African Unification Front
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July 8, 2005
Strengthen Links That Bind African Diaspora
By Christine Qunta
Johannesburg
THE interconnectedness between our continent and the African diaspora was the theme of an important conference held in March in Kingston, Jamaica. The African Diaspora Conference was held as part of SA's 10th anniversary of democracy celebrations in partnership with the African Union and the Jamaican government.
It was an inspiring and intellectually stimulating three days, with heads of state of several Caribbean countries as well as intellectuals and activists in attendance. The desire of all African peoples to shed the burden bequeathed to them by slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism remains powerful.
The conference revisited the historical path but focused on the future. It discussed practical steps to bring to fruition the dreams of the pathfinders of African liberation. Evident in the discussion was the abiding relevance of pan-Africanism. Pan-Africanism is the ideology that regards Africa as the home of all Africans, whether on the continent or in the diaspora, and declares the organic unity of the continent culturally, economically and politically. Self-determination and belief in the economic and political renaissance of the continent are essential components of pan-Africanism.
Pan-African ideas were first mooted in the diaspora where oppression of Africans was extreme. Clear articulation of pan-Africanism came in the 19th century, with the main proponents being people such as James Beale Horton, Edward Blyden, the Rev Alexander Crummel and Benito Silvan. Of these, Blyden was the most outstanding pan-African intellectual of the 19th century.
Henry Turner, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was a pan-African who mobilised for Africans to return to the continent and form governments. In the 20th century, Marcus Garvey, born in St Ann's Bay in Jamaica, became important not only because he articulated the pan-Africanist philosophy but because he mobilised Africans all over the world through the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Unia).
Unia had branches in SA, the US and South America. It remains the largest mass organisation of Africans. Garvey's ideas influenced a wide range of black nationalist movements in the 1960s.
The link between the continent and its diaspora found expression intellectually during the golden era of intellectuals in the 1950s. Best known of these intellectuals were Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, whose incisive analysis of the condition of African people stirred the consciousness of Africans worldwide and influenced liberation movements throughout the continent.
In his afterword to Cheikh Anta Diop's Cultural Unity of Black Africa, James G Spady tells of the interaction between intellectuals from the continent and those from North America and the Caribbean in the 1940s and 1950s. Diop called the first recorded pan-African student congress where African students from French-speaking and English-speaking African countries met. Two international conferences of black writers and artists were held, attended by outstanding African writers such as James Baldwin, Alione Diop, Richard Wright, Cesaire, Leopold Senghor and Sekou Toure.
In a paper I delivered as a panelist, I put forward the following concrete proposals to build on the work of those who toiled so hard and did not see realisation of their dreams. A database should be compiled containing a list of all Africans from the continent who live abroad, and Africans in the diaspora, with skills to contribute to the economic advancement of the continent. There should be an emphasis on scientific and other technical skills.
Educational institutions should be reformed to include in their curricula, African history and the effect of that history on our present. Of importance is the contribution made by the African continent to world civilisation.
African governments should actively invest in filmmaking to enable African filmmaking to tell the African story without having to rely on Europe for funding. A little investment by SA's arts and culture department through the National Film and Video Foundation has produced films such as Drum and others that won prizes.
A continental project to develop African languages should be created so that scientific texts can be translated and children can be taught science in their mother tongues.
The South African government plays a vital role in promoting the reintegration of the continent and the diaspora. The African Union has taken practical steps to advance this goal. Its representative at the conference announced that it had adopted the policy of setting aside 20 seats for the diaspora, which would be regarded as a region.
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