A Brief History of the Pan African Movement

“The Pan African World We Want: Building a People’s movement for a just, accountable and inclusive structural transformation.”

The Call for the 8th Pan African Congress has gone out under the banner of the “Pan African World We Want.” This theme builds on the African Union vision of “Peace, Prosperity and Unity.” The 8th Pan African Congress is being organized at a moment of global political, social and environmental challenges. This form of overt organizing has been present ever since Africans were conscious of themselves as agents of transformation. Cheikh Anta Diop sought to capture this self-awareness when he wrote on the cultural unity of Africa.

As Tajudeen Abdul Raheem observed in the book that came out after the 7th Pan African Congress, “while the years 1900-1919 can confidently be cited as important reference points for the Pan African movement, the movement stretches back further into the distant history of our people. Indeed, the roots of the Pan African movement can be traced right back to the ravages of the first European slave ships to touch the African coast, some five hundred years back.” In the midst of the great holocaust of the Atlantic slave trade, bonds of solidarity and unity were forged by the Africans who called themselves shipmates.

Background to the Pan African Movement
The word Pan Africanism first entered the political lexicon in 1900 when the Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvestre Williams, then based in London, called a conference of black people ‘to protest stealing of lands in the colonies, racial discrimination and deal with all other issues of interest to blacks.” But long before the intellectual understandings of Pan Africanism the spirit of freedom had been manifested in Pan African movements such as the movement for freedom, anti-slavery and independence in Haiti.

The leaders of the Haitian revolution wanted to organize an expedition to Africa to end the slave trade. The leadership of the Haitian revolution was killed and although there was an international conspiracy to crush Pan Africanism in Haiti, it continues up to today. Anti-slavery fighters such as Martin Delaney, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth and Rev. Richard Allen of Philadelphia linked the future dignity of Africans under slavery to freedom in Africa.

In fact, the dominant force to arise came in the form of religious Pan Africanism in the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The AME church became a force although other 19th century Pan Africanists such as Edward Wilmot Blyden did not believe that western Christianity could be a vehicle for Pan Africanism and liberation. Blyden, who was from the Danish colony in the Caribbean which is now called U.S Virgin Islands went to Africa, embraced Islam and was an organizer for African independence in West Africa. His writings and advocacy influenced many educated Africans who were mobilized to oppose colonial rule after the Berlin Conference of 1885 to partition Africa. During the 19th century Ethiopianism was the dominant variant of Pan Africanism, This was the view that the independence and liberation of Africans throughout the world was linked to the continuing freedom and independence of Ethiopia.

The First Congress
The first Pan African Congress took place in London from July 23-25 1900. But far more important than the meetings were the organized and spontaneous Pan African revolts against European colonialism and occupation. Whether it was the resistance of the Emperor of Ethiopia Menelik at the battles of Adowa (1896), the Bambata Revolts in South Africa (1906), or the resistance pf Simon Kimbangu (in the regions of Angola and the Congo), Pan Africanism at the grassroots flourished all over Africa.

In the Americas, the highest expression the Pan African Movement emerged in the forms of Garveyism and the Universal Improvement Association (UNIA). It was one hundred years ago in 1914 when Marcus Garvey popularized the ideas of African liberation among the poor and oppressed workers from the banana plantations in Costa Rica to the elevator operators and domestic workers in New York. The Conventions of the UNIA were major milestones in the Pan African Movement. It was at the 1920 Conventions where the Garveyites issued the ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Negro People of the World.’

The other major Pan African force to emerge at the same time was the meetings and Congresses organized by W.E. B Dubois 1919- 1945 Although the first Pan African Congress had been held in London in 1900, in 1919 DuBois organized what he determined to be the First Pan African Congress in Paris 17-21 February 1919. The meeting was held on the sidelines of the Versailles Conference which re partitioned at the end of World War 1. DuBois and the ‘first’ Congress demanded “The Land (in the colonies) must be preserved, with its natural resources, for the natives, their working conditions must be regarded by the law, and slavery and corporal punishment abolished, as well as forced labour, except for criminals… the natives of Africa must have the rights to participate in governments as rapidly as their development will permit… with the goal that in due time, Africa will be governed with the consent of Africans.”
This theme of independence and self-government for Africans dominated the meetings that Dubois called, the 2nd Congress of 1921 with sessions in London, Brussels and Paris, the 3rd Pan African Congress held in London and Lisbon, 1923, and the 4th Pan African Congress held in New York in 1927.

