Pan Africanism – African Initiative for a Royal Route to a Unified Self-Determination

December 19, 2021   

BY JOSEPH SOBOKA

It is natural that humans co-exist for two major purposes: one is peaceful co-existence where, between two persons, one safeguards the safety of the other by ensuring the security through understanding; the other one is people as a group, feel safer when they draw to one another and ascertain unity to fend off attacks by any external force. To come to this social state, people have to have a common ground, unity, to catapult accelerate the activities of social solidarity to a higher and reliable level.

Africans, for a couple of centuries, had been subjected to oppression of the whites in Africa itself and western hemisphere (the Americas) as a whole. It is believed that the whites who newly settled in the new found land could not resist the tropical diseases and died in thousands could not work on their plantation. Thus, they designed a survival strategy which was trans-Atlantic shipping of African slaves as it was then named.

The demand for the Africans labor was high as they come from tropical regions, able to survive tropical diseases much better the whites. At the time the older, outmoded plantation areas were sometimes left behind with diminished production as so was the decrease of revenue from local and international trade of the products.

The Africans, with strong and healthy physical condition, were able to easily solve the plantation problem even though they were laboring under the treacherous treatment of their cruel white masters. More than the physical abuse, the whites considered the black brothers and sisters as sub human creatures who do not deserve human treatment. The white masters thoroughly exercised their illegal whites’ supremacy uncontrollably. There was no law on the face of earth that would defend the rights of the black people whatsoever.

Abusive words, beatings, incarcerations and in worse case, killings were rampant or rather beyond control whereever the blacks were found. If at all there it was in existence, it favored the whites and the black people were scape goats for any crime committed. If need be, the slave master could sell them as domestic animals. The masters had lost the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In short they had no empathy towards the Africans.

Africans at that time were unfortunate wherever they were whether in the Americas or in Africa. Hinterland in Africa even deep inside, they were hunted down like animals and captured by the Africans themselves and are taken to the cost where their buyers wait to buy them. They were separated from their families and relatives never to meet them again.

Even after slavery was legally abolished, they did not have equal social status with the whites. Their children were forced to go to black schools. They never attended churches with the whites as they had to go to blacks’ church. The whites, who preach to Africans that all men are equal in the sight of God, denied the blacks the right to worship in the same church with them. Black Africans were not permitted to travel in the same means of transportation.

In Africa, the bitter seeds of colonialism had pervaded the social, political and economic structures of the Africans. They had no say in all these; in their territories they became less than second class citizens. Their natural resources were shipped to the countries of their colonial masters. Their cultures displaced by colonial culture and their fabrics totally dismantled. They were not adequately trained. For every technical skill they had to seek the assistance of the white masters and there was literally nothing to do on their own in this respect.

All these factors combined created the strong desire to form some kind of union. Eventually, they reached the situation where they had to search for autonomy and the basis for unity. That was the proper route to pan Africanism a form of integration that would empower them for self-government by throwing the yoke of colonialism. Thus, Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous and diaspora ethnic groups of African descent.

It is the idea that peoples of African descent have common interests and should be unified. In its narrowest political manifestation, Pan-Africanists envision a unified African nation where all people of the African diaspora can live.

At the root of many of these new initiatives lies a legacy handed down from the liberation struggles and the Pan-Africanist movement. Thus, African integration is benefiting from a number of reform programs such as Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) that includes the two largest economies of Nigeria and South Africa. At the same time, the African Union and the regional economic communities are consolidating and expanding their peace and security mechanisms. These are the major fruits of the attempted pan Africanism.

Apart from trade and security issues, there are many other areas where we can expect to see progress on Africa’s regional integration in the near future like what is happening in the horn of Africa through the instrumentality of Ethiopia: education and human capital, labor mobility, common currencies and taxes.

This policy note assesses how the Pan-Africanist ideas have been transformed from an ideology for decolonization into a framework for African development, with regional integration as its key strategy. Understanding the motives for and ideas of unity and cooperation, as well as which stakeholders stand to gain or lose from the integration programs, is key for everyone working for the continent’s security and prosperity. The struggle against such movement by the colonialists to thwart or nip it at its bud is that they knew they would lose their interests in Africa.

The Africans were wandering what should be done and by whom? With their strong tradition of advocating multilateralism, free trade and international co-operation, the Nordic countries should support regional integration in Africa. Drawing on their experiences of the European post-war integration projects, they could have a lot to offer, especially in education and capacity building. Correspondingly, the African experiences of cooperation across vast cultural, social, political and economic diversities could feed into the Nordic countries’ sustainable development agenda. Unity is vital to economic, social, and political progress and aims to “unify and uplift” people of African descent.

Many describe that Pan-Africanism as a concept that stresses the spiritual unity of the black people and upholds their right to self-determination. The central core is the need to be treated with dignity as the equals of the other races in all parts of the world. The Pan-African movement originated not in Africa. It was by the people who experienced inequality and brutality in foreign environment far away from their origin. For such unprecedented and cruel treatment, they had no one to turn to and nowhere to go, to seek solution for the harsh treatment inflicted on them.

The irony of the situation is that inhumanity of such magnitude was caused by people who claim to have had thousands years of civilization. But their civilization that they take pride on was trampled in the mud of their brutality. There is no way they can disprove the truth of the situation. It is carefully documented that the children and grandchildren can use as a spring board to higher level of Pan Africanism.

The most important early Pan-Africanists were Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel, both African Americans, and Edward Blyden, a West Indian. As we zoom down it to Africa, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and many others played a leading role in the struggle for the formation of Pan Africanism.

Haile Selassie was an outspoken proponent of the Pan-African movement and, as the leader of one of two sovereign nations within Africa at that time. He emerged as a leader for the entire continent during this era. As he earned international recognition for Ethiopia, so he did for all of Africa.

The current fire of Pan Africanism is rekindled by the motto No More coiled by Ethiopians for some countries of the west and the United States plot against Ethiopia to dismantle her sovereignty. The rest of African countries are believed to follow suite. Wake up Africa! Unite! Now is the time to shake the yoke of neocolonialism off your shoulders.

The Ethiopian Herald December 19/2021