache). However, it was precisely the majority of these States that decided to boycott the OAU Summit in Accra (1965), which was to decide on the attitude to be adopted and the measures to be taken against White Rhodesia and the United Kingdom. In reality, these disagreements covered a more fundamental debate on the substance of independence and the type of States to be built to overcome colonial domination. Should the state systems inherited from the colonial era be retained and completely overhauled to meet the aspirations of the people, and at the same time, pave the way for the unification process, or on the contrary, should they be left as they were, with their inherent authoritarianism, repression, imbalances between the powers and the oppression of the masses?

30 Should, the freedom fighters of territories still under the domination of European powers (the Portuguese colonies) and white minorities (in Southern Africa) be assisted; if so, how and to what extent? Furthermore, what should be done about the freedom fighters emerging in neo-colonial States, who opted for combat, if need be armed combat, against these States? Although Nkrumahs radicalism went as far as supporting the right to rebellion against allegedly neo-colonial States, and helped these rebels, the overwhelming majority of States condemned this interference, to the point of openly calling for subversion against States accused of interference. Well before the Cairo Summit (1964) which was to decide on the maintaining of borders inherited from the colonial era, the OAU Charter (1963) effectively opted for the sovereign equality of all Member States, and non-interference in the internal affairs of States and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each State and for its inalienable right to independent existence: the Declaration on Subversion adopted by the OAU Summit in Accra (1965), enshrined the noninterference of African States in the affairs of other States. The OAU thus became a sort of Holy Alliance (Edmond Jouve) between new African States whose leaders regarded themselves as brothers: following the paternalism of the colonial masters, this fraternalism immediately appeared to be one of the principal obstacles to any political or other form of change in Africa. Indeed, these principles clearly made it possible to overlook violations of human rights and the rule of law, while leaving the authorities in position room to resort to the intervention of foreign troops from the former colonial powers. Among African States, a consensus, which in the long run was relative, was found in support for the liberation movements of territories still under colonial rule or subject to racist regimes: one can still question what was the contribution in the liberation of these territories, of the action of independent African States, international organizations and the effectiveness of freedom fighters. Perhaps, also as serious as these differences between officials at the summit of political power was the crystallization of national feeling within former territories that had become sovereign States. Not only did the State powers take on the mission, among others, of nation building, but also gave free rein, when they did not actually encourage it, to the excesses of nationalist fever, heavily weighed down by xenophobia, which was witnessed by most States. The generous idea of organizing athletic competitions which would help Africans to be able to compete with their foreign counterparts, was short-lived: drawing inspiration from the CAN (Africa Cup of Nations in football), which was first organized in Ghana as far back as 1963, these competitions became an excuse for mass uncontrolled violence against foreign Africans. In the mid 60s, one witnessed States adopting discriminatory measures, going to the extent of massive immediate expulsions, without compensation, against Africans alleged to be illegal immigrants, or accused of, like in any situation of intolerance and xenophobia, of stealing the jobs of nationals or increasing the rate of crime in the host country. Is cultural and intellectual Pan-Africanism at a dead end?

