The Changing Character of Pan Africanism (Fighting Among Ourselves)

 By Takura Zhangazha*

 As an African you will regularly reflect on your being, your othered ‘blackness’ and also your material standing in a now highly globalized perception of what can be the ‘good life’.  And in all of its mimicry of the colonial legacy of global north societies.  Or if we were to be a little bit more academic, in the ambit of what the Ugandan professor Mahmoud Mamdani referred to as the “legacy of late colonialism’. 

A colonial legacy that we are living today in multiple facets of our everyday existence.  From our politics, our religious and cultural norms and how they inform the futures of subsequent young Africans going forward.

And it is something that we cannot historically wish away.  We were once colonized as Africans.  A decent number of us fought liberation struggles or negotiated political settlements to become independent.  We also, via the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now the African Union (AU) accepted the historical reality of the Berlin Conference borders as drawn by the then European colonial powers.  

Borders which were largely defined by either rivers, mountains and also last minute negotiations for territory because of assumptions of minerals or colonially strategic positioning of their military outposts. With one such example being the Caprivi Strip (named after a German general at the turn of the 19^th century).

The catch however is that we have a composite history of struggling against colonialism, winning these struggles but at the same time, in the contemporary, sort of seeking by default to repeat the same said history. 

And this is a complicated argument to make.  Particularly if we consider the current Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda 2025 conflict as recognized by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC). 

On social media there have been historical references as to why this conflict persists.  From issues to do with the recognized Rwandan genocide through to the role that SADC played in the toppling of Mobutu Seseseko Wazo Wabanga from power in the DRC. And the retention of Laurent Desire Kabila as president of the same country in the years that followed.  An issue that is not historically explained and understood by many Zimbabweans or Congolese to this day.

The key issue however is the fact that the DRC is not a simple country.  It is etched in the historical cauldrons of the full meaning of what colonialism was in Africa.  Particularly where we consider South of the Sahara Africa and the role of King Leopold the second of Belgium and what his government did to us. 

Further, beyond arguments about borders and their coloniality, the DRC is representative of what colonial capitalism and extraction is and can be.  Including the fact that capitalism comes with war against people who do not even understand what they are fighting against or for what cause they should be fighting for we now have a global reconfiguration of the meaning of Africa.  One which is pointing to a repetitive historical narrative of ‘extract and control’.  On either side of the West or East global divide. 

This is a development that begs the question of what is Pan Africanism in the contemporary? Who imagines or re-imagines it?

If you are African you have to remember Kwame Nkrumah’s eternal slogan of how “Africa Must Unite!” And Julius Nyerere’s pivotal role in making African political unity a reality with the OAU and its liberation committee.

But now we are at a crossroads. Albeit an easily populist one after the emergent changes in the United States of America (USA) foreign policy about its interactions with our continent. From the closures of the USA Agency for International Development Aid (USAID) through to its own foreign diplomatic missions and how we react to the same. More so beyond social media and mainstream media posts about what all of this means.   

We are in desperate need of a new Pan Africanism.  One that contends with new global political economy realities of China versus the USA but also recognizes the history of colonialism and post-neocolonialism. 

This is a difficult ask because as post liberation Africans we are sort of embedded in false realities that we are never able to handle. Not only for our internal but external conflicts without being ‘hand-held’ by either side of the global political divide.

So what does a new Pan Africanism look like? It is one that understands the historical reality of the fact that as black people from the African continent we know our past. And we also know our present.  And we can envision our future.  Never mind the slave trade, colonialism, or neo-colonialism, we simply remember our realities in the present. 

So major traditional donor agencies can and will close from the global north due to an increasing racist political culture but we have been there before.  We know who we are and who we can be.  `

For all the wars that are happening globally and affecting Africa in variegated ways, as Africans, we will need to learn that we are between a rock and a hard place.  But we have options.  One of them being a proper, “Return to the Source” as argued by Aime Cesaire. 

Almost like a return to the river.  Except for the fact that the river was always as Ngugi wrote in his novella and explained it metaphorically, a river that was always going to be put it ‘In between”.

The form and character of our new Pan Africanism can only be historically grounded without the abstract populism of 'velvet' or 'carpet' revolutions'.  

It has to be about what we can believe in as liberatory beyond the global preferable moment.  Even in abstract mimicry we also need to put Africa First. And make it Great Again. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his peronsal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) 

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