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Home , African nationalism, Eclecticism, Indian Ocean trade, Kwesi Prah, Territorial nationalism

CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 1

Online Article

The Struggle to Convert to Pan-Africanism: Taking Stock of 50 years of African Independence1

he post- ep- takes time before it is recognised och of some five centuries Issa Shivji as such, while the old persists be- is a story of the ‘West and Professor Emeritus yond its usefulness. Keeping that T 2 the Rest’. The West constructed University of Dar es Salaam, in mind, I am categorising the first its own story and the story of the four centuries (roughly from the Rest. It is a story of plunder, priva- last quarter of the fifteenth century tion, invasion and destruction; it is to the first quarter of the nineteenth a story of permanent wars and pass- Yet in this complexity and variabil- century) of the African encoun- ing peace. It is a story of the annihi- ity, in these major shifts and chang- ter with as the period of lation of pre-European civilisations ing continuities—all of which we as primitive accumulation, or, to use from the Incas of the , so scholars must study and have been the more recent and generic term, called after the European explorer studying—there is a pattern. There accumulation by appropriation. (It Amerigo Vespucci, to the Swahili is a red thread running through it. should become clear later why I civilisation of the eastern coast of That red thread is the process of prefer this term.) . The title of a book describ- capitalist accumulation seen in a ing the Spanish conquest of Mexico, longue durée. While we must, by The period of accumulation the near-extermination of the Tas- all means, resist linear trajectories by appropriation manian Aborigines by the British, that essentialise the march of prog- Within this period we have two the white American dispossession ress of so-called Western civilisa- sub-periods. One is the period of of the Apache, and the German sub- tion, including the stagiest peri- looting of treasures, sometimes jugation of the Herero and Nama of odisation of vulgar Marxists, we directly, sometimes indirectly, un- Namibia, sums it all: Rivers of Blood, cannot surrender to agnosticism or der the name of trade, based on Rivers of Gold (Cocker 1999). eclecticism—that the world is not unequal, rather than mutual ex- k n o w a b l e a n d e x p l a i n a b l e , h o w e v e r The tale of treasures at one end and change. This is the period when approximately. tragedies at the other cannot be un- European powers pursued their derstood, I suggest, without locat- Periodising the Process of singular mission to destroy pre- ing it in the trajectory of worldwide European long-distance trade— capitalist accumulation. No doubt it Accumulation the trans-Sahara trade on the west is a complex story of construction It is in the context of the trajec- coast and the trade and destruction of and cus- tory of capitalist accumulation that on the east coast of Africa—in toms; a story of the exercise of bru- I want to locate the genesis of the order to establish their mercantile tal power and subtle ; a spin- grand narrative of nationalism and and maritime hegemony. The pre- ning of epic mythologies and grand Pan-Africanism. To facilitate my European trade systems, both on ideologies. No doubt it cannot be re- paper I am resorting to some peri- the west and the east coasts, were duced mechanically to the capitalist odisation of the process of accumu- governed by Islamic precepts. mode of production nor explained lation. As we all know, all periodi- The gold trade passed through in a vulgar way by theories of con- sation has its hazards—processes Timbuktu on the west, and through spiracy or processes of economics. I overlap and intermingle; the new Kilwa on the east, both of which am suggesting none of that. is born in the garbs of the old and became centres of great Islamic ci- CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 2 vilisation and learning. Timbuktu Meanwhile, on the European stage, ject. For planters and slavers, ‘The and Kilwa were brutally destroyed capitalism was bursting its contain- Negroes are unjust, cruel, barba- by Portuguese privateers. The ex- ers (to use Prem Shaker Jha’s term, rous, half-human, treacherous, de- peditions had specific instructions Jha 2006: 17) and reconstructing ceitful, thieves, drunkards, proud, to Christianise the ‘natives’ and them. Jha argues that in its 700 lazy, unclean, shameless, jealous to eliminate Muslim traders. years of development, capitalism fury, and cowards’ (James [1938] has gone through three cycles of 1989). The Supreme Court of the As the Portuguese privateers were accumulation. At the beginning civilised United States decided in devastating the African coast in the of each cycle it has expanded the 1857 that ‘Dred Scott could not last quarter of the fifteenth century, size of its container. In the first, it sue for his freedom because he so Spanish conquerors were dis- grew from the maritime city-states was not a person, but property’ covering the ‘New World’. Vasco of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan (Zinn 2001: 187). Fathers, bish- da Gama laid the foundation of the and Amsterdam to the -states ops, learned priests and men of European invasion of Africa; Chris- of England, Holland and France. conscience found no fault in trad- topher Columbus inaugurated the The quintessence of the second ing in and owning slaves: ‘... we extermination of the indigenous cycle was from the nation-state to ... buy these slaves for our service populations of the Americas and the the colonising state,3 as European without a scruple ...’, declared men