RaceandHistory.com - Historical Record of 7th Pan African Congress

Of course, we sold you into slavery. The slave merchants did not come badgering into our huts to drag you screaming blue murder to their boats. They did not have to chase and hunt you down our jungle paths like animals. They found willing accomplices amongst us and in exchange for cheap ridiculous items like a mirror, tobacco, cutlass, gun or a drink, we did their dirty jobs for them.

But if you expect us to feel guilty about our negative role in slavery, you are not being realistic because Africans, like the other species of the human race, have their own greedy ones too. In relative terms though, only a very small minority of Africans benefited commercially from your enslavement considering the quantities of mirrors etc they acquired, and they were loathed by their captive majority. Names of such African traitors like the notorious Kosoko of Lagos still invoke hate today in Africans when mentioned.

Collectively, Africans did not understand what slavery was really all about. Even including the traitors, we had no idea we would never see you again or how far the ocean stretched to keep you apart from us. Parents hoped that their children being kidnapped into slavery would be treated no worse than we treat our houseboys today. Houseboys or girls in Africa are slaves in a sense but slavery to an African is like an adoption. Africa is almost a free slavery system, more akin to the system the Greeks and Romans adopted from us. A parent who cannot cope with bringing up a child may hand over the child to another parent in a better position to give the child a good home. A parent may give a child to a Chief because usually, Chiefs are well placed to provide food and shelter through the communal tax systems. The slave in an African home often has the rights of the adopted child.

You have kept your historical perspective on slavery intact whereas, in Nigeria for instance, the only reminder of it is a solitary slave chain preserved as a tourist attraction in a run-down hut in Badagry, a coastal suburb of Lagos. Ghana has more terrifying evidence in their fantastic Castles, but Africans on the continent hardly visit or relate to the evidence. One of the Castles in Ghana has been given over to the African Descendants association. They have a guest book you sign, and looking through, you see very personal and emotional comments by black visitors from abroad to the Castle. For you in the diaspora, the reaction when faced with damning evidence is painful. It is painful to remember that you were sold here like cattles but for us Africans on the continent, our memory of slavery is completely blank.

We sold you into slavery alright but Africa as a whole was not just waiting to be dismembered without a fight. Names of our warrior nationalists, mostly Kings and Queens abound: Queen Nzingha of Angola, King Nana Kwamena Ansa of Ghana, Nehenda of Zimbabwe, Anowa of Ghana, Ashanti King Prempeh, the Jaja of Opobo, Queen Idah of Benin City, Oba Overamwen Nogbaisi of Benin City, Madam Tinubu of Lagos, Queen Amina of Zaria, Behanzin Hossu Bo Willi of Dahomey, Samory Toure of Mali, Moremi of Ile-Ife, Mohammed Ahmed the mahdi of Sudan, Nefertiti of Nubia, Mohammed Ben Abdulla Hassen the Mad Mullah of Somaliland, Chaka the Zulu and many others, gave good account of themselves in our honour. Africans had to be beaten and dragged on board slave ships.

On slave ships, many Africans starved themselves to death, cut their own throats with their fingernails, threw themselves overboard to escape torture and slavery and quite a number of them succeeded in over powering their captors and taking over their slave ships as was the case with AMISTAD or Joseph Cinque, the son of a Mendi King of Sierra Leone.

On plantations, Africans continued their acts of rebellion through sabotage at work or by running away into hardly accessible swamps, forests and mountains to continue the fight for their freedom. Africans cursed their tormentors in work songs, communicated with each other, even under severe restrictions, with body language and signs, and transformed their religious inductrination to their advantage by replacing, for instance, "Heaven" with "Africa" in Christian songs about the joys of Heaven. Flying away home to Zion and crossing the River Jordan was translated by slaves to mean the joyful return home to Africa through the Atlantic. Death was seen as a welcome means of returning to Africa and with that, African slaves conquered the fear of torture and death.

