- The Main Reason for Turning Pan-Africanism into a Non-Racial 
Political-Economic Project


Dear Chinweizu, thank you for raising that fundamental question. The clue to the 
answer is found in you reference to Nkrumah's move in 1958. It came clear to 
him, as well as Nyerere and others, that defining Africa/Pan-Africanism/Africans 
in terms of a 'race' - the 'African' or 'Black' race - was only a temporal 
measure. Due to historical, cultural, geographical  - and even biological - 
reasons, not everyone in Africa would ever be able to  identify with that 
'racial category.' It is only a political category - if not a 'social construct' 
- that served that purpose of 'Anti-African' Racial-sim, if I may adapt Jean 
Paul Sartre's term 'Anti-Black Racism', that helped us construct an identity 
that will help us - the so-called black people - regain our dignity. I think 
Chinua Achebe put it very well when he said: “For no thinking African can escape 
the pain of the wound in our soul. You have all heard of the ‘African 
personality’; of African democracy, of African way to socialism, of negritude, 
and so on. They are all props we have fashioned at different times to help us 
get on our feet again. Once we are up we shan’t need any of them anymore.” We 
now don't need a racially defined Pan-Africanism anymore as it has 
already served its purpose since, as Ngugi wa Thiong'o put it, within the 
"overall context of economic and political domination, race, could, was, and is 
often used as a means of diminishing the self-evaluation of the dominated" and 
hence in "that context, racial self-assertion was a necessary first step in the 
reclamation of a positive self-awareness." What we need, now we are up after 
that first step, is a continentally defined Pan-Africanism that will truly 
usher the Economic Pan-Africanism depicted further below.
 
Refer: Beyond Pan-Africanism as a Racial Concept - Towards Continental Unity
It is logically impossible to conceptualize pan-africanism 'globally' withouth 
resorting to 'race' - the 'black race' as claiming Africa as its 'cradle'. The 
way 'black' has been conceptualized, even by Ali Mazrui in this paper, is not a 
black that is independent of Africa as its continent of 'origin'. That is why 
pan-africanism only become a race-less concept when it is conceptualized 
geographically (i.e. continentaly) by embracing whoever is a 'citizen of Africa' 
 irrespective of race or origin i.e. with respect to all historical phenomena 
such as slavery, colonialism, capitalism and imperialism that have shaped Africa 
as we know it today. As soon as you want to include others outside the continent 
the main marker become 'blackness' i.e. race as applied to Africa because that 
is the 'only' way 'citizens of the African Diaspora' can claim Africa simply 
because historically the only, nay, main, thing that really marks people out 
there of being of - or from - Africa is the colour of their skin. Thus not 
everyone outside Africa who is regarded as 'black' politically can identify with 
or claim Africa that way. It is in this regard the oppressed non-whites outside 
Africa who are not 'black' in the 'African' sense cannot claim Africa through 
a global pan-africanism which is inherently racial as it seeks to unite people 
of African (read black) origin in the world.  If pan-africanism could simply 
be pan-anti-imperialism then many 'continental outsiders' would claim Africa in 
terms of class - the global class of the 'oppressed' united against the 
'oppressor(s)'.Yes, they can identify with those who have been oppressed in the 
continent and historically many have joined their struggles but not on the basis 
of race - they joined on the basis of a common stance against 
human oppression. The following excerpt from Thabo Mbeki's famous poem  I am an 
African captures well how a raceless continental  and anti-oppression 
pan-africanism that is inclusive of all who, historically, have somehow ended up 
being in and of Africa - i.e. 'Africans of Africa origin, Africans of N & S 
America origin, Africans of Asia origin, and Africans of Europe origin' - and 
who wish to be united against 'common enemies' of the continent, can be 
conceptualized:

...
 
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great 
expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless 
genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their 
lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a 
people, perished in the result.
 
...
 
I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native 
land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.
 
In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their 
proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The 
stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a 
reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.
 
I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, 
the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe 
and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.
 
My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the 
jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to 
Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the 
desert.
 
I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and 
the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of a simple 
peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in 
ruins.
 