Caribbean—the first and powers colonised much of the rest of with conscience (ibid. holocaust in the history of human- of the world. The third was from the 29–30). The bottom line was enor- kind. One led to white hegemony, island territory of the small nation- mous profits made from the slave the other to white settlement. From state, Britain, to the continental na- trade and colossal surplus extracted then on, the fate of the three conti- tion-state of North America. Now, from slave labour. James Madison, nents was inextricably linked and in the era of globalisation, on the one of the ‘fathers’ of the Ameri- found its immediate expression in eve of the fourth cycle, it is poised can Constitution, could boast to a the triangular slave trade. to burst the very system of hierarchi- British visitor that he could make The second sub-period, from the cally organised nation-states. 2,000 per cent profit from a single sixteenth to the nineteenth century, slave in a year (Zinn 2001: 33). Whatever the merit of this thesis, Thus were constructed the univer- witnessed the gruesome Atlantic for our purposes two points can be slave trade, the so-called triangular sal ideologies, the grand narratives made. One, that the capitalist con- and the totalising outlooks of the trade. Half the slaves were transport- tainer was never self-contained. ed to the ‘New World’ in the eigh- Western civilisation, which we are Arteries penetrating deep into the living to this day. teenth century. Millions—fifty mil- wealth and treasures of other conti- lion, one estimate says (Zinn 2001: nents fed the process of capital ac- Accumulation by capitalisation 29)—of men, women and children cumulation in the heart of Europe. torn from their worked Africa was the theatre of the most Towards the end of the eighteenth the sugar plantations of the Carib- devastating kinds of appropriation. and the first half of the nineteenth bean and cotton plantations of the Two, the ideologies, , centuries, capitalism entered the southern states of America to pro- cultures and customs constructed throes of the Industrial Revolu- vide the raw material for Lancashire to rationalise, legitimise and ex- tion (1780 to 1840 by Hobsbawm’s mills, the pioneer of the Industrial plain the processes of accumula- reckoning, Hobsbawm 1968). It Revolution. The African continent tion were centrally premised on was also the period of primitive was looted of its treasures in the the construction of race, in which accumulation within the contain- first sub-period, which also ruined ‘the Self’ was White and ‘the Oth- er. Indeed, the original meaning its established mercantile routes. In er’ Black, the two also being the of primitive accumulation was the second sub-period, the continent referents for the in-between. Ge- confined to the process of - appro was looted of its people, devastating ography itself was constructed as priation of serfs and peasants from its social fabric and robbing it of its such, Europe being the land of the land to work in factories. Marx most important resource. This was White and Africa being the land called it the ‘prehistoric stage of accumulation by appropriation par of the Black. The racist construct capital’ (1887: 668). He theorised excellence—accumulating by appro- found its typical expression in the the capitalist system as if it were priating wealth in the first instance, Other, the Slave—a soulless, de- self-contained. ‘Accumulate, accu- and accumulating by appropriating personalised and dehumanised ob- mulate! That is the Moses and the people in the second. CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 3 prophets!’ (Marx 1887: 558) was Lenin, from a different point of ‘tribes’ (Mafeje 1971). Tribes were the driving force of capitalism. departure, argued that in the last conveniently divided and sepa- quarter of the nineteenth century, rated in their ghettoes, lest, as co- By dissecting the appearance of capitalism had become imperialist lonial paternalism averred, they the commodity society, Marx as monopoly finance capital sought kill each other given their violent showed how surplus is appropri- new spaces of profitable investment propensity. The separation was ated from the working class and (Lenin 1917). At the Berlin Con- thus in the interest of the natives to accumulated to make more sur- ference of 1885, rapacious capi- maintain law and order, meaning to plus, even when, on the face of it, talist powers carved up the African rule (divide et impera—divide and the exchange appears to be mu- continent and appropriated its parts rule). Institutions of indirect politi- tual and equivalent and no one is as their exclusive possessions, thus cal rule and colonially constructed cheated or short-changed. (And if heralding another seventy-five or regimes of customary law were cheating does happen in practice, it so years of colonialism. The rac- created. Colonial identities of race is only a deviation from the norm.) ist ideology of the White ‘Self’ and tribe were formed, and to the Accumulation based on equal ex- (master) and the Black ‘Other’ extent that they were internalised, change is what we call accumula- (slave) came in handy in the cre- self-identification and perception tion by capitalisation. The notion ation of colonies. It was reinforced followed suit. of equivalent exchange forms the in religion and anthropology and bedrock of bourgeois legal ideol- literature as droves of missionar- The dual tendency of accumulation ogy and philosophical outlook. ies preceded and anthropologists continued to operate—accumulation The edifice of the Western legal followed armed soldiers, to pacify by capitalisation being dominant in system is constructed on atomised the soulless, indolent ‘native’. The