Amongst the slaves, one of our wicked traits soon began to show. Slaves spied on other slaves to win a lousy cup of porridge. They betrayed confidence to gain their masters small favours but our finer nature prevailed and produced many nationalists and inspirers of freedom in the new world such as: Blyden, Frederick Douglas, Nat Turner, Sam Sharpe, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vasey, Paul Cuffee, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Martin R. Delany and numerous others.

Then came August 1791, when the slaves of the Island of San Domingo revolted under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Boukman, Dessalines, and Henry Christophe. The struggle lasted for twelve years, during which time, they defeated in turn, the local whites and soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion force, a British expedition of some 60,000 men, and a French expedition of similar size under Bonaparte's brother-in-law. The defeat of Bonaparte's expedition in 1803 gave us Haiti, our first independent anti-slavery state.

The revolt is the most successful slave revolt in history and to quote C.L.R. James in black Jacobins: "The odds it had to over-come is evidence of the magnitude of the interests involved. The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement."

Haiti's revolution inspired other liberation wars and in particular the growth of what Prof. John Henrik Clarke described as "intellectual Pan-Africanism," expressed immediately then through the building of cultural and religious ties across state barriers.

To quote John Henrik Clarke in Pan-Africanism, a brief history of an idea, published in Third World First Journal, Lagos, Nigeria: " In 1804, Jacques Dessalines, the Governor-General of Haiti, issued an appeal for American Blacks to settle in his Island. In 1819, Henri Christophe, King of Haiti, negotiated for the settlement of 200,000 Black Americans who ultimately settled in Liberia. Denmark Vasey sought the assitance of Haiti in his slave conspiracy of 1822. Jean-pierre Bayer, who later became President of Haiti, pushed for similar emigration and the Maryland Haitian Society was formed in 1821 by free Blacks to facilitate emigration."

In the continent itself, the military Pan-Africanists were reacting to the so called scramble for Africa, which in effect was the transformation of the early nineteenth century system of slavery into the system of colonialism - an extension of slavery. Two new European powers (Germany and Belgium) entered the scene, and with the old colonial powers (mainly England, France and Portugal), began to spread their control from the coastal holding stations to the hinter-land. There was much rivalry amongst the scramblers so, like a bunch of hungry demon butchers, they assembled around a table in Berlin in 1884, carving knives in hand, map of Africa as their prized beef, to chop away to their heart's content. Vandalising our economic resources beyond recognition to enrich their homelands. Ruining our mind and personality with their religion. Turning us into apes of their decadent culture.

Intellectual Pan-Africanism received a boost with its series of congresses from 1900. Europe grudgingly granted some of us 'flag independence' with deafening fanfare to distract our attention while they stayed quietly on in the guise of neo-colonialism. Now their cartels bestride our continent like giant Octopuses, crushing and absorbing all indigenous initiatives thrown in their paths.

The question now is, why has intellectual Pan-Africanism, to which Africa surrendered its militancy, not routed our tormentors in ninety years of organising congresses? Why are you still the underdog here and I their footmat back in Africa?

I am aware of the arguments for and against Henry Sylvester Williams as a major figure in the African consciousness movement and I think being able to call a Pan African Conference at the time ought to confer some honour on Mr. Williams. This is not to say, however, that the content of this conference should escape the critical judgement of history.

Mr. Williams' Pan African Conference was attended by thirty delegates mostly from the USA and the West Indies, Its aims were to act as a forum of protest against the aggresiveness of white colonialists; to bring people of African descent throughout the world into closer touch with one another; and to start a movement which would secure to all African races living in civilised countries, their full rights and would promote their business interests.

Our Sylvesters of the 1900s obviously did not have a great deal of respect for Africa if they had to describe us as uncivilized. In any case, they did not camouflage the fact that the conference was to promote their individual private business interests in our name.

Actually, the opening address of the conference was given by a white man, the Bishop of London at the time, who supported the needs of Africans: "To be educated into a sense of responsible self-government." Isn't that condescending?

