Pan Africanism Essay

Pan-africanism has a dual character it is at the same time (i) an internationalist semipolitical purport and (ii) a socio-political world-view, a philosophical and ethnical umbrella concept, which seeks to correct the historical and cultural show uprage that Europe has perpetrated on the continent during the past several centuries.An international movementAs an international movement, the term denotes the forward-looking elements in Africa that have as their common remainder the unity of either Africans and the elimination of colonialism and white supremacy from the continent.The First Pan-African Congress was held in London in 1900, and was followed by others in Paris in 1919, in London and Brussels (1921), London and Lisbon (1923), and in New York City in 1927. These conventions were organized chiefly by W. E. B. Du Bois1 and att dismissed by the North American and West Indian black intelligentsia. These, however, did not propose immediate African independence, rather, they f avored gradual self-rule and interracialism.In 1944, several African organizations in London joined to form the Pan-African Federation, which for the first time demanded African autonomy and independence. The Sixth Pan-African Congress was convened in Manchester, England, in 1945, to which came future political leaders of Africa such as Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah of the G grey-headed Coast, S. L. Akintola of Nigeria, and Wallace Johnson of Sierra Leone. At the Manchester congress, Nkrumah founded the West African National Secretariat to promote a so-called United States of Africa.Pan-africanism can alike be considered as an intergovernmental movement which was launched in 1958 with the First Conference of independent African States in Accra, Ghana. Ghana and Liberia were the only sub-Saharan countries represented the rest were Arab and Muslim.Thereafter, as independence was achieved by more African states, other interpretations of Pan-Africanism emerged, including the trade union of African States (1960), the African States of the Casablanca Charter (1961), the African and Malagasy Union (1961), the organization of Inter-African and Malagasy States (1962), and the African-Malagasy-Mauritius Common Organization (1964).In 1963 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was founded to promote unity and cooperation among all African states and to bring an end to colonialism and by 1995, it had 53 appendages. The OAU struggled with border disputes, aggression or subversion against one member by another, separatist movements, and the collapse of order in member states.One of its longest commitments and greatest victories was the end of apartheid and the establishment of majority rule in South Africa. Efforts to promote even greater African economic, social, and political integration led to the establishment in 2001 of the African Union (AU), a successor organization to the OAU sculpted on the European Union. The AU fully superseded the OAU in 2002, aft er a transitional period.A socio-political world-viewPan-Africanism is also a sociopolitical world-view, which seeks to unify and uplift both native Africans and those of the African Diaspora, as part of a spherical African community.As originally conceived by Henry Sylvester Williams of Trinidad, pan-Africanism referred to the unity of all continental inkiness African cultures and countries. The concept soon expanded, however, to include all disconsolate African-descended people worldwide, who had been dispersed to the United States of America, the Caribbean, Latin America and even parts of the Middle East and South Asia through the trans-Atlantic and Islamic/East African slave trades and, later, immigration.More recently, the term has expanded to encompass the Dravidian Blacks of India, including the Tamil, Siddi, Kamil, Kanikar and others the Andamanese Island Negritos and the Black aboriginal populations of Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia. Pan-Africanism as a movement actu ally began in the West Indies, not Africa. Williams coined the term at the 1900 Pan-African Congress. To date, the Afro-Jamaican Marcus Garvey2 has led the largest pan-African movement in world history with his UNIA-ACL organization that he founded in Kingston, Jamaica in 1912, and Garveyism quickly spread in the United States when he moved his headquarters to Harlem in 1914.Pan-Africanism in essence means the unity of all Black African descended people worldwide irrespective of ethnicity/culture or nationality. The Rastafarian movement of Jamaica grew out of pan-Africanism, when Marcus Garvey declared look to Africa for the crowning of a Black king the Rastas looked to Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. (Ironically, Garvey criticized Selassie on many issues). overly a branch of the pan-African movement is the Afro-centric movement, of whom Cheikh Anta Diop and his idealogical son Molefi Kete Asante are the champions. This movement centers on reexaming African history from a pro-African perspective as opposed to the a pro-European one, a return to traditional African concepts and culture and frequently espouses the view that Egypt and round other civilizations were and should be acknowledged as having Black African origin. Also associated with pan-Africanism is Black Nationalism.During apartheid in South Africa there was a Pan Africanist Congress that dealt with the oppression of Black South Africans chthonian White apartheid rule. Other pan-Africanist organizations include Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association-African CommunitiesPan-Africanism is often criticized for overlooking the cultural and ethnic differences as well as different socio-political circumstances.Role of Pan-africanism in the modern history of AfricaThe eccentric that pan African movement has played in minimizing inter-governmental conflicts and civil war- like situations in some African countries has been very significant. The restriction of the page limit for the essay does not pe rmit me to go into the expatiate of these conflicts. However, the pivotal role that the movement played in the proposals to reform the United Nations Organization deserves more than a cursory mention.The campaign for the proposed reforms of the United Nations protection Council (UNSC), while producing fireworks around the world, has also opened up old historical wounds and heightened regional rivalries in Africa.The hottest rivalries have been in Asia, particularly between India and Pakistan, and between Japan, South Korea and China, just Africa has also exhibited some kind of divisions along regional and language lines as countries scramble for permanent seating room in the Security Council.African countries jockeying for the permanent seats have been South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Libya. To that list, Senegal has been the latest addition, The African Union (AU) is flummoxed as to which of its member states to endorse, and has yet to establish the criteria to be used f or selecting African countries to the reformed Security Council. The innovation of Senegal into the race has only increased the dilemma, and is an indication of the AUs indecision. In creating this leadership vacuum, the AU is exit the selection of who will represent Africa on the expanded UN Security Council to be determined by immaterial busybodies and regional power struggles.A working group that was appointed in January 2005 during the Abuja Summit of the African Union to make recommendations on the proposed UN reforms presented its report to the Foreign Ministers on March 7, 2005 in Addis Ababa, but was deafeningly smooth on the selection criteria for Security Council permanent seats.What the AU stands to gain from a reformed Security Council tally to the Ezulwini Consensus, which was adopted by the AU Foreign Ministers as Africas common position on UN reform, Africas goal is to be fully represented in all the decision-making organs of the UN, particularly in the Security C ouncil, which is the principal decision-making organ of the UN in matters relating to international peace and security.Many observers feel that the UNSC is now more important than ever to Africa, particularly concerning matters of intervention in the conflicts occurring within the region. A consensus as to the criterion of UNSC membership is the least(prenominal) expected of the African States.ReferencesKadiatu Kann, African Identities Race, Nation and Culture in Ethnography, Pan-Africanism and Black Literatures, ROUTLEDGE, LONDON, 1998.Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Fathers House Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, Oxford University Press, 1992