the metropole and accumulation by individuals bearing equal rights ‘Self’ was now the White colonist appropriation being dominant and (Pashukanis [1924] 1978). Atom- and the ‘Other’ was the ‘native’. pervasive in the colony. To be sure, ist individuals of bourgeois society it manifested in new forms, through as carriers of commodity relations The ‘colour line’ thus constructed new political, economic, cultural are all equal. This is also the basis had its own internal logic and drive. and social institutions. Politics and of where to be a citizen It determined the very life-con- cultures were reconstructed; so means to have equal claims and ditions of the colonist/settler and were customs and ideologies. A lot entitlements, as against each other the ‘native’. The settler’s town, as changed. The capitalism of 1942 and in relation to the state. Fanon described it, is a ‘strongly was not the same as the capitalism built’, ‘brightly lit’, ‘well-fed’ town. of 1492, nor was that of the 2000s Later Marxists, beginning with It is a town of ‘white people, of for- the same as that of the 1900s. Yet Rosa Luxemburg, questioned the eigners’. The native town is: in these sea changes the heart of the theorisation of capitalist accumula- system lay where it had always tion based on the assumption of a a place of ill fame, peopled by men lain—in accumulation. self-contained system. They argued of evil repute. They are born there, that so-called primitive accumula- it matters little where or how; they New forms of primitive accumula- tion was not simply the prehistory die there, it matters not where, nor tion were devised. Minerals were of capital but an inherent part of its how. It is a world without spa- mined with migrant labour; planta- history. The capitalist centre always ciousness; men live there on top of tions cultivated by bachelor labour. requires a non-capitalist periphery each other, and their huts are built Women were turned into peasant to appropriate from, which trans- one on top of the other. The native cultivators. Children’s hands were lates into invasions of non-capital- town is a hungry town, starved of deployed to weed and harvest. None ist spaces. Capital not only comes bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of was paid the equivalent of his or her into the world ‘dripping from head light. ... It is a town of niggers, and subsistence as the laws of commod- dirty Arabs. (Fanon 1967: 30) to foot, from every pore, with blood ity exchange prescribe. Bachelor and dirt’ (Marx 1887: 712), but The racist construct of the slave wages were paid in cash and kind. also throughout its life continues period, assisted by colonial intel- The cash was just enough to pay the to drain the blood of the ‘Other’ in- lectuals, was extended and recon- poll tax, buy cigarettes and the lo- terspersed by orgies of bloodshed, structed. Differences of custom cal brew. The other component was called wars. Capitalism by nature is and cultures among the ‘natives’ food rations. The colonial capitalist predatory and militarist. became immutable divisions called rationed every ounce of mealy meal CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 4 and every grain of bean just to keep ian revolution, which would usher back centuries to the slave trade, so the body of the migrant labourer humanity to the next stage of ci- did the resistance. For two hundred alive, but not his family. (That was vilisation—socialism. His twenti- years the slaves in Haiti, originally the woman’s responsibility.) Ra- eth-century followers even postu- named Hispaniola by Columbus, tions were meticulously calculated lated imperialism as the pioneer of sang their freedom song (James on the basis of expert opinion on the capitalism and therefore progress [1938] 1989: 18): needs of the native’s morphology. (Warren 1980). Eh! Eh! Heu! Heu! Prison and forced labour, with no To be sure, colonial capital by the Canga, bafio té! wages, constructed the arteries of very nature of capital did introduce Canga, mouné de lé! colonial infrastructure to transport commodity relations, thus planting Canga, do ki la! raw materials and food—cotton, the seeds of accumulation by capi- Canga, li! coffee, rubber, tea—to the coast and talisation. The post-independence thence to the metropole to satisfy development theorists—again, of We swear to destroy the whites, and all that they possess; the voracious appetite of the mas- course, of the West—considered ter’s industries and the luxurious these pockets of capitalist relations let us die tastes of its aristocracy and middle the driver of modernisation. It re- rather than fail to keep our vow’. classes. More often than not, pris- quired a few and minority scholars This was the prehistory of one oners were those who had failed to of the Rest to theorise on the de- strand of Pan-Africanism, racial pay poll tax or wife tax. A flat-rate velopment of underdevelopment, nationalism. The prehistory of the tax was levied on every adult male the relationship between two ten- other strand, territorial national- native above the apparent age of dencies of capitalist accumulation ism, found expression in the Hai- eighteen. He had to pay tax on each and its contradictions. The modern tian revolution of 1791. None of it of his ‘apparent’ wives.4 In addition was not modern, they said, nor the at the time, of course, was called by to flushing out the self-sufficient traditional backward. Rather, both that name. If I may jump the gun, producer from the land to work on were part of the capitalist whole in a the Haitian revolution was in ad- plantations and mines to get cash symbiotic relationship that ensured vance of its times. It was the fore- for tax, taxation raised the revenue the