31

During the 1960-1970 decade, the cultural sphere and, more broadly speaking the intellectual sphere soon appeared as one of the areas where Pan-Africanism would flourish because of the strong cultural demands voiced since the 30s within the context of Pan-Africanism. However, serious and insuperable contradictions soon emerged. This is not because the initiatives and actions emanating from states of groups of experts were not continent-oriented. As a matter of fact, some of these initiatives and actions had even produced visible and far reaching effects, like the congress of Africanists. At the 1962 Accra Congress hosted by Kwame Nkrumah, the then President of Ghana, the latter spoke of regeneration of Africa, recalled Africas age old research and intellectual thinking and called on the scientific community to contribute in a creative manner to the revival of the African continent. Historians at that congress, notably K. Onwuka Dike and Joseph Ki-Zerbo made very significant and decisive contributions to the moulding of a genuine history of Africa by spearheading the great intellectual adventure which culminated in the publication, under the aegis of UNESCO, of the General History of Africa. The Second Congress held in Dakar in 1967 addressed the issue of development in Africa and set out to spell out the means of scientifically establishing a development policy at continental level. It proposed a series of measures aimed at co-ordinating development research, planning and programmes at continental rather than national level. The OAU, for its part, was not idle. In 1976, it adopted the Cultural Charter for Africa. An African Cultural Institute came into being, as well as Pan-African research centers which unfortunately suffered from lack of resources. The States were also active up to the 70s by conducting and promoting artistic and cultural activities, organizing in particular major events such as the World Negro Art Festival (Dakar, 1-24 April 1966), the Algiers Pan-African Cultural Festival (21 July 1 August 1969), FESTAC (Art and Culture Festival, Lagos, 15 January 12 February 1977) and regular festivals with more limited scope such as the Ouagadougou Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO), the PanAfrican Music Festival (FESPAM, Brazzaville, 1987). Apart from their demonstrative aspect, these congresses forged, revived and renewed ties among intellectuals, artists, men of culture and science on the continent and its diasporas. The proliferation of multi-faceted trade fairs and festivals, cultural and sporting events in Africa or in the major regions helped to keep alive the Pan-African flame. Some States also took it upon themselves to launch in co-operation with their neighbours and with PanAfrican and international institutions cultural integrating bodies like CICIBA in Libreville (1980) or the Black PeoplesInstitute in Ouagadougou (1990). All these initiatives which often are not known, should be studied and reevaluated within the new context of contemporary Africa.

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The main difficulty arose from the fact that policies as well as cultural and scientific activities were now being conducted within the context of new sovereign states. Hitherto associated with Pan-Africanism, nationalism was increasingly being used as a guise for patriotism in the narrowest sense of the word, thus giving rise to what could be termed as nationalization of activities, researchers and intellectuals whose horizon so far was Africa as a continent and who found themselves, willy-nilly, compelled to turn their attention to issues of national states. Everything or virtually everything was pushing them in that direction: proliferation of national universities and research or art/cultural institutes; opening of new vocational opportunities within the context of africanization policies; implementation of development and nation-building policies which required local expertise and which they wholeheartedly embraced out of nationalism even the authenticity ideologies of which Zaire was the champion found intellectuals who helped to knit them together. Among other paradoxes, this nationalization which limited the scope of the local intellectuals made do very well with the use of the languages of the former colonizers, thus putting the intellectuals once more in an awkward position in relation to the imperative of decolonization of minds (Ngugi wa Thiongo) as enshrined in Pan-Africanism, and requiring, at the level of the sub-regions and the continent, the promotion of cross-border languages. There were endless tensions as evidenced by the turbulent relations between the State and the university in situations as diverse as in Kwame Nkrumahs Ghana and Leopold Sedar Senghors Senegal. Be that as it may, the important thing, it would seem, was achieved, namely the nationalization of the African elite which seriously impoverished the PanAfrican debate on the continent. Even alternative and revolutionary thinking as disseminated by many magazines became country focused. This development was not without danger as far as fruitfulness of thoughts was concerned. Indeed, political pluralism which the colonizers had accepted in the aftermath of the Second World War gradually gave way to the proliferation of one party system which silenced the intellectuals, forced them into exile or compelled them to make opportunistic U turns. This was compounded by difficulties of the late 70s and 80s: increasing role of Washington-based financial institutions in the definition of projects and state policies; adoption of structural adjustment programmes which left States with little room for manoeuvre; considerable weight of foreign NGOs which was being increasingly felt. Already marginalized by their own States, African intellectuals had no alternative but to resort to survival strategies. They became, willy-nilly, consultants and informants of these financial bodies and NGOs, thus losing that autonomy of thinking which was the strength and power of previous generations engaged in the Pan-African struggle. This, therefore, explains what could be termed as the

