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(Dr. Diedre Badejo). Beginning with the 1970s
when the Sixth Pan-African Congress was being
contemplated, continental Pan-Africanism had come to
mean the exclusive relationship between
the African nation states, north and south of the Sahara.
Unfortunately, most of these states were in a weakened
political and economic position.
Consequently, they focus more on government to government
relationships, which included not only their former colonial
masters, this is one of the ironies, they gain independence,
they throw them out, and then they have to go back
to them politically and economically, but also
other countries whose racialism they had chided.
So now they have to go back and deal with the United States.
Furthermore, the flagrant human rights violations, which existed
in some African countries, undermined their ability to
criticize the governments which oppressed the African diaspora.
In 1974, Nkrumah's vision of a united Africa had eroded.
The nationless Africans in the diaspora were on their own and a
vigorous continental Pan-Africanism lay
at the altar of internal affairs.
From 1945 onwards, the protests within the African diaspora and
the simultaneous shift to the motherland
marginalized the role in the diaspora in the
newly independent continental Pan-Africa.
Following Ghana's independence in 1957, the African diaspora
found itself grappling along with its old issues of political
freedom within each Western nation for social, cultural
independence, self-determination, and global
empowerment, which remained at the core of diaspora politics.
In centuries earlier, out of Africa's indigenous ethnicities
had evolved the multiple ethnicities of the diaspora.
Then, when Africa emerged in all her independent splendor, her
position could've been strengthened if she had
carved out new paths and policies whereby those
she called home could really be home.
Surely, given its historic activism in the creation of
that independent splendor, the African diaspora had earned
more than the right to participate in cultural events.
By the way, I just participated in April in the Lagos Badagry
Conference, Black Heritage Conference in which there was a
discussion about slavery and the slave trade and the role of
Africans in the diaspora and on the continent in Nigeria.
It was a very fascinating event.
Moreover, since the success or failure of the continent's
political aspirations directly impacted on the images
and the reality of the diaspora as it
continued to exist in the Western Hemisphere.
The diaspora's sense of self-worth and responsibility
remain inexplicably tied to the fate of the continent.
So when the continent is successful,
we can all go around and hold our heads up.
When they start talking about Darfur or Mugabe then we all
feel the pressure of race, we all feel the burden of race,
but ask now are all people similarly burdened?
Are all of the Koreans similarly burdened by
the misdeeds of Kim Jong-il?
So there is something that happens in the collective psyche
to people of African descent globally when we have these
miscreants in our own social and political environment that
I think maybe goes back to this idea of the psychology of
I would say not only slavery and enslavement,
but also colonialism, okay?
I think we see this in the Native American
population as well, and we should not forget
[unclear audio] who gave us the roadmap to understanding this.
From the 1960s on with the mounting political and economic
pressures facing the newly independent African states
forced them to close ranks around the continents agenda at
the very moment when the diaspora in the position of
Malcolm X raised the American civil rights question into a
question of human rights as defined by the U.N. Charter.
You know that that was part of the reason why Malcolm X was
being targeted because he had proposed to raise the question
of how people of African descent were treated
in the United States as a violation of
human rights according to the U.N. Charter.
And that really exacerbated his problem.
If the, if Africa had been in a different position being member
states of the United Nation, there could have been a
different type of response to that particular issue.
Simultaneously, the diaspora too became
ensnarled in various regional and national attempts to force
stall the erosions of its likewise minimal gains at a time
when the continent needed a strong advocate in the West.
By the end of the 1960s, the vanguard of nationalism and
Pan-Africanism in the diaspora and on the continent had been
either assassinated, overthrown, or jailed.
Others had died of old age, frustration, or exhaustion, and
still others were silenced or abandoned.
It is doubtful that this is what [unclear audio] had envisioned.
The Sixth Pan-African Congress was symptomatic of some of the
fundamental contradictions which the 1945 shift to continental
Pan-Africanism had failed to consider or address.
The failure of the Sixth Pan-African Congress to set any
substantial agenda for the remainder of the 20th century is
a consequence of an unforeseen balkanization within global
Pan-Africanism and a reaction to the superimposition of rabid
capitalist ideology, Western culture, and globalization.
The multi-national corporation held [unclear audio] over
cultural and political glue that unified global Africa.
The question then was not only of double [unclear audio]
consciousness, but also the place and the role of the
diaspora's dual racial identity in the formation of Africa's new
national enclaves had escaped in this euphoria of independence
and the challenges of neo-colonialism.
Africa Pan-Africanism in the new world order.
There's a Yoruba proverb that says, "If a husband and a wife
see a snake, but the wife is the one
who kills the snake, it does not matter.
What matters is that the snake is dead".
There are snakes in our house, poverty, ill health, illiteracy,
to name a few, violence in the diaspora and on the continent.
As we face the 21st century we can ill-afford to misuse or
misdirect one iota of our collective and individual gifts,
irrespective of geography and gender.
We have to raise the type, we have to raise the question of
the type of Pan-Africanism we want in the 21st and indeed
going into the second decade, the 22nd century.
Certainly the question of access between the nation states of the
continent and the people of the diaspora will be key to
solidifying a working Pan-Africanism where the needs
and abilities on both sides can be readily utilized.
It seems that this particular issue is closer to the type of
Pan-Africanist vision which Nkrumah saw, and if you read the
AU Charter, you see, it's very deeply embedded, in fact, they
acknowledge that this is closer to what Nkrumah had envisioned.