The Sunday News
My present interest in Pan-Africanism and the Pan-Africanists is based on my primary interest in African liberation philosophies. It is not possible to ponder African liberation philosophies and not take notice of Pan-Africanism and its related ideologies and philosophies.
How these philosophies did not actually get translated into political practices in Africa is a stubborn question. Even more stubborn a question is how these philosophies delivered political independence but did not deliver the liberation that was the goal of African struggles against colonialism and imperialism. I have previously called these questions part of the “trial of Pan-Africanism” whose existence as a philosophy of liberation must be justified. While Anglophone African intellectuals and political activists described their philosophy of African liberation in English as Pan-Africanism their Francophone counterparts spoke in French and articulated Negritude.
Colin Legum describes how in the 1930s London became the political centre of the Pan- Africanists while Paris became the political centre for Negritude poets and philosophers. As noted earlier in this column, Pan-Africanism was born in the New World, the Americas, and as it grew it spread into European capitals and became the political and philosophical noise against the history of slavery, imperialism and colonialism. In that way, the metropoles of European colonialism and imperialism also became the centres of the resistance that black people mounted against conquest and domination. What was called the “Paris Circle” was a collective of poets, philosophers and other kinds of artists that populated coffee shops, college campuses and university campuses in France. Prominent within that French speaking black mob were two influential figures, Aime Cesaire from Martinique and Leopold Sedar Senghor from Senegal.
The cultural journal, Presence Africaine, was the platform and outlet of the ideas of the Paris Circle that captured the imagination of the French polity and academy. Their prominent white ally was the titanic French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre, like Cesaire and Senghor was a philosopher, a poet and an artist of many talents. It is interesting that French colonialism of African countries was first challenged by philosophers, poets and other artists. Plato’s judgment that poets were an apolitical nuisance that should be banished from any republic was proven wrong by the Paris Circle that advanced its liberatory politics through poetics and philosophy. In that Paris Circle, Pan-Africanism had its poetic and philosophical wing if elsewhere it had military wings and other wings to talk about.
Our critical task, however, is not to romanticise over Pan-Africanism and its Francophone brand of Negritude, but to ask questions. That colonial borders remain with us in Africa, and African countries remain stuck in their individual nationalism, and the continent remains divided and closed to itself while open to Europe and America, is a verdict of failure of African unity and liberation. All the poetic and philosophical force that the Paris Circle deployed contributed to the political independence of some African countries, but it seems to have done nothing to undo coloniality and deliver full liberation in Africa. Negritude also remained in the lips and books of the academic and political elite but did not come down to the existential realities of the African grassroots where it was needed most, I observe.
Some spectacles of Negritude
If Negritude means being proud and dignified about being African, then I have seen it before. And I continue to witness it here and there. It is found naturally and spontaneously among ordinary African men and women, and the African youth. During the Soccer 2010 Fifa World Cup Tournament here in South Africa, for instance, Pan-Africanism and Negritude walked on two legs in the streets. We were all one as Africans against the whole world. When an African team played another team from elsewhere it was ‘us’ playing ‘them’, and the team was ours as Africans. There is not enough diction and vocabulary to describe the African and black ecstasy in the streets and the stadia of South Africa. Africans from different countries sang, danced, hugged and kissed to celebrate African teams and their players. There was a moment of African conviviality.
When Ghana was robbed at Loftus Stadium in Pretoria, the whole of Africa was robbed and we collectively mourned the loss. One Luis Suarez of Uruguay used his hand to block what was obviously going to be a goal for Ghana. Africans expected the referee to grant the goal, but the Fifa rules prescribed a penalty kick which, as the Devil will always do, Asamoah Gyan went on to miss the goal. Suarez’s hand became another ‘hand of God’ for Uruguay that won to boot Ghana out of the tournament, leaving Africans weeping and wailing in the terraces. At that moment of weeping and wailing, there was no Ghanaian or South African, Nigerian or Cameroonian, Zimbabwean or Congolese, there were only Africans. I was not in the stadium but across the road at Eastwood Tavern, watching the match on television while supporting the South African breweries. I could hear the wailing in the stadium and see the mourning at Eastwoods; Africans had been robbed in their entirety. Even as Uruguay is another country of the Global South, neither European or American, except by the history of colonisation, our African solidarity and oneness was felt at the loss.
The present World Cup tournament is watched with similar African solidarity as Morocco, Senegal and Ghana are the remaining hopes of the African continent. As I write the same Uruguay appears to be prevailing over the same Ghana; and it is not funny at all for Africans around here. What appears is that challenges and miseries from outside Africa, in sport, politics, culture and economics have a strong potential to unite Africans. Do we Africans need problems, challenges and adversities from outside to unite us? In South Africa, even Operation Dudula is momentarily frozen as Africans from every part of the continent are focussed on our teams that still remain in the tournament.
The pitfalls of Negritude
In its form Negritude was about African solidarity, pride and unity. For Negritude black was beautiful and being African was an article of pride. The long years of slavery, colonialism and imperialism were the years of the evil of the enemies of blacks and Africans. African uniqueness and difference from Europeans, Americans and others was a matter of pride. As such Negritude became celebratory to the point of being romantic and somehow forgot to engage with the world as real and a dangerous place for black people and Africans. Plato might have had a point in condemning poets for believing in and selling illusions when they are supposed to engage with the concrete human condition. Pride and dignity about being black and African were merely sentiments they were not liberation. Being intoxicated in the pride and dignity of being black and African was nothing close to liberation.
Aime Cesare’s poem of 1939, Return to My Native Land, became a rallying cry for the Paris Circle. In a few of its lines the poem chants about the ‘victory’ of Africans thus: “Hurray for those who never invented anything, Hurray for those who never explored anything, Hurray for those who never conquered anything…” Here was Negritude celebrating African non-achievements as victories.
African lacks and deficities were being lauded as articles of pride and dignity. Pride and dignity are important especially for those that have been conquered, dominated and dehumanised the way Africans were by colonialism. But pride and dignity, as a push-back to dehumanisation and oppression, are not enough to be victory or liberation, they remain romantic sentiments. Celebrating anything African even if it is failure and evil is one huge pitfall of Negritude that has prevented Africans from looking their problems in the eye and solving them. This pride in failure has been used in African economies and polities to normalise incompetence and even evil under the excuse of being African, I note.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].