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silence of African intellectuals over the issues of Pan-Africanism in the difficult 1970 and 1980 decades. As a matter of fact, in Africa groups and associations of experts (historians, economists, sociologists, political analysts) continued to brainstorm, exchange views, hold discussions and propose Pan-African programmes and alternatives, particularly in such institutions as CODESRIA founded in 1973 or the Third World Forum. Artists, more particularly modern musicians who gained prominence after independence began to educate the masses about the major themes of PanAfricanism. This modern music took on a cosmopolitan dimension, drawing extensively on Afro-American, Caribbean and Latin-American music, itself of African origin, and encouraging crossborder exchanges and mixture of talents in artistic capitals like Kinshasa, Brazzaville, Accra, Lagos or Abidjan. Franklin Boukaka, Myriam Makeba, Joseph Kabasele, Youssu NDour, Pierre Akendengue, Salif Keita, Manu Dibango, Fella Alpha Blondy and Bob Marley, to cite only a few, found words and rythms to keep alive the themes and indeed the Pan-African dream, beyond the narrow circles of intellectuals and specialists. Outside Africa, numerous pressures continued to propel the PanAfrican drive forward. The meeting of the two African diasporas, namely the Diaspora born of slave trade and the Diaspora as a result of contemporary migration, maintained in the United States a strong PanAfrican awareness whose manifestations are well known: support to freedom fighters and anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, thanks particularly to the Sullivan principles(1977) aimed at regulating economic relations with South Africa; convening in Africa of African and AfricanAmerican Summits; dissemination of the problematics and themes of Afrocentricism; multiplication of researches on Africa spearheaded by African-American and African researchers. With regard to Latin America, it is a known fact that it was not cut-off, as was believed, from the excitement generated by the nascent Pan-Africanism. After the resistance against slave trade, Blacks participated actively in the independence wars; however, their hopes to see the establishment of a pardocracia i.e. a regime anchored on effective participation of the various casts soon faded away. The 19th century and the first half of the 20th century witnessed the publication by anthropologists from Latin America of studies aimed at criminalizing social and religious practices of slave descendents replete with African heritage. However, despite the population whitenization policies, the myth of mild slavery and racial democracy, the stifling of memory and dictatorial regimes, the Africanity consciousness remained very much alive, as were the memories of past struggles, of quilombos and palenques. The euphoria of the 40s which was visible in Brazil where

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Abdias do Nascimento founded the Black Experimental Theatre was once again suppressed by the hardening of the political regimes. From the 70s, in the heels of the movements for the defence of civil rights in the United States, there were growing demands for equal rights for Blacks and the recognition of their community status. This was a new phenomenon in the sense that these demands which for a long time were visible only in a few flagship countries Brazil, the Caribbean countries spilled over to the entire Black Americas, with a particularly strong agitation in Columbia and Venezuela, culminating in significant legal reforms in several states, particularly the granting of community status to the former slaves in Columbia and the recognition by the governments of prominent figures and events of Black consciousness. Thus, in 1978, the Brazil United Negro Movement decided to declare 20 November the National Day of Black Consciousness, date on which Zumbi, the hero of the Palmares insurrection in the 20th century died. More significantly, several Black culture congresses were held in Latin America in 1977 (Cali, Columbia), 1980 (Panama City, Panama), 1982 (Sao Paulo, Brazil), 1984 (Quito, Ecuador) and the impressive Seminar on Racism and Xenophobia in Montevideo (Uruguay), in 1984. Judging by the studies currently being conducted on identity activities in the communities of descendents of Black slaves in North Africa, the Middle East and India, it is possible that similar congresses will take place there in the coming decades. Absence of Pan-Africanism in the Economic Field To every architect of Pan-Africanism, the primacy of politics over economy was obvious. Well before the slogan of his party (The Convention Peoples Party) seek ye first the political kingdom became famous, Nkrumah distinguished himself by insisting on the hierarchy of politics and economy. Indeed, in his statement at the Manchester Congress, the uniqueness of which was reported beyond the United Kingdom and its African colonies by the United States media and the New Independent India, Nkrumah declared: We must fight for these ends even by revolutionary methods. Seizure of power is an essential prerequisite for the fulfillment of social, economic and cultural aspirations of colonial peoples We condemn self-government within the Empire. We stand for full and unconditional independence: (Adi, H. and Sherwood, M., 1995, p.45). This is not to say that references to the economy were lacking in PanAfrican thinking, but too often they were confined to denunciations in the name of Christian morality, to abuses of colonial exploitation, to vague promises and future reconstruction of African economies. The First PanAfrican Congress (1919) enunciated five principles the European States

