Simply put Pan-Afrikanism is both an ideology and a political liberating movement that seeks in a collaborative working way to unify and uplift Afrikans worldwide through integrative political alliance among Afrikan nations.
In essence it is about Afrika, the land, its culture and its people including its descendants that were horrifically kidnapped during the Transatlantic Slave Trade sponsored by Zionists (Jews), the Arabs and the Europeans alongside their counterparts which included the Christian Church and the (pseudo) scientific community.
Pan-Afrikanism emerged as the dominant liberating ideology for Afrika and its people primarily because critical thinking Afrikans were able to conceptualize a wider vision for Afrika based on instituting a framework that would provide the mechanisms for transforming the continent. They would with conviction control and administer the protocols and framework of this new revolutionary ideology.
In the spirit of Sankafa which translate, ‘go back and fetch it’, conscious Afrikans under Pan-Afrikanism were encouraged to interrogate the past in order to find out where, what and how things started to go wrong. Books, articles and artefacts alongside scientific and archaeological findings were widely distributed and shared.
Afrikans everywhere were beginning to interrogate previously held views of Afrika and Afrikans and to question themselves as to who they were.
It is within this context of self-interrogation and historical examination (that our ancestors have used for thousands of years), that Afrikans began to address the existing and historical ills that beset us as a people and started seeking ways to correct the misinformation and views they held about themselves, and others held about them.
Pan-Afrikanism raised the consciousness of the Afrikan family everywhere to confront the past and move positivity forward, correctly and divinely, to redesign the Afrika that should have been and the one that Afrikans collectively deserve as a people.
In many ways Pan-Afrikanism was both a revolutionary and an evolutionary ideology that not only sought to dismantle and deconstruct old, misguided and oppressive ideologues, but it also to change progressively with successive stages of a changing world reality.
There were initial difficulties among Afrikan leaders to formulating a clear ideological concept that would provide the basis for a continent prototype that would promote unity and development for and within member states. Such differences led to the formation of what was known as the Organisation of Afrikan Union or OAU with individual states retaining their state sovereignty. Early Pan-Afrikanists had envisioned an Afrika where there was collective empowerment of the Afrikan peoples in a political and cultural unity that would enable Afrika as a whole to collectively control its destiny.
In other words political, cultural and economic unity was crucial to the liberation and progress of a unified Afrika. This was consistent with the premise of the Pan-Afrikanists that stated, thus, “We the people of Afrikan descent throughout the globe constitute a common cultural and political community by virtue of our origin in Afrika and common racial, social and economic oppression. Political, economic and cultural unity is essential among all Afrikans, to bring about effective action for the liberation and progress of the Afrikan peoples and nations” (Robert Chrismans, 1973).
Two positions were reflected in the differences among member states which the OAU attempted to address within the context of two appeals. The first is the appeal to all Afrikan descendants in the Diaspora, and the second is the promotion of unification of Afrikan peoples on the continent of Afrika. There was a justification for these two positions.(To be continued)…