drainage of wealth and surplus runner of both the logical conclu- to run the colonial machinery of ad- from the continent to be capitalised sion of and ministration and repression. in the West. In short, then, accumu- citizenship, and their crisis under lation by appropriation dominated imperialism, all of which we see in Political economists of the West, colonial capitalism under the hege- post-independence African states. who were wont to theorise for mony of imperialism. If it produced the Rest, argued interminably on indigenous capitalists, they were The racial construct in the Haitian theories of unequal exchange and compradorial or semi-feudal in alli- freedom song is palpable. It could uncaptured peasantry to explain ance with, and under the shadow of, not be otherwise. On the launch- colonially created poverty and un- imperial . ing of his 1903 book, The Souls derdevelopment. Few would see of the Black Folk, Du Bois said that cutting into the necessary con- The Birth of Pan-Africanism that the ‘problem of the Twentieth sumption of the ‘native’ crippled Century is the problem of the color the conditions of human existence We don’t have to be told that wher- line’. Pan-Africanism was born at and its reproduction, resulting in ever there is oppression there is the turn of the century as a racial, chronic undernourishment, high bound to be resistance (Mao). As anti-racist ideology. Its founders infant mortality, deprivation and C. L. R. James says, ‘one does not came from the West Indies, the disease. It was nothing short of need education or encouragement to confluence of the slave trade, from primitive accumulation of the cherish a dream of freedom’ (James where slaves were transported to most primitive kind, which even [1938] 1989: 18). As happens so the Americas. It is in the so-called Marx did not foresee. Instead, he often in history, ideologies of resis- ‘New World’ of North America thought that the march of capital- tance are constructed from the ele- that the White supremacist ideol- ism would bring the backward and ments borrowed from the ideologies ogy found expression in its most tradition-bound natives into the of domination. Pan-Africanism was brutal and dehumanising forms. It fold of civilisation by integrating such an ideology of resistance born is also there that the roots of Pan- them into capitalism. Thence, they in the throes of imperialism. Just as Africanism can be traced. would benefit from the proletar- the dominant racist construct went CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 5

Two names stand out: Du Bois and Negritude construct originally de- The independence of in . Du Bois’ father and veloped by the West Indian Aimé 1957 was an earthshaking event. grandfather came from the West In- Césaire clearly demonstrates. C. L. R. James described Ghana’s dies. Garvey came from Jamaica. independence as a revolution. For The two men stood in contrast, in The turning point was the 1945 a people who had been humili- their conception and methods. They Fifth Congress at Manchester. The ated for five centuries, indepen- represented—between them and moving spirits behind that Con- dence was indeed a revolution. For within them—the two poles of na- gress were and Nkrumah, though, the indepen- tionalism within Pan-Africanism, . The demand dence of Ghana was incomplete one defined by race and , was unambiguous—Africa for Af- without the liberation of the whole the other by geography. Garvey op- ricans, liberation from colonialism. continent and the liberation was posed accommodation within the It ushered in the national liberation incomplete without the unity of White structures and spearheaded movement. Pan-Africanism thus the continent. These two concepts a ‘back to Africa movement’. He gave birth to nationalism. The main became his passion. With the ad- thus stood for a territorial home. question was: would this be territo- vice and help of George Padmore, Du Bois demanded equal racial rial nationalism premised on sepa- Nkrumah set in motion two sets treatment within the US. He thus rate colonially created , or of conferences—the conference of stood for equal treatment or citi- Pan-Africanist nationalism? This, African independent states, eight zenship. Needless to say, both po- in turn, gave rise to two sets of sub- in all at the time, and All-African sitions were a political construct, questions. If it was territorial, what People’s Conferences, a meeting even if they did not present them- would be the boundaries of inclu- of national liberation movements, selves as such. Paradoxically, but sion/exclusion, race or citizenship? trade unions and other leaders. The understandably, the boundaries of And if Pan-Africanist, would it be resolutions of these two conferenc- both were set by the dominant po- global, including the African di- es were a forerunner of the ‘new’ litical and social constructs—White aspora, or continental, excluding bifurcation of the Pan-Africanist supremacy in one case, colonially the diaspora? Even if continental, ideology—the statist Pan-African- carved borders in the other. would it be racial/cultural including ism and its concomitant state-based only black Africans while excluding nationalism, and people’s Pan-Af- In his ninety-three years, Du Bois Arabs? These became hot issues of ricanism based on and lived through and embodied the six- debates and contentions a few years African identity. Statist Pan-Afri- ty-odd years of the evolution of Pan- before and a few years after the in- canism culminated in the forma- Africanist ideology and movement. dependence of African countries. tion of the Organisation of African Between the wars, Du Bois’ Pan- Unity (OAU), underpinned by the Africanist congresses were