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should use to govern Africa and three of such principles related to the economy: 1. The Land and its natural resources shall be held in trust for the natives and at all times they shall have effective ownership of as much land as they can profitably develop. 2. Capital. The investment of capital and granting of concessions shall be so regulated as to prevent the exploitation of the natives and the exhaustion of the natural wealth of the country. Concessions shall always be limited in time and subject to State control. The growing social needs of the natives must be regarded and the profits taxed for social and material benefits of the natives. 3. Labour. Slavery and corporal punishment shall be abolished and forced labour except in punishment for crime; and the general conditions of labour shall be prescribed and regulated by State: (Adi, H; and Sherwood, M., 1995, p.65) While the second congress (London and Brussels, 1921) was discreet on these issues, the Third (London and Lisbon, 1923) and the Fourth (New York, 1927) underscored identical concerns using the same words: The rights of the indigenous people over their land and its resources; development of Africa for Africans and not merely for the benefits of the Europeans, recognition of trade and industry with as it main objective capital, labour and well-being of the masses rather than the enrichment of a few. The accession to independence did not significantly alter the thinking and perception of economic projects by African leaders. For instance, Felix Houphout-Boigny, one of the strong advocates of the capitalist economy model told Ivorian farmers on the occasion of the 1953 Dimbroko trade fair: If you do not want to vegetate in your bamboo huts, focus your attention on the cultivation of coffee and good cocoa. They will fetch you good prices and you will become rich. From Kenya to Madagascar, from Senegal to Uganda, many theoritians of African socialism in practice continued to advocate the division of labour established under the colonial rule. The exception to this rule of discretion and absence of audacity as far as economic matters are concerned first come from Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore. On his arrival in London in 1945 and prior to the Manchester Congress, Nkrumah wrote a book titled: Toward Colonial Freedom. Even though the book was not published until 1962, Nkrumah on several occasions outlined the substance and conclusions thereof. The book accurately described the economies of the British colonies and strongly criticized the principles underpinning the operation of those economies, while giving a hint about the publication of another book: Neo-colonialism

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(1965). It also highlighted the economic shortcomings which independent Africa inherited from colonialism and merely replicated. Padmore had similar views. In publishing the first edition of the report of the Manchester Congress in 1947 (Colonial and Coloured Unity, 1947), he made sure that a selective bibliography was annexed to the said report. This outstanding publication in the economic field, particularly books that diagnosed the structural dysfunction of African economies and their past and present relationships with flourishing economies of the Metropolis: L. Buell (The Native Problem in Africa, 1928), J. Burger (The Black Mans Burden, 1943), W.E.B. Du Bois (The World and Africa, 1947), S. H. Frankel (Capital Investment in Africa, 1938), Lord Hailey (An African Survey, 1938), Middleton (The Rape of Africa, 1936), Lord Olivier (Anatomy of African Misery, 1927), Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery, 1945) and L. Wool (Empire and Commerce in Africa, 19--). As a matter of fact, in the 50s and 60s, some intellectuals began to feel the urgency for economic brainstorming, especially in response to the repeated appeals made by Mamadou Dia: African Intellectuals would be wrong to think that they can discard or toy with Economic Sciences in order to achieve their cultural objectives. That would be tantamount to ignoring one of the fundamental tenets of NegroAfrican culture and resigning oneself to half-culture which will not stand the test of time or the assimilationist tendencies of other cultures because it has no root. The African man of culture cannot, under pain of serious mutilation, ignore the relationship that exists between the evolution of economic structures and that of the various phases of civilization (). He cannot but realize that the genius of each people marks with an indelible seal not only his works of art, his philosophy but also his economy, i.e. his grip on the reality. (Dia, M., 1957, pp. 5-6) Indeed, there was a radicalization of economic thinking and projects in terms of Pan-Africanism. This was first evident in young students belonging to interterritorial organizations and strongly opposed to the balkanization of the African continent. In LAfrique rvolte (1958), Albert Tvoedjr, former editor in chief of LEtudiant dAfrique noire, an organ of the Federation of Students from Black Africa in France, of which he was one of the prominent leaders wrote: Colonial hegemony is our worst enemy. Nothing in the system which is modernizing itself is conceived in relation to our needs and legitimate interests. Our plight remains the same: illiteracy continues, the living standard of our peoples is excessively low; health services remain precarious and we are deprived of our lands. What then? I say therefore that it is not legitimate to manufacture products or farm lands if this manufacturing or farming require a policy that keeps the labour in poverty. It is high time the helm

