Pan Africanism has become a movement known for the dedication to the solidarity of it’s people. Since the 1900’s, Pan- Africanists’ concerns along with their philosophies and politics have depended on the time and where they were living. Leaving a legacy behind, many early dedicated Pan-Africanists have passed, leaving others to continue in the areas of this movement. Those leaders of Pan Africanism, Henry Sylvester Williams, Dr, Edward W, Blyden, Bishop Henry M Turner, and many more inspired a new generation of Pan Africanism.
W.E.B Du Bois, became a known element to the revival of modern Pan Africanism. The philosophies among Pan African activists may differ but the overall movement of Pan Africanism is to bring the people of Africa together, in solidarity, in all world civilizations. Kwame Ture’s, a prominent political activist to the global Pan African movement, encompassed several fundamental principles and beliefs into the movement and it’s future.
He stood for the unity of the Diaspora, argued for the necessity to reject capitalism, and the need to revolutionize in masses.
Kwame Ture discussed his ideas of unity. He believed in the unity of the Continent and the Diaspora. He states that, “All African peoples wherever we may be are one, and belong to the same nation”. Ture believes that the idea of continental unity is important because Africa, who was once involved in a evolutionary process was interrupted by slavery and colonialism, or European imperialism. This principle for the unity of African people is essential to the development of Pan Africanism because it is a response to the dividing of Black empowerment through African communities all around the world.
Although there was thousands of years rooted in oppression, some African politicians believed that the implementation of European powers would contribute to developing Africa. Edward Blyden, a politician of Pan Africanism said, “The British government are taking most active interest in the exploitation and building up of regions which have been for generations scenes of warfare and carnage” (Harris), in which he had recognized that the continent of Africa needed peace and order and he then concluded that only outside intervention would achieve that. Kwame Ture emphasis on amalgamation was crucial for the development of Pan Africanism. In terms of resistance against European colonialism, developing a unity of the continent and diaspora allows for people to take back their own, and spiritually reconstruct non colonial identity with soul force as a collective will.
Africa’s evolutionary process being interrupted by European capitalism, Kwame Ture’s argues, is exceedingly important to Africa’s unity in that Africa must move into a revolutionary process aiming at a socialist economy. He believes that the only way to take back the time stolen is to begin a revolutionary process toward the economy. For European imperialism, or capitalism, slavery was a prominent source for money. Slavery fed capitalism. Capitalism is a system that conditions the type of people they want throughout society. (Lecture). Ture emphasized that people of Africa must destroy the capitalistic system which has enslaved them. He says, “Pan-Africanism is grounded in socialism which has its roots in communalism” meaning that Pan Africanism must come from the masses of people and up to create a system deeply embedded in African history and culture.
This is essential to the development of Pan Africanism because it allows people the power to reject and deconstruct colonial imbedded ideologies. Developing socialism throughout the African Diaspora, to reject capitalism, creates resistance from colonial powers because it would help unify Africa and protect its people from exploitation while also providing a relationship between Africans on the continent and Africans in the Diaspora. Lastly, Kwame Ture emphasizes that in the development of Pan Africanism, revolutionizing in mass organizations all across the African Diaspora is important to the fight against colonialism. The struggle of imperialism and internal imperialism comes from deeply rooted oppression. Leveling political, social, and economic events such as the Atlantic Slave Trade created miscegenation, christianity, labor hierarchy, cultural differentiation, and fighting for the oppressor.
The disruptions and transformations that the slave trade gave rise to can be divided into two categories- demographic and cultural. Through the traumatic force of imperialism, for Caribbean island nations such as Jamaica, “ the inescapable fact of their blackness had always marked a tangible and material link with their origins in Africa, and the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic traces and patterns of the continent in the daily lives and intersections of these communities had long played a central role in the articulations and affirmations of Caribbean cultural identity” (Murdoch). According to the reading, “A Legacy of Trauma”, Jamaica was home to more slave rebellions than all of the other British islands combined which makes the island important to the development of Pan Africanism.
In Kwame Ture’s principle to revolutionize among all the African Diaspora, he highlights the importance of gathering the masses of people of African decent, whether they are in Africa, the United States or the islands, and organizing against colonial powers. Jamaica, the island that slaves fled and migrated to rebel, is a positive example of mass organization through the “continuing identitarian role of African culture in the Caribbean during the period of slavery” (Murdoch). Mass organization or revolutionizing is essential to the resistance because it is the solution to the final confrontation with colonialism.
Overall, Pan Africanism was introduced and developed to propose unity against the imperialist oppressors. With many leading Pan African politicians,as early ad the 1900s, each had different approaches to how to create a unity among people that would prosper. Kwame Ture, one of those politicians, created several principles to what Pan Africanism is and towards its development. He believed in an organized, unified continent with a socialist system and creating a powerful Africa. Amongst those principles, Ture highlighted the unity of the African Diaspora, the necessity to reject capitalism and move towards socialism, and the process of mass revolutionary organization. These three principles gave opportunity to the development of Pan Africanism, allowing people to advocate for self-determination of Africa and African people. Pan Africanism has developed into an revolutionary agency that creates a community for Black people to define their own goals, unite their communities and lead their own principles and organizations.
The Publication on Legacy Development of Pan Africanism. (2022, Feb 08). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/the-publication-on-legacy-development-of-pan-africanism/