I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world 
markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.
 
I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided 
in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught 
me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human 
existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human 
existence.
 
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that 
assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African.
 
...
 
I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa.
 
The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the 
Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear.
 
The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is 
a blight that we share.
 
The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the 
periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow
 
This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned.
 
This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent 
that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa 
reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.
 
Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now!
Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!
However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!
 
Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry 
baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of 
cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and 
say - nothing can stop us now! 

  
Such an inclusive Pan-Africanism is the telos of Africa's Unity. In fact it is 
Humanism. Ultimately, Pan Africanism is nothing more than Pan-Humanism.


________________________________

Hello Chambi Chachage,
I gather from your piece below that you think Pan-Africanism should not be a 
racial project. Can you give me one good reason why it shouldn't?
Please bear in mind that it started in 1897, with Sylvester Williams, as a 
racial project ; it remained a racial project for both Du Bois and Garvey; it 
was a racial project up to the 5th PAC in Manchester. It was only in 1958 that 
Nkrumah deviated from the racial project, and I have sought and found no reason 
given for that deviation. Perhaps you could present at least one good reason, 
whether from Nkrumah or Padmore or from yourself or anybody else, for turning it 
into a non-racial project. I eagerly await your reason.
 
Chinweizu
 

Which Pan-Africanism? A Critical Reading of Ngugi’s ‘Re-membering Africa’
 
 
“The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down 
to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even 
a village in some instances… But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission. 
Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, 
it should continue to guide remembering practices” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
 
A quote from Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2009) book Re-membering Africa that was recently 
posted online sparked an interesting query from his compatriot: ‘Has this book 
arrived here in Kenya? Is it available in Africa? Or should we wait until it is 
savoured exhaustively in Euro-America!’ Needless to say information on how to 
get hold of it was appreciated to the extent that another Kenyan thus exclaimed 
just after reading its launching review: ‘It has really awakened me!’
 
This quest for a book that was published a year ago reveals in a ironic way the 
twin tragedy that Ngugi has been attempting to transcend over the years – the 
limited (and lack of) access to knowledge produced in and on Africa among and by 
Africans. Apparently this book is published by East African Publishers Limited 
based in Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam. Interestingly, it was launched at 
the University of Dar es Salaam among, I presume, other places in Africa.
 
It is this ironic background – the story of a very important book published in 
Africa yet not widely, as in adequately, known among Africans – that has 
prompted me to pen this critique. The book constitutes four chapters, three of 
which are based on the 2006 McMillan-Stewart Lectures at Harvard University. The 
other is primarily based on a lecture I was privileged to attend and which left 
a lasting impression on my mind – The 2003 Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at the 
University of Cape Town. As such the book has varying themes but they are all 
tied with a common thread – the importance of memory in explaining and renewing 
contemporary Africa.
 
Ngugi’s preface categorically states that this “book speak about the 
decolonization of modernity” as there is “no region, no culture, no nation today 
that has not been affected by colonialism and its aftermath.” The author is so 
convinced of this to the extent that he affirms that “modernity can be 
considered a product of colonialism.” Now to those who have been following 
Ngugi’s consistent works this claim may not seem new. But what makes it novel is 
this research finding:
 
It was astonishing to discover, in writing them, the centrality of the Irish 
experience to the colonial question, especially as it relates to language, 
culture, and social memory. Ireland was England’s first colony, and it became a 
prototype for all the English colonies in Asia, Africa, and America. Irish 
missionaries, army officers, and administrative officials were often considered 
part of the British empire, thus possibly explaining why Rudyard Kipling chose 
to make Kim, the eponymous hero of his novel, both Irish and working class, as 
if to show both the British proletariat and the colonized alike were willing 
servants of the empire. Anglo-Irish literature was certainly used in the service 
of the cultural self-image of the empire: It was integral component of the 
English canon in schools and colleges in Africa, often taught as the empire’s 
“gift to the world.” But colonial context of the Irish writers’ texts was erased 
from their artistic being (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: vi - vii).
 