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or the pilot was changed. Change to go where? Most of this youth opted for accelerated growth of the African economies, the theory of which Osende Afana, a Cameroonian, tried to expound in Lconomie de louest africain, perspectives de dveloppement (1966). The Ghanaian philosopher, Willie E. Abraham (The Mind of Africa, 1962) and the Senegalese Historian Cheikh Anta Diop (Les fondements conomiques et culturels dun Etat federal dAfrique noire, 1960) both bet for an industrialization designed to redevelop the agricultural sector, derive profit from the vast energy and mineral resources of the African continent and meet the needs and aspirations of its peoples. The precise balance sheet of these proposals and economic debates is yet to be drawn up. Nevertheless, it should be said that African economists have radically renewed the approach to the economic history of our continent and, by so doing, contributed to another reading of the economic history of the world, while formulating bold strategies to steer the continent out of the quagmire of underdevelopment. It is an open secret that since the 60s-70s, Samir Amin, an Economist, had played a decisive role in these approaches and the resulting deconnection strategy. The misfortune of Pan-Africanism lay in the new balance of power between the political leaders and the intellectuals after independence. Until then, there was more than collaboration between the two groups, a veritable osmosis in the sense that the political and intellectual functions were performed by the same movements and, often, by the same people. Afterwards, in an Africa dominated by parties-states-nations, the political leaders appropriated all the powers to themselves and sidelined, sometimes with brutality and violence, the intellectuals from the political scene and from government. Economic thinking, though relevant, novel, bold and brilliant, was thus confined within university walls and nuclei of dissidence, while in the circles of princes there were all kinds of busy and shrewd advisors bent on keeping African States in the neo-colonialist structures. This produced disastrous consequences. Whilst on the political scene the Pan-African ideal was sluggishly moving toward the full emancipation of the continent, the latter was indeed paralysed (S. Amin) from the economic standpoint, incapable or unwilling to map out a development strategy for the entire continent, leaving it to each State to define its short term interests. By hanging onto the European Economic Community, particularly through the Lome Accord, African States found themselves bound hand and foot in traps against which they were warned by the first generations of Pan-African activists like Kwame Nkrumah (Africa must unite, 1963; Neo-Colonialism, 1965). The Lagos Plan of Action (1980) which was adopted five years after the signing of the first Lome Accord was proof of an even greater ambition. However, in practice, it was nothing but a mere catalogue of pious wishes: the African Economic

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Community which the Heads of State and Government had undertaken to establish by the year 2000 remained a dead letter. III. 21st Pan-Africanism faced with its heritage : continuity or break? There are obvious signs in time and space against which the prospects offered by the Pan-Africanism of the 21st century can be gauged. Whereas the Sixth Pan-African Congress convened by Julius Nyerere in Dar-es-Salaam in 1974 had attracted only a few people and did not have any significant impact as it were, the Pan-African events of the 90s on the other hand were massively attended, with a stimulating mixture of political passion and intellectual fervour, as evidenced by the inaugural conference of the Black Peoples Institute (Ouagadougou, 1990), the meetings of intellectuals from Africa and the Diaspora held in Dakar in 1996 and the Conference on African Renaissance (Johannesburg, 1999). Thus, Africa finds itself in a situation where the stakes, old and new, are reactivating the problematics of Pan-Africanism. The question to be asked is: which tools and resources do we use to carry this reactivation and what do we do with all the multifaceted heritages the previous Pan-African struggles bequeathed us? African personality: Pan-African Heritage, Old Stakes and New Challenges The new relations among States known as globalization has not in the true sense of the word transformed the nature of the challenges that Africa must address. If anything, it has only changed the degree of visibility. Be it the numerous structural impediments to development or the inability of States to successfully address these challenges within their current territorial boundaries, most of the analyses and thinkings of the founding fathers of Pan-Africanism are still relevant. The novelty in PanAfricanism perhaps lies in the fact that African leaders are now seeing the manifestations of these structural problems. One only has to read the presentation note of NEPAD (New Partnership for Africas Development) to realize the extent to which the current perception of the leaders is far from the conventional and droning therapies used in the past: Africa is the fertile ground for serious endemic diseases. Bacteria and parasites carried by insects, travelers and other carriers find a breeding ground there, mainly because of weak ecological policies and the poor living conditions of the populations. One of the major impediments to development efforts in Africa lies in the serious consequences of transmittable diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

