The Renewal of Pan-Africanism and the 9th Pan-African Congress
After passing a reform which would give Togo’s parliament the ability to select the president, President Faure Gnassingbé has called for a “second reading” of the legislation. This call for a second reading seems to suggest some hesitancy on the part of the Togolese government to commit to these changes. This hesitancy would no doubt be related to the public outcry which the proposed legislation has invoked.
It is against the backdrop of this struggle against dictatorship in Togo which the 9th Pan-African Congress will be held. The upcoming congress in Togo has been of great interest to me because it demonstrates the very point that I made when I wrote Faure Must Go. In that book I argued that we must make the effort to rebuild the Pan-African movement into a truly revolutionary movement which seeks to unite African people for the purpose of our advancement.
In recent decades, Pan-Africanism has been hi-jacked by those who have been opportunistically using the movement to advance their own agendas at the expense of the African masses. This can be demonstrated by the brand of Pan-Africanism which is promoted by the African Union (AU) and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) which predated the AU. I quote Horace Campbell who wrote:
One of the cardinal principles of Pan Africanism which emerged at the
period of slavery and colonialism was that “the people of one part of Africa
are responsible for the freedom of their brothers in other parts of Africa;
and indeed black people everywhere were to accept this same responsibility.” This ideal has been subverted in the OAU by the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of member states, thus leading to a conspiracy of silence among most states when African leaders carry out atrocities in their own societies.
The upcoming 9th Pan-African Congress makes a call for the renewal of Pan-Africanism. For Pan-Africanism to be truly renewed, we must move beyond this principle of non-intervention. Those of us who call ourselves Pan-Africanists must stand with the people of Togo and support them in their struggle to end more than five decades of dictatorship.