The Fifth Pan African Congress
During the worse years of the capitalist depression there were many organizational forms of Pan Africanism. The Rastafari movement and the Kimbangist movements were expressions of Pan Africanism at the grassroots. Among intellectuals such as C.L.R James, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Paul Robeson and W. Alphaeus Hunton, Jr., there were formations such as the International African Service Bureau (IASB) and the Council on African Affairs (CAA). The Italian Invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935 elicited a wave of Pan African response all over the world and the 5th Pan African Congress grew out of the galvanized and organized Pan African forces.

The 5th Pan African Congress took place in Manchester, from 15-19 October 1945. This Congress took the decisive stand on colonialism and the racism of that period and set in motion the networks for the independence struggles all over Africa. Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey provided the crucial linkages between the forces of the UNIA conventions and the intellectuals who had been organized in the Council for African Affairs, the West African Students Union (WASU) and the International Africa Service Bureau (IASB). Shirley Graham DuBois was another such force who went on to serve the movement with distinction for decades.

At the 1945, Congress the major forces of decolonization was represented. Along with the above named women the IASB luminaries such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and DuBois, there was Wallace Johnson (Sierra Leone), Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe (Nigeria), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Ken Hill and Dudley Thompson (Jamaica), Hasting Banda (Malawi), Peter Abrahams (South Africa), Ako Adjei (Ghana), Jaja Wachukwu (Nigeria), along with D. M. Harper and Ras T. Makonnen (Guyana). There was a very strong representation of trade unions at this meeting.

One of the limitations of the representation of the 5 Congresses up to 1945 was the silencing of the frontline role played by progressive women. Two children of one of the main organizers of this meeting wrote a book about the male centered narrative of the five Congresses. Their book, In Search of Mr McKenzie : two sisters’ quest for an unknown father, highlighted the limitations of the male centered movement when the men were involved in Progressive Pan African politics in public but in private neglected their families and children. The story of Ernest McKenzie Mavinga, who was a key organizer of the 5th Pan African Congress, has been repeated by Pan Africanist women since the publication of this book in order to highlight the fact that in the written narratives of the Pan African Movement, women have been in the main excluded.

Books on the history of the Pan African Movement by scholars such as Immanuel Geiss wrote black women out of the movement. Women, with the exception of Adelaide Casely-Hayford, Shirley Graham DuBois, Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, were virtually invisible in this history, particularly for the first five Congresses. There were, however, several forthright women who participated in these congresses. Some of the Black women participants in the early Congresses included Annie J. Cooper, Jessie Faucet, Ida Gibbs Hunt and Mary McLeod Bethune. A group of twenty-one women of African descent were the main organizers of the Fourth Pan African Congress, held in New York, 1927. Many of them were members of a women’s organization called “The Circle of Peace and Foreign Relations.” Dorothy Hunton, who was the President of this organization, was involved in the struggle for Pan Africanism for many years.

The Road to the Sixth Pan African Congress
Many of the luminaries of the 5th Pan African Congress went home to join the decolonization struggles being borne by market women, students, workers, poor peasants, ex-soldiers and intellectuals. Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Hastings Banda (Malawi) Obafemi Awolowo was among the more famous of the activists of the Pan African Movement. In 1957, when Ghana became independent, Kwame Nkrumah sought to give Garveyism and Pan Africanism a base, and he proclaimed, “the independence of Ghana is meaningless if it is not linked to the total liberation and continental union of the whole of Africa.”

It was the expectation of W.E.B Dubois that once Ghana was independent the sixth Pan African congress would be called in Ghana. At that time DuBois could not travel because of the harassment and impounding of his passport by the US government. In April1958, Nkrumah along with George Padmore called the All African Peoples Conference in Accra, Ghana. Pan Africanism had finally returned home to Africa. At this meeting 62 nationalist and liberation movements were represented. It was at this meeting where Patrice Lumumba was introduced to the wider Pan African world by A.M. Babu and the delegation from East Africa that had organized the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA).