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Unless a definitive solution is found to these epidemics, it will be impossible to really develop the continents human resources. In the area of health, Africa is seriously lagging behind compared to the rest of the international community. In 1997 the mortality rates among children and teenagers were respectively 105 and 169 for 1000 people compared to 6 and 7 for 1000 in the developed countries. There are only 16 doctors for 100,000 inhabitants compared to 253 in the industrialized countries. Poverty, as evidenced by the very low per capita income, is one of the major factors hampering the efforts of the population to overcome their health problems (New Partnership for Africas Development, October 2001, points 125 and 126, in Ben Hammouda, H. and Kasse, M. (eds). Le NEPAD et les enjeux du dveloppement en Afrique, Paris, Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002, p.259). Admittedly, there are also the current unresolved consequences of this structural impediments, the growing debt burden, the tutelage of international financial institutions, the weakening of States from above (as a result of this tutelage and interference by some NGOs from the developed countries), and from below (due to policies often imposed from without, decentralization, inordinate privatization). Many are today rediscovering the relevance of the appeals for unity as the only way to bring about the accelerated and self-reliant development of the African continent. Among these liabilities should be mentioned the conflicts besetting the continent whose number has increased, whose landscape has significantly changed (reduction of the number of conflicts and their scope in Southern Africa, exacerbation or eruption of conflicts in other regions, particularly in Central Africa and, above all, in West Africa which is a new phenomenon), whose power of contamination has increased and whose devastating effects have become more visible for everybody to see, particularly the genocide that occurred in Rwanda, the wars in ex-Zaire and the armed conflicts which broke out concurrently in many States like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Cte dIvoire. Despite the end of the cold war, external interference is playing a major role in these conflicts, particularly in terms of arms trafficking and the plunder of local resources. With the massive drafting of children in armed bands, large scale violations of human rights and suffering visited upon the civilian populations, the destruction of the social fabric also seemed to take an irreversible turn. Apart from the fact these images revealed the gloom-mongering in the 80s and 90s which was widespread and associated with the various Afropessimist statements, they also compelled States to find collective, regional or Pan-African solutions to their difficulties, rather than relying exclusively on their own resources, preferring purely national approaches

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or resorting to the mediation of the major powers and international institutions. These queries which may sound new, in fact formed part of the issue of African personality as enunciated by Edward W. Blyden in the second half of the 19th century and fine tuned by Kwame Nkrumah at the 1958 Conference of Independent African States: For the first time, I think in the history of this great continent, the leaders of purely all African States who can play an independent role in international affairs will meet to discuss the problems facing our continent and take the first measures to work out an African contribution to international peace and good understanding This will enable us to assert our African Personality and to develop according to our own modes of life, customs and traditions and our own culture. By asserting our African Personality we shall, at any time, be free to act in our individual and collective interest. We shall also be able to exert our influence for peace and defend the right for all peoples to decide their own form of government and the right of all peoples, irrespective of race, colour or religion to live their lives in freedom and free from fear. Indeed, new circumstances seemed to render the concretization of this African personality ideology possible. We shall mention only two of such circumstances which stem from long term structural processes. First, we witnessed a powerful emergence of the manifestations (which were initially scattered but which later became more and more convergent) of a long and painstaking memory work whose roots can be traced back to the complex development of the Pan-African ideology. This memory work which was easily discernible in popular expressions, particularly in modern music and in pictorial productions in vogue in the urban areas and also in cultural events in the rural areas, related to moments, figures, situations or events whose consensual or conflicting evocation had served and continues to serve as crossroad of the affirmation of the African historic identity. Some of these places of memory can be distinguished by their recurrence and the weight and depth of the debates they generate. Mention will be made in particular of the origins of Africa and the latters place in the history of mankind, up-dated by the problematics of Afrocentricism; colonization whose Berlin conference centenary, marked by several meetings of experts and intellectuals, once again brought to the fore the reevaluation and role of colonization in the history of Africa both in terms of demarcation of the current borders of the continent and the processes of its under-development, as well as the persistent alienation of African societies; lastly, and above all, the slave trade and slavery revisited, as it were, by such factors as the radicalization of the identity