essen- In one sense, the bifurcation be- tween racial and territorial nation- discourse on the unity of African tially small gatherings of African- states, while ‘All African People’s’ Americans and African-Caribbeans, alism symbolised by Du Bois and Marcus Garvey between the wars Pan-Africanism was increasingly with a sprinkling of Africans from eclipsed by territorial nationalism. French colonies. Demands centred seemed to re-appear. But the con- text had changed. There were two Each one of these, in its own way, on racial equality, equal treatment reproduced the triangular tension and accommodation in existing new factors: independence on the African continent and in the Ca- between racialism, nationalism and structures. To the extent that colo- citizenship. nialism and imperialist oppression ribbean; and the civil rights move- itself was ideologised in terms of ment in the US. One introduced The tension between the two arms , the anti-racist, ra- state sovereignty into the territorial of the bifurcation was well de- cial constructs and demands of Pan- equation, the other citizenship into scribed by a leading Pan-African- Africanists were anti-imperialist. It the global equation, both setting ist, , as the dilemma is important to keep this dimension apparently ‘new’ boundaries of of the Pan-Africanist (Nyerere of Pan-Africanism in mind—that in exclusion/inclusion, identity and 1968). When Nyerere was writing, its genesis and evolution the ideol- belonging. In a nutshell, the tri- in 1966, there were thirty-six in- ogy and movement was primarily angular contestation between citi- dependent African states. Each of political and essentially anti-impe- zenship, racialism and territorial these was involved in the consoli- rialist. No doubt, it drew upon the nationalism defined the parameters dation and development of its na- victim’s cultural resources, as the of the Pan-Africanist discourse. tion-state. ‘Can the vision of Pan- CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 6

Africanism survive these realities? from Nyerere’s Socialism and It was a valiant struggle but it was Can African unity be built on this Self-reliance to Senghor’s Negri- ultimately defeated, as the on- foundation of existing and growing tude, lay the contention between slaught of neoliberalism amply nationalism?’, Nyerere agonised. accumulation by capitalisation and proved. The nationalist, labelled His answer was unambiguous. accumulation by appropriation. ‘ethnic’ by the West, either failed or lacked the means and the historical I do not believe the answer is easy. Programmes and policies undertak- time and opportunity to master the Indeed I believe that a real dilem- en in the nationalist period, whether driving force of the construction of ma faces the Pan-Africanist. On under the ideology of modernisation the ‘Self’ of the West—accumula- the one hand is the fact that Pan- or socialism (essentially a variant tion. Accumulation by capitalisa- Africanism demands an African of state capitalism), were meant to tion required a relatively autono- consciousness and an African loy- bolster the tendency for accumula- mous economic space to operate alty; on the other hand is the fact tion by capitalisation. But under the that each Pan-Africanist must also and political self-determination to hegemony of imperialism, accumu- master. In other words, paraphras- concern himself with the freedom lation by appropriation continued to and development of one of the ing Cabral, national liberation assert and reassert itself. Using lo- meant people reclaiming their right of Africa. These things cal state or private merchant capital can conflict. Let us be honest and to make their own history, whose as the intermediary, and trade, aid admit that they have already con- objective was ‘to reclaim the right, and debt as the means, natural re- flicted. (Nyerere 1968: 208) usurped by imperialist domination’ sources were rapaciously exploited of liberating ‘the process of de- They more than conflicted. The vi- and working people cajoled or co- velopment of national productive sion of Pan-Africanism was buried erced into yielding surpluses that forces’ (Cabral 1969). in the statist discourse of African inevitably found their way into the unity and regional integration/ capital circuits of imperialist cen- This called for nothing less than disintegration. More astute na- tres. Just as looting, plundering and a structural reconstruction of the tionalists like Nyerere defined the the triangular slave trade of the pre- economy and reorganisation of the two-fold task of the independent vious centuries, called primitive ac- state. None could be done success- government as nation-building and cumulation, had primed the wheels fully under the Western capitalist development. In the absence of of the Industrial Revolution, so domination of the economy and the a local bourgeois class worth the the appropriation of resources and political hegemony of imperialist name, the agency to build the na- surpluses of the working people of ideologies and policies transmit- tion and bring about development Africa fuelled the Golden Age of ted by local proto-bourgeoisies, so would be the state. Meanwhile, im- Capitalism (1945 to 1971). Nation- well caricatured by Fanon. The few perialism continued to cast its long alist attempts to construct a self-re- who attempted were assassinated, shadow and at times more than a liant economy, and inaugurate what overthrown or forcibly removed. shadow. Assassinations and coups Samir Amin calls autocentric de- The rest had to accommodate and engineered by one or other imperi- velopment, were sternly opposed or compromise to survive. alist power became the order of the accommodated and absorbed into The