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

AFRICAN UNION

UNION AFRICAINE

UNIO AFRICANA

Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA P. O. Box 3243 Telephone: 517 700 Fax: 517844

1

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,

2incorrect. 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 African-Americans, 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, African-Americans provided the main driving power in the movement. Pan-Africanism 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

3particularly 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: Pan-Africanism 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

4Congress 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

1 Du Bois in The Crisis (May 1924), Garvey in The Negro World (May 10, 1924) quoted by Tony Martin, 1986, p. 273.

5the 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 Pan-Africanist 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 Afro-American 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 Pan-Africanism. 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.

7Africans 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);

8August (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 (1840-1882).

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.

9

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 (1868-1915, 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.

10In 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 so-called 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 (1887-1936). 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

4 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).

11Zoumnou, 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 ex-serviceman 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)

12came 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,

5 See in particular Elisabetta Maino The Identity Kaleidoscopy. Historical Anthropology of So Tom and Principe (Le Kalidoscope indentitaire. Anthropologie historique de So Tom Principe).

13came 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 (1910-1911) 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

14remained 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 Pan-Africanism, 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 anti-communist 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

6 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.

15abiding 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

16people, 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).

19be 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 anti-colonialists: 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 neo-colonialism 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

20Pan-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 Pan-Africanism 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.

21and 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

22the 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 sub-Saharan 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 re-emerge 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

25Kaunda, 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-

26interest 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, 1959-1960), the declaration of the