The conference addressed a petition to Queen Victoria through the British government protesting against the treatment of Africans in South Africa and Rhodesia at the time. The petition, in a nutshell, could be interpreted in modern idiom as follows:

Dr. W.E.B Dubois attended that first conference and seems to have been greatly influenced by it. A great deal has been written and said about Dr. DuBois. That he was the brightest star ever to have graced our firmament of ideas or words to that effect. I am too inconsequential to even begin to challenge such a reputation in any way. So if you will pardon me, I will take nothing away from this intellectual colossus. But I have problems accepting that he served me any better than poor Henry Sylvester Williams did. I am talking about how DuBois relates to me as an individual. I know that Dubois wrote some thought provoking books in his life time and called four Pan African Congresses between 1919 and 1927 that set in motion the tradition that has brought me here to address you today on Pan Africanism, and I am grateful for this.

But Dubois himself never claimed to have been the indispensable factor in our chequered journey. After all, he admits in his essay: Four congresses, "that he, through his congresses, was not on our behalf, seeking control of our economic and social life nor our independence." So, we might be tempted to ask: what was this brilliant man seeking in our name then?

We know, for instance, that DuBois was half Black and never tired of reminding everyone who cared to listen to him about his aristocratic white half. Mind you, his was very much the era of the darker you are the further down the social ladder of progress you were confined. So, DuBois had no respect for Garvey, not because Garvey was dark hopefully.

Dubois' congresses dissociated from the patriotic Pan African posture of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of Marcus Garvey, opting instead, for the rather tame tactics of begging Europeans politely to be nice to their African servants. Garvey wanted African progress through self development and self efforts. DuBois insisted that co-operation with whites was vital to our struggle. In fact, the opening speech at DuBois' first Pan African Congress claimed that European governments were not the enemies of Africans, a sentiment that flavoured all his resolutions afterwards on our behalf.

But did ordinary Africans forget Garvey? May be a little story from my past can help provide a possible answer. It is a true story about my mother. I have never told anyone the story before and I hope my mother would forgive me for exposing her so far away from home. I don't know if you can guess my age but my mother is over seventy years old and she has never been inside the four walls of any school. It is not something to boost about but that is the position. She never had the opportunity to go to school. She is the picture of ancient African motherhood, the type white television thinks they are taunting us with. My mother does not watch white television and does not miss it.

One eveining after a busy weekend of reading publications on Dr. DuBois and Marcus Garvey, I felt like teasing my mother a little. I asked her on the spur of the moment, half expecting a rebuff, if she had ever heard of a man called Marcus Garvey. My mother, without appearing to have seriously thought about my question said in my native language, Bini; "Is that not our son who lived abroad?"

I was her only son who had lived abroad until that time so obviously she did not mean me. I proded her further and found that by calling Garvey son, my mother was not only appropriating Garvey, she was showing her pride in him as a dedicated African son.

I have still not been able to figure out how my illiterate mother who had never travelled more than twenty kilometres from our home base could relate to Garvey and not Dubois. I have not tried to influence her on the matter since either. I do not think she knows about my activities in the Pan African Movement yet. I am saving my shock for when I hope to ask her in about ten years time, what she knows about her real son.

I don't want you to go away thinking that I have no respect for Dr. Dubois. Of course, he was a great man, only that he never managed to win my illiterate mother over to his side like Garvey did and that is what has been bothering me really about intellectual Pan Africanism.

The congress, held in Manchester in 1945, coincided with the second conference of the World Federation of Trade Unions, thus enabling several trade union delegates from the African world to attend and broaden the narrow intellectual base of the Pan African Congress for the first time. It, of course, also helped to lock Pan Africanism more firmly into the Marxist-socialist politics of the unionists, thereby diverting us witlessly from our original goal of racial emancipation, to a formless, rhetorical and tedious sing-song about the working class uniting to over throw the nebulous bourgeois. The truth of the matter is that traditional African politics is not homogenous and there is no reason why the fortunes of a whole race of people should be condemned to the status of the working class for ever. A billion virile, determined and ambitious people scattered all over the economies of the world can not and must not be restricted from reaching even beyond the stars.