problem was that the ideology day. was brutal- the imperialist system. of resistance and anti-hegemony— ly murdered and Kwame Nkrumah Nonetheless, imperialism during and their institutions of operation- was overthrown by the machina- the nationalist period was morally alisation—was constructed drawing tions of the CIA. Survival became and ideologically on the defen- on the intellectual and cultural re- Nyerere’s pre-occupation. sive. Educated in the theories of sources of the dominant and domi- Capitalist Accumulation in the the master and borrowing from the nating West. African nationalists cultures and history of the colonis- failed to construct alternative ideol- Post-Independence Period er, African nationalists attempted ogies and institutions. In the course Half a century of independent to reconstruct their identities and of the struggle, again, a few tried Africa neatly divides into two polities in the idiom of nationalism, but they were nipped in the bud in halves—the first twenty-five years sovereignty, self-determination the nick of time. of nationalism and the second of and citizenship, the philosophical Amilcar Cabral postulated that neoliberalism. Underlying the ide- underpinning of which, as we have ‘there are only two possible paths ologies of development and nation- seen, is the notion of the atomist for an independent nation: to re- building, of identities and politics, individual with equal rights. CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 7 turn to imperialist domination been made autonomous and com- have been fought after the end of (neocolonialism, capitalism, state mercial banks privatised away the so-called Cold War than dur- capitalism), or to take the way of from the public scrutiny of elected ing its existence. Most of these socialism’ (Cabral 1969: 87). He bodies. They make policies on the have taken place on the African did not live to see either the inde- basis of prescriptions handed down continent. Within a period of two pendence of his country or practise by International Financial Insti- decades, four countries have been his position. Agents of Portuguese tutions and donors. Policies are destroyed and the fifth about to be colonialism assassinated him as thrust down the throats of politi- devastated. Two of these are on the his country was approaching inde- cians and parliamentarians using African continent. The continent pendence. Chris Hani, who envis- the carrot of loans, aid and budget is being militarised as American aged a new democratic and social- support, whose withdrawal acts as imperialism spreads its tentacles ist South Africa, was killed on the the veritable stick. Meanwhile, vo- through the AFRICOM and seeks eve of the transfer of power. Steve racious imperialist capitals backed more and more naval bases on the Biko, who redefined Black as a by their states and the so-called Indian Ocean rim. positive identity of the oppressed ‘donor community’ are grabbing beyond the colour line, was tor- land, minerals, water, flora and Revisiting the Pan-Africanist tured to death by the henchmen fauna. I need not go into details be- Project of . John Garang, who cause a few African scholars have postulated a united New Sudan be- amply documented these facts—I The continent is in crisis as is the yond colour, cultural and linguistic say ‘ few’, because many have capitalist-imperialist system con- lines, infuriated racial and seces- succumbed to consultancies in the structed by the West over the last sionist elements both in the North service of ‘development partners’. five centuries. Some have argued and the South and their imperialist that the fall of Lehman Brothers backers. We are told he was killed Let me sum up by saying that the and the financial crisis following in a helicopter crash. The lies tension of the nationalist period be- it marked the beginning of the end buried somewhere in the debris. tween accumulation by capitalisa- of capitalism as we know it. Oth- tion and accumulation by appropri- ers are taking the position that the The nationalist project was thus ation has been resolved in favour of centre of gravity and hegemony is defeated and its building blocks neoliberal primitive accumulation. shifting from the West to the East, shattered. The neoliberal attack To be sure, there are new forms in that capitalism is poised to recon- was foremost an ideological attack which the process of expropriation stitute itself in new centres. The on radical nationalism. Imperial- is constituted and manifested, but debate rages on. ism went on the offensive—eco- the essence remains. The projected nomically, culturally, politically identity of the ‘Self’ in the West is Most, at least most African schol- and intellectually. Within a period that of a benefactor, humanitarian, ars, agree that the national project in of two decades, Africa underwent investor, advisor, entrepreneur and Africa has failed and national liber- three generations of structural ad- donor, while the ‘Other’ is the poor ation has been aborted. Some locate justment programmes in an orgy and helpless victim of the corrupt, the failure of the national project in of liberalisation, marketisation, unaccountable ethnic ruler. No the crisis of citizenship, others in privatisation, commodification and doubt, capitalism at the centre is the failure to liberate the continent financialisation. Pockets of capital- not the same either. from the clutches of imperialism. ist development based on accumu- In my view, the two are connected. lation by capitalisation have been Prem Shankar Jha argues that capi- Underlying the crisis of citizenship destroyed as country after country talism is on the verge of bursting is the failure to master the process in Africa has