Among the major Pan African forces and individuals to be represented at that meeting in April 1958 were Frantz Fanon and Ahmed Ben Bella (representing the Algerian liberation struggles), Tom Mboya and A.M Babu (representing East Africa and PAFMECA), T.B. Makonnen, Felix Moumie of the French Cameroons, Roberto Holden (Angola), Modibo Keita (Mali) Joshua Nkomo (Zimbabwe), Oliver Tambo (South Africa), Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia) and Sekou Toure (Guinea). Western imperial forces did not sit idly by as the Pan African forces deliberated on the full decolonization of Africa.

In the face of the independence of Ghana and the liberation struggles in Algeria and Kenya, France worked hard to break up the Rassemblement Democratique Africaine (RDA), which addressed itself to the whole of French West Africa. After the defeat of France in Vietnam in 1954, the leaders of France decided to make a stand in Africa in order to maintain the ‘prestige of France as a ‘world’ power.” Areas of West and Central Africa, which experienced French colonial rule as a unified bloc, witnessed the shameless dismantling of those colonial politics which had a large territorial base. Whereas the French had maintained unity for exploitation, the African petty bourgeoisie lacked the capacity to demand both unity and freedom.

In 1958 in the face of Ghana’s independence President Charles De Gaulle toured the French colonial territories with his famous oui-ou-non (yes-or-no) offer. The offer gave the African colonies two choices: become autonomous states in the French Union, or become immediately and fully independent. De Gaulle actively campaigned for the colonies to join the Union, and only Guinea chose immediate independence. However, by 1960 the French Union had failed and the other French colonies soon gained their independence as well.

This independence was granted on the condition that the societies would remain under French cultural, linguistic, military, commercial and monetary domination. From that time to today these former territories were not allowed monetary independence and their reserves were kept in France. The francophone leaders on the whole accepted French domination and they accepted the Balkanization which led to fragments called Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Niger, Chad, and Central African Republic and so on. Since independence, little or no progress has been registered with respect to reversing this Balkanization. Leaders such as Felix Moumie and movements such as the UPC of the Cameroons were killed.

Imperial machinations to divide the Pan African Movement.
Ghana had become a magnet for Pan Africanism and leaders such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X made pilgrimages to Accra. Maya Angelou was another of the Pan African forces that moved to live in Ghana. While the Nkrumah forces sought to build a coalition for the total independence of Africa in a formation that was to be called the Casablanca Group, western supported organs resisted the idea of an all-African organization and came up with what they called the Monrovia Group under the leadership of William Tubman of Liberia. The Monrovia had convened in Liberia after the radical call of the meeting of African leaders in Morocco in December 1960. The Casablanca group had met in Morocco in December 1960, the year of African Independence, and called for the immediate political union of Africa.

This group included leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gama Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Ben Bella of Algeria, King Mohamed V of Morocco, and Modibo Keita of Mali. This group met in May 1961 in response to the December meeting of 1960 and included leaders from Nigeria, Liberia, Togo, and observers from the French speaking areas. They argued for slow steps to be taken to lead to African unity. One of the primary aims of this group was to oppose the mobilization of an all-African army after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in January 1961. Inside the USA the anti-Communism of the Cold war had created a rupture among Pan Africanists such as Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois, on one side, and others such as Alphaeus Hunton, who became rabid anti-communist. Patrice Lumumba was also characterized as a communist and the British, Belgians and USA conspired to eliminate him.

The USA, France, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Italy and South Africa worked hard to break the cohesion of the Pan African forces and unleashed intellectuals and operatives to undermine the Pan African movement. It was in the wake of this imperial resistance that saw the removal of leaders such as Ben Bella, Nkrumah and Keita.

Dar es Salaam 1974
The Organization of African Unity had been formed in 1963 as a compromise between the Casablanca group and the Monrovia group. Whatever the differences, there were a number of issues that kept the Global Pan African movement together. Two of these issues were the outstanding struggles against racism, apartheid and colonialism and the struggles against Jim Crow and apartheid in the USA. By the 1970s, the forces of African Liberation in Africa and in the Global African family coalesced to organize the 6th Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam, in June 1974.