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struggles in the Black Americas, the proliferation of novels, songs and films relating to this crucial phase of the history of Africans, the development of slave trade and slavery sites such as Gore, Ouidah, or yet still the numerous slave route related projects, programmes and activities. In this connection, even though any appraisal in such a short time could only be provisional, the 1988-1999 decade seems to have been crucial in the Black world. Whereas the last visible traces of foreign domination faded in Africa with the independence of Namibia and the collapse of apartheid in South Africa, the decade referred to above was marked in the Diaspora by a long series of commemorations which most governments unsuccessfully tried to capitalize on and which rather revived history and memory debates in the face of which governments often backtracked or made concessions: anniversary marking the abolition of slavery in Brazil (1988), bicentenary of the Hati insurrection (1891), anniversary of the discovery of the Americas (1492), anniversary of the abolition of slavery in France (1848), tricentenary of the death of Zumbi in Brazil (1695) For instance in Brazil, the Government was compelled to turn into National Park the place where insurrection broke out, culminating in the formation of the Palmares Republic; in Columbia, the 1991 constitution provided for the granting of collective rights to the slave descendents and this was given concrete expression under the legislation promulgated in 1993; in France, a law voted in 2001, considered slave trade and slavery as a crime against humanity. This impressive memory work therefore no longer concerned only African countries and the Black Americas but also the new diasporas as a result of African migrations in the last two or three decades, which, by virtue of their numeric power and activism, brought the issue of African Renaissance to the heart of former colonial States and to all the nooks and crannies of the world. Secondly, while the institutional structures of the OAU seemed to make no headway, some regional or sub-regional organizations based on the nomenclature of international institutions showed vitality and efficiency, which explained the rationale behind Pan-African strategies. According to this rationale, one stands to gain by joining hands with others, even if the number is small, than going it alone. Whatever the reservations or criticisms directed against them, ECOWAS and SADC compared to the numerous sub-regional organizations seem to be the two institutions on the road to concrete regional integration capable of implementing policies that really address difficulties, crises and problems, both supranational and national, which the West, Central and Southern African States have encountered since the 80s. It is not surprising therefore that these two supranational bodies have played alongside other institutions and states, a leading role in the birth of the African Union and the elaboration of

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NEPAD (New Partnership for Africas Development), two initiatives which have given substance to the issue of African Renaissance. Africa rediviva? African Renaissance revisited The concept of African Renaissance which is closely linked to that of African personality strongly emerged at the prehistoric era of PanAfricanism and accompanied the latter in all its developments since the 19th century, becoming either very visible or virtually non-existent depending on the period. Its greatest visibility was undoubtedly during the independence era when, hand in hand, intellectuals and politicians believed that the time had come to announce better tomorrows to Africans. As a matter of fact, Willie Abraham, a philosopher and one of the closest collaborators of Kwame Nkrumah reechoed the creative optimism and voluntarism advocated by Edward W: Blyden; Isaka Seme and Nnamdi Azikwe: Africa has proved that speed of action is one of its blessings. The dangers threatening a fragmented Africa, the impotence of schismatism, and the salvation of unity are startingly clear The history of the continents is like the unfolding of Nebuchadnezzars dream of the giant whose sections were composed of different substances of growing scintillation. Africa, as pan-Africa, will prove to herself and others that she has not got feet of clay. United, her future history will be a history of splendour, scintillating with achievement and variety, in unity and dignity(Abrahams, W. The Mind of Africa, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962, pp.201-202). It is important to note how this Pan-African voluntarism gained momentum since the historical, cultural, social and political efferscence of the 90s, coupled with the renewed dynamics of Pan-African integration. Today as in the past, the aim is first and foremost to stitch up the memory fabric for, as was explained by Thabo Mbeki when inaugurating the African Renaissance Institute in 1991: The challenges of African renaissance are intimately linked to the painful experiences of our continent from the slave trade to today. However, these painful experiences should strengthen us in our conviction and determination to forge ahead: No one among here was present when thousands of Black slaves were forcibly ferried away from Gore or Zanzibar. Nonetheless, we all know that they survived that terrible ordeal because of their ever abiding determination and instinct. In the same vein, the people of Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Namibia, South Africa, and indeed the whole of Africa survived because they rejected annihilation. The refusal to die is the spirit which for centuries guided our peoples. It is this same spirit of