On the basis of this finding Ngugi aptly entitles chapter one of the book 
‘Dismembering Practices: Planting European Memory in Africa.’ Therein he 
provides two individual cases that highlight how Euro-American 
colonial-cum-capitalist modernity could not really thrive without first trying 
to erase the memories of those it sought to colonize and capitalize in ‘new 
lands’.
 
The first case is that of Waiyaki wa Hinga who resisted British military 
occupation in the 19th Century. When the British captured him they removed him 
from his region, that is, the base of his power. In the realm of military 
tactics this is quite understandable. Even killing him is logically explainable. 
But they didn’t just kill him – they buried him alive with his head facing the 
bowels of the earth. Why such a strange form of burial? Ngugi’s explanation 
underscores the fact that this was an act of cultural imperialism aimed at 
making a statement against the cultures of those who were resisting colonialism. 
To Ngugi, the British applied this cultural-cum-military tactic in “opposition 
to the Gikuyu burial rites’ requirement that the body face Mount Kenya, the 
dwelling place of the Supreme Deity.” It is indeed an old tactic that even 
features in Biblical narratives of conquests whereby the vanquished’s names, 
bearing their God, were changed. “Similarly”, he notes, “in Xhosaland, the 
present-day Eastern Cape of South Africa, the British captured King Hintsa of 
the Xhosa resistance and decapitated him, taking his head to the British Museum, 
just as they had done with the decapitated head of the Maori King of New 
Zealand.” 

 
Yes, if I may add, the Germans did the same with Mtwa Mkwawa of Uhehe – who 
successfully defeated them in the famous battle of Lugalo – and went on to hang 
in public the consortium of leaders who were inspired my Kinjeketile Ngwale of 
Ngarambe to resist German occupation in the legendary Maji Maji War (1905 – 
1907). “The relationship between Africa and Europe”, as Ngugi aptly observes, 
“is well represented by the fate of these figures” since a “colonial act – 
indeed, any act in the context of conquest and domination – is both a practice 
of power, intended to pacify a populace, and a symbolic act, a performance of 
power intended to produce docile minds.” This relationship is characterized by 
what the author refers to as dismemberment and defines as an “act of absolute 
social engineering” that occurred in two stages. In the first stage “the African 
personhood was divided into two halves: the continent and its diaspora.” Then, 
in the second stage, the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 “literally 
fragmented and reconstituted Africa into British, French, Portuguese, German, 
Belgian, and Spanish Africa.” This tragedy and what followed afterwards is what 
Ngugi’s Re-membering Africa aims to undo:
 
The result was an additional dismemberment of diasporic African, who was now 
separated not only from his continent and his labour but also from his very 
sovereign being. The subsequent colonial plantations on the African continent 
has led to the same result: division of the African from his land, body, and 
mind…Whereas before he was his own subject, now he is subject to another (Ngugi 
wa Thiong’o 2009: 3 - 4).
 
Thus, both generally and specifically, the African mind/memory has been 
colonized and neo-colonized by Euro-American “capitalist modernity”. Invoking, 
albeit not entirely agreeing with, V. Y. Mudimbe’s Idea of Africa, Ngugi’s 
reaffirm that wherever “they went, in their voyages of land, sea, and mind, 
Europeans planted their own memories on whatever they contacted.” He then 
narrates the way this was done, from how our places – such as Kirungii and 
Namlolwe – were renamed Westlands and Victoria respectively and our names – such 
as Ngugi –  was changed to James to submit Africa to Euro-American memory and 
identity. It is this submission that stamped and continues to stamp 
Euro-America’s sense of ownership of Africa. Predictably, Ngugi moves to, and 
concludes with, his favourite subject of language to unmask this process:
 
If the planting of its memory on the body was effected through names, the one on 
the mind was accomplished through the vast naming system of language… Africans, 
in the diaspora and on the continent, were soon to be recipients of this 
linguistic logic of conquest, with two results: linguicide in the case of the 
diaspora and linguistic famine, or linguifam, on the continent. Linguicide…is 
the linguistic equivalent of genocide. Genocide involves conscious act of 
physically massacre, linguicide, conscious acts of language liquidation…This is 
precisely the fate of African languages in the diaspora…On the continent, 
languages are not liquidated in the same way. What happens to them, in this 
post-Berlin Conference era of direct colonialism, is linguistic famine. 
Linguifam is to languages what famine is to people who speak them – linguistic 
deprivation and, ultimately, starvation… In the African continent, African 
languages – deprived of the food, water, light, and oxygen of thought, and of 
the constant conceptualizing that facilitates forging of the new and renewal of 
the old – underwent slow starvation, linguifam (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 11 - 
14).
 
