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Pan-Africanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Rupert Emerson
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Extract

The African scramble for independence has led to two major political trends which have at least the superficial look of being contradictory but which may still turn out to be complementary. One is the consolidation of states, and, it may be, of nations, within the frontiers traced on the map of Africa with an imperial flourish by the colonial powers. The other is the unceasing agitation and conferring to secure some sort of African unity which would bring together within a common framework either all the African peoples or such more limited groupings of them as are now prepared to join forces for general or particular purposes. The unanswered, and still unanswerable, question is whether the states which have been emerging in such quantities, with more still to come—29 African Members of the UN at the end of 1961 as against five in 1955—will serve as the building blocks for a greater African union or whether they will jealously guard the separate identity which they have now achieved.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Spring 1962 , pp. 275 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1962

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References

1 The Party (Accra), 10 1961 (No. 14), p. 13Google Scholar. When it was reported that Sylvanus Olympio, then Prime Minister of Togoland, was opposed to the integration of his country with Ghana, the Ghanaian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the following statement: “The arbitrary carving out of the African Continent by the imperialist powers during the ‘scramble for Africa’ in the 19th century resulted in an unnatural and unsatisfactory situation. People of the same ethnic group, indeed sometimes members of the same family, came to be ruled by different powers and were compelled to regard their brothers across the border as foreigners. The Ewes along the Ghana/Togoland border are not the only such victims. The Sanwi, Aowin and Nzema peoples on the Western borders of Ghana are in a similar plight.

“The Prime Minister's suggestion is therefore no bid for expansionism. It represents the natural urge of these peoples to achieve the basic ethnic regrouping of the communities which had been violated by the plans of the imperialist powers for domination and exploitation.” Ghana Today (London), 11 25, 1959Google Scholar.

2 Olympio, Sylvanus E., “African Problems and the Cold War,” Foreign Affairs, 10 1961 (Vol. 40, No. 1), p. 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Cited by Milcent, E., “Forces et idees-forces en Afrique Occidentale,” Afrique Documents, 05 1960 (No. 51), p. 63Google Scholar.

4 Azikiwe, Nnamdi, “The Future of Pan-Africanism,” a speech made in London on 08 12, 1961, published by the Nigerian High Commission, LondonGoogle Scholar.

5 The article by Erasmus H. Kloman, Jr., which appears elsewhere in this issue, gives an account of many of the more recent African groupings.

6 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, West Africa, 11 4, 1961, p. 1211Google Scholar.

7 d'Arboussier, Gabriel, “La coopération des Etats africains et les problèmes internationaux,” Afrique Documents, Mars-Avril 1961 (No. 56), p. 68Google Scholar.

8 ;The multiplicity of the groupings which can appear was well illustrated by the speech made by President Youlou in welcoming the heads of state of former French Equatorial Africa to a conference in Brazzaville in November i960. Asserting that this was the hour of communities, he ended with a vivefor each of the four republics, the Equatorial Community, the African Community, and the Community of States d'cxpression française.No grouping having an African language as its base has yet been seriously proposed.

9 “As a movement which was conceived in America and which blossomed in West Africa, pan-Africanism remains essentially an English-speaking movement, a delayed boomerang from the era of slavery as practiced on the West African coast two centuries ago. It is significant that, linguistically and ethnically, most of the American Negroes in North America came from the coastal areas on the Gulf of Guinea, and only a few from the interior areas of Senegal and Niger.” Henry, Paul-Marc, “Pan-Africanism: A Dream Come True,” Foreign Affairs, 04 1959, p. 445Google Scholar. See also Hodgkin, T. and Schachter, R., “French-speaking West Africa in Transition,” International Conciliation, 05 1960, p. 432Google Scholar; Decraene, Philippe, Le Panafricanisme, Paris, 1959Google Scholar.

10 Wallerstein, Immanuel, Africa: The Politics of Independence, New York, Vintage Books, 1961, p. 111Google Scholar.

11 John Marcum distinguishes between the Casablanca and the Monrovia groupings on the basis of their representing monolithic and pluralist unity respectively. “How Wide is the Gap between Casablanca and Monrovia?” Africa Report, 01 1962 (Vol. 7, No. 1). This article contains (p. 4)Google Scholar a useful table showing the membership of African countries in the different groupings.

12 For Nkrumah, , see The New York Times, 01 14, 1960Google Scholar. For Houphouet-Boigny, , see “Les Chances de l'Afrique,” Revue Politique et Parlementaire, Juillet 1961, p. 3–11Google Scholar. Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1959 affirmed his confidence in the creation of the United States of Africa, but warned that:

It would be capital folly to assume that hard-bargaining politicians who passed through the ordeal of victimization and the crucible of persecution to win their independence will easily surrender their newly-won power in the interest of a political leviadian which is populated by people who are alien to one another in their social and economic relations. It has not been possible in Europe or America, and unless Africa can show herself different from other continents, the verdict of history on this score will remain unchallenged and unaltered.

Zik, A Selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Cambridge, University Press, 1961, p. 72Google Scholar.

13 Keita, Modibo, “The Foreign Policy of Mali,” International Affairs, 10 1961, p. 435–6Google Scholar.

14 World Assembly of Youth Forum, No. 40, 09 1961, p. 14Google Scholar. Most of the leaders would presumably also agree with Nyerere's further contention that only African unity can save the continent from the rival imperialisms of capitalism and communism.