THE 8th Pan African Congress (PAC) held in Johannesburg in January last year, was most significant as the first Congress initiated by non-governmental actors since the landmark 1945 Manchester 5th PAC.
Though it received little publicity, it was the first congress to attract delegates from every community in the global African diaspora,including representation from South American countries and India.
Not long after the Cape Town event, however, the head of the Ugandan government intelligence services, Major-General Kahinda Otafiire, was in Ghana to get the Mahama government host another “8th PAC”. That was postponed because of the Ebola epidemic, according to the Ghanaian agents of the Uganda initiative. Major-General Otafiire had masterminded the earlier 1994 7th PAC in Kampala. Possibly, he and his government must have considered as proprietary the right of states to organise PACs, thus the refusal to recognise the 8th PAC initiated by civil society actors without resort to any government’s blessing or backing.
Who should lead the movement for global African unity, the African states or citizens (civil society)? The record shows that initiatives by African governments, starting with the 1958 All African Peoples’ Conference in Accra, led successfully to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its later brand the African Union. But unity of the African people is a completely different aspiration. The author convincingly shows that unless one confuses the O/AU with the unity of the African people – wherever they may be – then the African states have proven beyond any doubt that they cannot, and do not have any interest to lead the African people to unity.
What kind of unity must Pan Africanism pursue? This is one of the fundamental questions this book confronts. Prah sums up cogently the meanings and implications of the “Two contending and contrastive notions of unity [that] are conceptually on offer today.” The first is the “Continentalist” view which proposes “the geographical unity of Africa as the basis of the project.” This is flawed and will lead nowhere, according to Prah. The fundamental problem of this argument, Prah states, is that this approach fails to recognise that Arabs do not identify and consider themselves as Africans. More importantly, “the Arab North of the continent has another aspiration, a Pan Arab idea, … (the unity of the Arab nation/homeland ) whose current expression is the League of Arab States (Arab League).” In addition, “The continentalist approach implicationally excludes the African diaspora.”
The 8TH PAC rejected “continentalism” and affirmed the other approach, the formula that may be defined as the true African perspective, “which is historically and culturally more meaningful”. This approach “views the task not primarily as the unity of the African continent, but rather as the unity of African people; Africans as historically and culturally derived and related people who regard themselves as Africans. If Africans unite, most of the continent will unite, but we must democratically co-exist with the various non-African minorities who live with us as citizens.”
Some of the critical issues the book raises quite forcefully as conditions for unity and development include, for example, promoting a cultural movement that “will enable us to shed the inferiority syndromes which stifle African progress.” For Prah, who has been working to promote the development of African languages in the past four or so decades, “The development of African languages must stand at the heart of the cultural movement. If we develop our languages, we will develop our people. The converse is equally true; if we do not develop our languages, we shall eventually commit ethnocide; we shall die off culturally as a people; we shall become other people. … If we do not want to ultimately disappear into history, we must cultivate our languages; make them literate languages of science and technology.”
Beyond clarifying the African nationalist perspective on unity, the real importance of this book lies in its enormous educational value. Its size (only 116 pages) masks its true worth. It is the most comprehensive overview or survey of the history, ideas, politics, debates, tactical and strategic differences and developments in and of the Pan Africanist movement I know of. It brings together the contributions of all the important thinkers, actors and movers of the movement from across the entire African world and over the centuries. And as a brilliant piece of scholarly work, the book provides an encyclopedia of references for any reader interested in further research and study.
For students and young people eager to know about Pan Africanism beyond slogans and myths, this is the most reliable starting point. For the citizen, or the politician, who wants to deepen their understanding of a movement and ideas that will continue to inspire Africans committed to the continent’s genuine independence, freedom and progress, this book is a must read. It deserves to be translated into other languages accessible to Africans.