Since language is indeed “a communication system and carrier of culture by 
virtue of being simultaneously the means and carrier of memory” that bears “the 
weight of a civilization”, the ultimate result of this dismemberment through 
linguifam, and thus, culturefam, is a “destruction of the base from which 
people”, in this case, us, Africans, “launch themselves into the world.”
 
Thus far, I agree with Ngugi. As far as re-membering our African languages is 
concerned I have no qualms with him. The problem starts when he invokes a global 
version of ‘Pan-Africanism’ and a Euro-American conceptualization of ‘African 
Renaissance’ and ‘Afro-modernity’. I have already addressed the racialist 
pitfalls of the former in my online discussion with champions of such a version 
so I won’t dwell so much on it. Here it is important to observe that Ngugi’s apt 
premise that Africa has been dismembered between the continent and diaspora 
logically leads to his conclusion that re-membering such an Africa is to bring 
back these two halves together. This is how he puts it in the second chapter 
entitled ‘Memory, Restoration and African Renaissance’:
 
Political Pan-Africanism should make the continent a base where African peoples, 
meaning continentals and people of African descent, can feel truly at home – a 
realization of the Garveysian vision of Africa for Africans, both at home and 
abroad. Such an Africa would be a secure base where all peoples of African 
descent can feel inspired to visit, invest, and even live if they so choose 
(Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 68).
 
Inherent in such a conceptualization is the idea of ‘race’ – the African/Black 
race to be precise – as a tie that visibly bind what has been referred by 
Chinweizu, in an online discussion, as “the Pan-African constituency.” The 
Julius Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan-African Studies who presented the 
book’s launching review referred to above thus captures this race-cum-cultural 
dilemmatic which, intentionally or unintentionally, reduces Pan-Africanism to a 
racial project:
 
Often both the ideologues and detractors present pan-Africanism as a racial 
construct… Yet, the notion of the African nation, even among Pan-Africanists, is 
a fiercely contested concept. It is, unfortunately in my view, formulated in a 
rather fruitless question: ‘Who is an African?’ Are the Arabs in North Africa 
part of the African nation and therefore included in the Pan-Africanist project? 
Are the Indians in East and Southern Africa, the Lebanese in West Africa, the 
Boers and Malays in South Africa etc. Africans? (Issa G. Shivji, 2010, on Kwame 
Nkrumah’s Thought in the Evolution of Pan-African Ideology)
It is my contention that by invoking the essentialist term ‘African descent’ 
Ngugi falls into this pitfall of presenting Pan-Africanism as a racial 
construct. If I were to rewrite his call above I would invoke Mwalimu Nyerere’s 
no-racial clarion call for an inclusive continental Africanity by declaring that 
Political Pan-Africanism should make the continent a base that “will belong to 
Africans” whereby “this word ‘Africans’ can include all those who have made 
their home in the continent, black, brown, or white” (Julius K. Nyerere, June 
1961, on The Future of Africa). 

 
This conceptualization of Pan-Africanism is local in a continental sense, rather 
than global in a diasporic sense, and in a significant way it augurs well with 
Ngugi’s own call that “Economic Pan-Africanism will translate into a network of 
communications – air, sea, land, telephone, Internet – that ease 
intra-continental movements of peoples, goods, businesses, and services” whereby 
“Africa becomes a power bloc able to negotiate on an equal basis with all other 
global economies (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 67 - 68). Such a Pan-Africa, I still 
assert, is post-racial.
 
© Chambi Chachage
-- 





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