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determination and optimism that should fill us today in our fight for African Renaissance. Indeed, what is at stake is not the Africa of yesteryear but rather the Africa of tomorrow, and the creative genius of the African peoples which is universally acknowledged and which is proven and tested by their long history should spur them on towards that goal: The new Africa to be built through the African renaissance is an Africa underpinned by democracy, peace and stability, sustainable development and a better life for all the people; an African devoid of racism and sexism, where all nations are equal and where a just and democratic system of international government is upheld. None of these objectives will be attained unless we work towards it. In the same way as we freed ourselves from the yoke of colonialism, in this same way we have to work resolutely to bring about the African renaissance. I think that if in the past we as Africans had said that all these things were necessary, we have now reached a point where many in Africa firmly believe that they have indeed become possible. No doubt, the historic victory of our continent over colonialism and apartheid had something to do with that. With that success, we have once again created the possibility of facing up to the challenge of reconstruction and development of our continent. As every revolution requires revolutionaries, so does African renaissance need its militants and activists to chart its future course that will help win back our dignity (Thabo Mbeki). The role of intellectuals The issue of intellectuals and their vital contribution in this phase of the Pan-African struggle has thus once again come to the fore. The reflection on this issue within the Pan-African context is not a novelty. As a matter of fact, E.W. Blyden began thinking about it way back in 1862 when he inaugurated the Liberia College. In 1900, the symbolic date in the PanAfrican history, he laid the foundations of this role of intellectuals by giving in broad terms the profile of the Liberian scholar in a speech he delivered in that College (Blyden, E.W., 1971, pages 265-268). In fact, most theoreticians of Pan-Africanism directly dealt with this issue from the posture of intellectual they assumed or claimed, and in the brainstormings they devoted to this social category regarded by everybody as crucial in that phase of the liberation struggle. The relevant texts are many. I will conclude by mentioning only two or three which may open the discussion because on the one hand they define what is meant by African intellectual and, on the other, draw the profile thereof and assign the role that he is expected to play. Moreover, the same

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texts advocate the alliance that gave vitality to the political liberation movements which, I think, we need to rebuild, within the specific context of contemporary Africa and its diasporas, so as to move forward. The first text belongs to a politician. During his talks with Pastor Colin M. Morris, Kenneth Kaunda devoted a long part of his discussion to intellectuals: By intellectual, I mean anyone who has a level of modern education beyond that of the mass of the people and who is prepared to become politically involved. The intellectual must be distinguished from the academic who is not a man of action but dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. He must also be distinguished from the scholar who is versed in traditional lore the Confucian scholar in China, the Islamic scholar in the Middle East or the tribal elder in Africa. The intellectual is essentially an engaged man, applying modern knowledge and training to political purposes. The intellectual group has been a key element in most twentieth-century revolutions, particularly in Africa. (Kaunda, K. D. A Humanist in Africa, London, Longmans, 1966, pp.93-94). The second text naturally comes from an intellectual. In his analysis of Pan-Africanism, Willie Abraham, a philosopher, also has something to say about intellectuals: Africa is faced with a number of parallel revolutions. It is faced with political, economic, communicational, and education revolutions, and with others of similar kind () The role of intellectuals in such situations becomes critical () They must be distinguished from intellectuals in anchored societies who either fulfil a role which their society needs, like the priesthood in Ancient Egypt, or who pursue their academic studies in a national condition in which there is no marked shortage of technologists, civil servants et cetera () In underdeveloped societies, however, it is a pity when intellectuals become tired intellectuals. An intellectual has become tired when the possibility of new ideas, fulgurating with excitement, escapes him. The intellectual is a kind of expert, and an expert is someone from whom ideas seem to come with ease. This means, naturally, that intellectuals tend to lean on their memory and habits, on what they have worked out and are used to. Nevertheless only intellectuals can be socially sensitive to the possibilities and dangers affiliated to rapid development with a minimum of waste and great economy. In rapidly developing countries, they are even more useful than elsewhere. (Abraham, W. The Mind of Africa, London, Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1962, pp.184-188).

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Like the old and recent Pan-Africanism which benefited from the commitment of intellectuals, the Pan-Africanism of the 21st century is also expected to benefit from the inventions of the new technologies and knowhow, as well as the modalities of adapting them to the changes in Africa. The African intellectuals should make their contribution towards the attainment of this goal.