PAN AFRICANISM OR RECOLONISATION
July 2000, it was exactly 100 years since the first ever Pan African Conference was held, at the Westminster Central Hall, in the city of London, United Kingdom. A West Indian lawyer, from Trinidad, Henry Sylvester William convened the conference. About 30 people, mostly West Indians of African origin, a few African Americans and even fewer Africans directly from the African continent were present at the meeting. Nevertheless, what they did not have in numbers they made for in high ideals and passionate advocacy for an idea that sounded so far fetched and utopian then: African Unity. As they say 'great ideas have very humble beginnings'.
What Williams and his colleagues started became a powerful mobilising ideology less than four decades later, in 1945 when, the fifth Pan African Congress was held again in England but this time in Manchester. In between 1900 and 1945 a series of four other Congresses, convened and presided over by the African-American Scholar and political activist, Dr W.E.B. Du Bois (regarded as father of modern Pan Africanism) were held.
The abiding ideas of dignity of the African that inspired Williams inspired Du Bois in all his efforts. The 5th Congress is better remembered because unlike previous Congresses dominated by Africans in the Diaspora Manchester had representations of Africans from the continent: students, war veterans, migrants and trade unionists. In previous Congresses appeals were made to colonising powers and liberal opinion in the West to accept and treat Africans as equals, to consider self-government for African countries and apply the same standard of dignity and human rights to Africans as bestowed on Europeans.
By 1945 the strategy and focus had changed. No more pious appeals but a militant demand for Africa to be governed by Africans: Freedom by whatever means possible. The major document of the Congress, Declaration to the Colonial and subject peoples of the World' authored Kwame Nkrumah (founding President of Ghana, voted African of the Millennium by BBC world Service listeners) asserted the right to self determination by declaring: 'We believe in the rights of all peoples to govern themselves. WE affirm the rights of all colonial peoples to control their own destiny. All colonies must be free from foreign imperialist control, whether political or economic. The peoples of the colonies must have the right to elect their own government, a government without restrictions from a foreign power. We say to the peoples of the colonies that they must strive for these ends by all means at their disposal'. It concluded by stating that ' … there is only one road to effective action-the organisation of the masses'. Organised they did. Within a decade of this declaration the colonial map of Africa and the world began to shrink as the anti colonial struggles in Asia and Africa gathered momentum and colonial powers retreated in different directions. First India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in Asia and Ghana blazed the trail in Africa by gaining its independence in 1956. After that many of the countries became independent in the 1960s with the exemption of racist settler regimes in Southern Africa and former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique which had to wage armed struggles before gaining political independence.
What happened to the great hopes about African Unity after the initial success of the nationalist movements? The decade of the 1960s was the high point of African desire for freedom and equality with other peoples of the world. Soon after independence educational opportunities opened up, infrastructures improved and in the first decade most of the countries witnessed rapid growth in their economies. But the development was not sustainable in the long run. The powerful alliance of the elite and the masses that brought UHURU (freedom) collapsed as the new elite became self-serving allied to metropolitan interests of former colonial powers. As it distanced itself from the people it resorted to naked oppression and exploitation to retain power. Politics of exclusion became the order of the day as the elite to capture and retain power exploited religious and regional differences. The interests of the masses became secondary to the desires of the newly bourgeoisified African elite. One party dictatorship, life presidency and military coups became the order of the day.
Two external reasons also contributed greatly to the collapse of the dreams. One, is the cold war between the West led by the USA in NATO and the East led by the USSR and the WARSAW pact countries. Africa again lost its own self-determination as countries and governments became allies of either powers not because of what they did or did not do for their peoples but their allegiance to extra African powers. Objectionable regimes like that of Mobutu in former Zaire, KANU in Kenya, Bokassa in Central Africa, Idi Amin in Uganda became 'moderate pro western ' allies while killer regimes like Mengistu Haile Meriam in Ethiopia or Late Siad Barre in Somalia were 'socialist' allies of Moscow. Some of them like Barre even changed sides by whims. The other external factor concerns the nature of the economy inherited by the postcolonial regimes. The economy was built by colonial powers to serve colonial interests. Often they were based on the production of primary raw materials for the colonial countries. It was an economy that encouraged the production of what the countries did not consume and the consumption of what they did not produce. And the industrialised countries determined the prices of both. Worsening terms of International Trade in commodities and a rising cost of imported consumables meant that most of the countries were caught in balance of payment crises. They used soft loans from the West and East to shore up the difference. By the 1970s Africa entered the decade economists refer to as 'the lost decade' during which the foundations for the unpayable debt burden of today was laid. Corruption, graft and authoritarianism became the dominant character of the state.
The phenomenon of neocolonialism (i.e. Political independence without economic independence) is what this system is called. Western multi national corporations dominated the resources and exploited them with the active collaboration of Africa's political and military elite and their cronies.
With the cold war thawing in the late 80s Africa was not in any position to reap the so-called peace dividend expected from the end of the war. The English say: ' When two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers'. The opposite is also true: 'if two elephants play or make love the grass still suffers'. That is why recolonisation threatens Africa today. There are two basic aspects to this process. One, the state and key economic and financial decisions are firmly controlled by the IMF/WB while the civil society are being reconstituted by rich and powerful Western NGOs who have become the major source of development Aid and Humanitarian assistance to Africa. As if this is not bad enough it has now become fashionable to hear Western journalists, humanitarian 'experts' or even so called 'frank' Africans and Africanists advocating a return to some kind of colonialism (probably under UN mandate) as a remedy for Africa. The arrogant ignorance exposed by this suggestion is the fact that colonialism never really left Africa. Like the deadly AIDS virus it merely mutated.
