Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a term which can have two separate, but related meanings.
Pan-Africanism is a movement of solidarity among the nations of Africa, most particularly Black Africa. The Pan-Africanist perspective is one of common cause with citizens of other African nations, as a result of shared history and shared struggle against a number of threats and challenges, among them: racism, white supremacy, slavery, colonialist exploitation, neocolonialism, and imperialism. Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) is considered the father of the modern Pan African movement.
Pan-Africanism is also an international movement that has as its goal the unity of Africans and the elimination of colonialism and white supremacy. The term Pan Africanism commonly is used to mean solidarity among indigenous, or black Africans. However, the concept has evolved so that it now encompasses a set of ideas that have emerged over time— from Africa's first contact with Arabs and Europeans and the slave trade; from various slave insurrectionn and abolitionist movements and struggles to end colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism; from the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-apartheid movement and liberation struggles in Southern Africa; and from Afrocentrist history and thought.
In another sense, pan-Africanism is the notion that all black persons are an "African people," with shared or related cultural traditions and a common history of struggle against many of the same threats and challenges mentioned above. According to pan-Africanism, all blacks, even if they are several generations removed from African soil, as in the case of descendants of African slaves in the Americas, are part of the African Diaspora. As such, it is important that African people work together for one another's empowerment, self-determination and freedom from oppression. This sense of group identity and solidarity of purpose has become a tenet of most black nationalist movements.
Additionally, the concept of who comprises the "African diaspora," sometimes called the "global African community," has changed over time to include so-called "Negroid", Veddoid and Australoid peoples the world over. These groups include black aboriginal populations in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
Today, Pan Africanism is a large part of modern culture, and pan african symbolism is used to express counter culture and resistance to oppression all around the world, in a diverse number of issues. For example the Fist of Glory, a popular symbol of the Black Power movement has been adopted in Eastern European by OTPOR.
See also: Pan-African colours
History
An organization with the formal name "Pan-African Congress" held a meeting in 1919, in Paris. Prior to that, the ideas of Pan-Africanism already circulated including at a conference of 1900 considered a prelude to later ones.
The most important leader of the early years was W.E.B. DuBois. Another was George Padmore.
As Africans gained independence from the colonialists, Pan-Africanists not only held meetings but started to head governments. Padmore served as a government official, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania were vital leaders who headed states.
Also in the 1960s, an organization arose specifically for the fight against apartheid in South Africa. The Pan-African Congress was responsible for much of the radicalization of the fight against apartheid, because prior to it pacifist ideas held greater sway. The Pan-Africanist Congress was one of two U.N. recognized organizations connected to South Africa (sometimes referred to as "Azania") while the white-minority regime held power.
External links
- [1]All African People's Revolutionary Party and more Pan Africanist links
- [2]Archives of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania
- [3]Early Pan African documents and some writings of George Padmore