That fortunately is the kind of positive and forthright posture that informed the broad activities of the team of George Padmore, C.L.R James, Kwame Nkrumah and others at the fifth congress on the issue of our independence. They not only demanded immediate independence for all African countries, they threatened to use every means, including violence if necessary, to achieve their aims. Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe who was represented and many other potential African leaders left the congress determined to do battle with our colonisers. Out-break of mass anti-colonial struggle followed throughout Africa. Armed uprising in Kenya and Algeria, mass nationalist parties in Zaire, Ghana and Nigeria etc. This phase of the struggle led to Ghana's independence in March, 1957, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. Ghana's example electrified the African world resulting in scores of free African countries between 1960 and 1963.

Ghana's independence also provided intellectual Pan-Africanism with its first real foothold on the continent. Nkrumah consolidated this by convening the first Conference of Independent African States (CIAS), in furtherance of his Pan-Continental ideas, in Accra in April, 1958. The participants of this historic conference were Ghana, Ethiopia, Lihya, Liberia, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Republic. These were the then independent African states except South Africa which was actually invited but refused to come because the colonial powers were not also invited.

Other meetings followed until a broader conference of independent African states took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in June 1963, establishing for the continent, the OAU, a loose interstate arrangement.

The OAU, of course, did not fulfil the ambition of Kwame Nkrumah for a strong political union of all African states but it opened the Pan-African ideology institutionally to non-Blacks, some of them colonisers and oppressors racially marginalizing Africans in Northern Africa. This is how George Padmore defended the trend at the time: " In our struggle for national freedom, human dignity and social redemption, Pan-Africanism offers an ideological alternative to communism on the one side and tribalism on the other. It rejects both White racialism and Black chauvinism. It stands for racial co-existence on the basis of absolute equality and respect for human personality. "

Also, Nkrumah and Padmore needed to have been asked to explain how their Pan-Continental politics was going to solve the deteriorating problems of the African diaspora? 40% of the Black world do not live in Africa and are, as a result, ignored by the OAU.

The overall success of the 5th Pan African Congress blinded us to some of its not so sound pre-occupations. The 5th PAC set off many half-baked diversionary ideas which unfortunately led to the failure of the 6th Pan African Congress. The conveners of the 6th PAC did not reckon, for instance, with the selfish interest of the newly independent African governments of the time so:

And yet, the 6th PAC succeeded in filling a yearning vacuum and keeping the movement alive, at least, in academic circles, 29 years after the 5th congress. More papers than ever before, were submitted or read at the 6thPAC and a great deal more resolutions were left behind for scholars to pore over till eternity as to their motives etc. The 6th PAC piled considerably more library materials, and gathered more delegates and observers, some 600 of them at one count, than all congresses before it, put together. To the extent that the 6th PAC achieved these feats administratively, therefore, it deserves to be recognised as a gathering of some sort.

Ask any African in the streets of Europe and America about the 6th PAC and you would draw a blank. Ask any grassroots African on the continent about Pan Africanism today and he would think you are speaking Greek. The 6th PAC has not stopped the continued racial rape and murder of our people in the diaspora nor has it educated Africans on the continent, sixteen years later, to think beyond the severely circumscribed OAU.

Only the 5th congress was able to make immediate direct impact on our lives with its independence fire sweeping rapidly across colonial Africa soon after the congress. The 5th PAC set the standard by which to measure the success of all future PACs. The 6th PAC, therefore, was no more than a boring charade and if Pan Africanism is to be saved now, it must be moved beyond the constraining walls of our Ivory Towers, the deadly hold of our narrow-minded political leaders and deposited squarely on the laps of virgin Africans.

Professors do not mobilise people, neither do professional hirelings. Pan Africanism is the property of all Africans and that is what the 7th PAC is striving to achieve. That, in fact, is what my institutionalising ambition for our movement is about. I want to take us into the era of institutional Pan-Africanism. A grassroots league restricted absolutely to the black race and like the Jewish World Congress, to cause an earthquake every time it sneezes.

Copyright: The Black Agenda, written by Naiwu Osahon and published in April 1994 by Heritage Books, Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria. Several editions in pamphlet form were published between 1982 and 1990 by Heritage Books, Lagos, Nigeria and in the Obobo Books series for children under the title: 400 years and still a slave, a message to the black world.