been deindustrialised. its nation-state container and is go- of accumulation by capitalisation, The few achievements of social ing global, in the process wreaking which in turn is due to imperialist services, in education, health, wa- havoc and destruction on a global domination in alliance with local ter, old age pensions and other scale. One does not have to accept comprador classes. Jha’s thesis to agree with him that public services, are commodified Whatever be the case, African under such policies as cost-sharing the destruction is real and palpa- ble, its implications felt not only scholars, intellectuals and activ- and outsourcing. Fiscal instru- ists have been compelled to re- ments and institutions of policy- in Africa but also in the West. Yet Africa suffers the most. More wars visit the Pan-Africanist project. making, like central banks, have Some of the old debates on racial CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 8 and territorial are re- As we engage in re-imagining and in the post-World War II anticolo- appearing. Who is an African for re-theorising Pan-Africanism, we nial struggles in Africa, nation and the purposes of Pan-Africanism? need to make several epistemic nation-building were privileged. In And, therefore, who constitutes breaks while at the same time re- effect it meant the building of the the nation for purposes of national construct some of the elements of nation-state in which the nation and liberation? For , Bankie historical Pan-Africanism. As we state were conflated. What is more, Bankie, Chiweizu and others, ‘Af- engage in the intellectual task of the nation-state was conceived in the rican’ is defined by colour, culture re-imagination and re-theorisation image of the European nation-states. and custom. For Archie Mafeje, of New Pan-Africanism, I suggest Nyerere candidly admitted so much. , , Taju- the following elements may pro- deen Abdul-Raheem and others, vide some of the building blocks I was not seeing [social- ism] outside of the nation-state. African or Black is not a function for its reconstruction. Needless to I’ve questioned many, many, many of colour, race, biology or morphol- say, the list is not exhaustive nor things from Europe, but I’ve not ogy but a social and political con- cast in stone, for the task of theo- questioned the nation-state. I can- struct, which ought to be histori- retical praxis cannot be isolated or not think, how do I think in terms cised. Mafeje affirms, ‘... Africanity detached from the praxis of real-life of not the nation-state? … My could not possibly mean the same struggles of the working people. questioning did not reach the na- thing to succeeding generations of tion-state. My questioning focused African intellectuals’. And the fact First, we must always keep in mind that historical Pan-Africanism was upon the borders. (Sutherland and that the first and second generation Meyer 2000: 76) of Pan-Africanists may have bor- a political ideology and anti-impe- rowed from racial and cultural cat- rialist from its inception. At no time In Pan-Africanism and national lib- egories to deal with the problema- has Pan-Africanism been a theory eration, nation was privileged over tique of white racism in a colonial or ideology of economic regional class. It needed the frontal attack of setting ‘does not commit later integration. ‘Politics first’ was the neoliberalism on the nation-state generations of Pan-Africanists to fundamental precept of Pan-Afri- and nationalism to bring home the the same conflation between race/ canism. Politics was in command, fragility of the nation-state. For all colour and culture’ (Mafeje 2000 ). economics followed, not the other intents and purpose, the postcolo- way round. In his gradualist, prag- nial national project has failed. The In the view of many African schol- matic approach to building Pan-Af- more recent rise of narrow nation- ars, intellectuals and activists, we rican unity, Nyerere believed that alisms and populisms has further need to revisit and reconstruct the regional integration, of whatever questioned the viability of the ide- Pan-African project to address the kind, could become the building ology of nationalism. So long as unfinished task of national libera- block of African unity. Nkrumah imperialism exists, no doubt, the tion from imperialism and take us opposed it. He called it Balkanisa- national question remains. But can beyond, to the emancipation of the tion on a large scale (see Nyerere’s we continue privileging the nation working people of Africa from the conversation with Bill Sutherland, over class even in the context of hegemony of capitalism. In doing in Sutherland and Meyer 2000: 84). anti-imperialist struggles? Is it not so, we would of course borrow History has proved Nkrumah right time to subordinate the national from the intellectual and cultural and Nyerere wrong. question to the social question? resources of humankind as well as the experiences of the struggles of Second, hitherto, Pan-Africanist Third, therefore, in re-imagining the people of the continent. In con- anti-imperialism has been racial or Pan-Africanism, accent should structing a ‘new Pan-Africanism’, national, and not about class. Even shift to class and class struggle, which would go beyond colour in intellectual discourses on Pan-Af- and the unfinished tasks of national and national lines, we need fun- ricanism, class is largely absent. Pan- liberation should be clearly and damental paradigmatic shifts. The Africanism has been much more an audaciously defined as anti-impe- African intellectual community is ideology of national liberation than rialist in the context of and as part deeply involved in these debates social emancipation. Nkrumah be- of the class struggles of the work- and I need not go into details. Suf- gan to talk about Class Struggle ing people (see Shivji 2017 for the fice it to say that the insurrection in Africa (1972) only after he was concept of working people). The of Pan-Africanist ideas has begun, overthrown and exiled in Guinea. biggest active component of the hesitatingly but definitely. Even then his analysis was rather working people in the concrete schematic. It is understandable that CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 9 conditions of Africa is women— the unfinished tasks of national 3. Here I am slightly modifying whether as peasants in rural areas liberation and move forward to Jha’s thesis. or as construction workers, market the tasks of social emancipation. 4. ‘Apparent’ because in different women and food vendors in urban Throughout the history of human- circumstances (for example, when areas. Working women suffer the kind, masses have been moved applying the rule that a spouse is double burden of oppression and by the grand narrative of liberty, not a compellable witness against exploitation, capitalist and patri- freedom, justice and emancipa- a fellow spouse) ‘native’ wives archal. They subsidise capital both tion to bring about change—some- wedded under ‘native’ law were as producers of commodities and times revolutionary, at other times, not recognised by colonial courts reproducers of their families. Thus, not so much. Humanity stands at as wives, while for the purposes the struggle of the working people a crossroads. It is crying out for of tax anyone who appeared to be a ‘wife’ was so recognised. against capital is intertwined with fundamental change. We need an the struggle against patriarchy. alternative utopia to live by and Bibliography fight for if we are not to be consu- Fourth, hitherto, Pan-Africanist ide- med by the death and destruction Amin, S., 1990, Maldevelopment: ology has been state-centric. The wrought by the barbaric system of Anatomy of a Global Failure, nation-state has been at the centre of the last five centuries. The worst London, UK: Zed Books. Pan-African political and intellectual of that barbarism has been felt and Badat, S., 2009, Black Man: You Are discourses and imagination. What is continues to be endured in Africa. On Your Own, Braamfontein: more, it is the state that is seen as the In reconstructing Pan-Africanism, Steve Biko Foundation. agency of Pan-Africanism. Here we Africa is calling all ‘at the ren- Bankie, B. F. and Mchombu, K., eds, need a paradigmatic shift from the dezvous of victory ...’. With Aimé 2008, Pan-Africanism/African state to the working people, both as Césaire we can all sing: Nationalism: Strengthening the the carriers of the Pan-African ideol- Unity of Africa and its Diaspora, ogy as well as its implementers. Af- (and) no race possesses the mo- Trenton, NJ: Press. rican intellectuals must deliberately nopoly of beauty, of intelligence, Bernal, M., 1987, Black Athena: The and consciously effect such a shift. of force, and there is a place for Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Ci- all at the rendez-vous of victory vilisation, London, UK: Free As- Finally, in the course of re-imag- ... (Césaire 1955) sociation Books. ining Pan-Africanism we should Notes Cabral, A., 1969, The Weapon of Theo- reconstruct it as an ideology of the ry, in Cabral, Revolution in Guin- working people, as an ideology 1. This is a very slightly revised ea: African People’s Struggle, of social emancipation and, there- version of my keynote address London, UK: Stage I, pp. 73–90. fore, inextricably embedded in the delivered to the 4th European Césaire, A., [1955] 1972, Discourse struggles of the working people. Conference on African Studies, on Colonialism, Pinkham, J. This is the task that is before public Uppsala, 15-18 June 2011. An ear- trans., New York and London, intellectuals of Africa and organic lier version of the paper appeared UK: Monthly Review Press. intellectuals of the African work- in Pambazuka News https://www. Cocker, M., 1999, Rivers of Blood, ing people. pambazuka.org/pan-africanism/ Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Con- struggle-convert-nationalism-pan- flict with Tribal Peoples, London, Conclusion africanism I have added a couple UK: Random House. of new paragraphs just before the Davidson, B., 1961, The Black Moth- I have given the story of Pan-Afri- conclusion. The arguments made er: The Years of the African Slave canism as a grand narrative of na- then, in my view, still hold. Since Trade, New York: Little Brown. tionalism and national liberation. I this was never published or publi- have shown its internal contradic- cised by the European organisers Fanon, F., 1967, The Wretched of the Earth, London, UK: Penguin Books. tions and movements. I have tried of the conference, I am having it to locate my narrative in the trajec- published in this CODESRIA Bul- Geiss, I., 1974, The Pan-African Move- tory of capitalist accumulation and letin for the benefit of the new gen- ment, London, UK: Methuen. eration of African intelligentsia. imperialist domination, without, Grimshaw, A., ed., 1992, The C. L. R. hopefully, making it mechanist 2. The sub- ­‐ title of Niall Ferguson’s James Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. and deductive. And I have called book, Civilization (2011). The book Harvey, D., 2003, The New Imperialism, for a reconstruction of a new Pan- is an excellent example of how a Oxford: Oxford University Press. right-wing Western historian tells Africanist grand narrative to face the story of the ‘west and the rest’. CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 18, June 2021 Page 10

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