The themes around which the 6th Pan African Congress was called included total independence and self-determination, unity and self-reliance of Africans in all parts of the world. Central to the theme of self-reliance and self-determination was the question of advancing a command of science and technology. At that historical moment, Tanzania was the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee and Tanzania represented the principal example of self-reliance. The largest delegation of Africans outside of Africa at that Congress was the North American delegation and the forces of the Black liberation movement in the USA that had been organized under the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC). From Brazil Abdias do Nascimento joined the US delegation to Dar es Salaam and after 1974 was an instrumental force in strengthening the Pan African networks in Latin America.

The ideological leadership of the liberation movements from Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and South Africa ensured that the outcomes of the sixth Pan African Congress were focused on material, military, financial and moral support for the last struggles against colonialism and minority rule. Henry Kissinger, Chester Crocker and France colluded with Portugal and the racist apartheid regime to break the solidarity of the Sixth Pan African Congress. From the proxy states allied to Washington and Paris came spokespersons who wanted to speak for the liberation movements.

The declaration of the Sixth Pan African Congress on the support for armed struggles exposed the ideological lead taken by the liberation movements. However, the anti-communist position promoted by France, the USA and South Africa sought to create deep divisions and the depth of this division was manifest in the position of the Pan African Movement over the question of the independence of Angola. Sections of the Pan African Movement carried a racial line and argued after 1975 that the Angolans should not ally with the Cubans to fight against the invading South African Army.

After the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980 the African leaders convened in Nigeria to hammer out the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) incorporating programs and strategies for self-reliance development and cooperation among African countries. In response, the World Bank issued the Berg Report in 1981 and went into over drive to obstruct economic integration. Elliot Berg, the World Bank functionary in this report, argued that the reason why African economies were in difficulty was because of the role of the state in the economy. It was argued that there should be an emphasis on ‘liberating the forces of the market’ in order both to revive exports and improve the incomes of the rural agricultural populace. Structural adjustment and IMF conditionalities strengthened foreign capital in the same measure as it weakened African governments.

The road to the 7th Pan African Congress in Kampala 1994
The defeat of the apartheid army at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988 laid the foundations for a new lease of life in the Global Pan African Movement. In the early 1990s Namibia acceded to its independence and the apartheid regime unbanned the liberation movements (the ANC and PAC) and released Nelson Mandela. This was the milieu in which the 7th Pan African Congress took place in Kampala, Uganda, April 3-8 1994. It was originally scheduled to take place in December 1993 but had to be rescheduled due to lack of sufficient funds to host the meeting and the logistical problems that arose from the lack of funds.

More important, than the shortage of funds were the ideological differences over the future of the Pan African Movement. There were questions as to whether it was possible to hold a Pan African Congress in Uganda. Should African governments be invited? Who is an African? Could activists and opponents of governments take part in the Congress? In fact, there were two motions for the 7th Pan African Congress. Apart from the Kampala Initiative which was driven by A.M Babu and Karrim Esack, there was the Lagos Initiative for the 7th Pan African Congress spearheaded by Naiwu Osahon of Nigeria.

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem who had been recruited by Babu to serve as the core organizer for the Congress has written on the twists and turns between the varying factions that dogged the 7th Congress. This Congress had been called under the broad theme of “Facing the Future of Unity, Social Progress and Democracy.” Those who believed that governments should not be invited to the Congress stayed away. However, all but 17 of the governments boycotted the Congress. Ghana, Libya, Namibia, provided important resources for the 7th Pan African Congress. Most of the governments that had leaders such as Mobutu of Zaire stayed away because these governments feared that the Congress would be dominated by revolutionary groups opposed to dictatorial governments.

With over 2000 delegates, the ideological and political struggles in the wider Pan African world exploded at the plenary sessions of the Congress. The government of Sudan sent one of the largest delegations to the 7th Pan African Congress and sought to direct the proceedings by opposing the participation of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), represented by Joseph Garang who raised the ideas of self-determination.

The other major question that was hotly debated was the question of who is an African. There was one tendency within the 7th PAC that argued that Pan Africanism should only include black Africans along with the African descendants in the wider African Family outside of Africa. This tendency opposed what they called continentalism and the inclusion of Africans of Indian descent (such as Gora Ibrahim, who was the spokesperson for the Pan African Congress of Azania).

Many of the discussions on the 7th Pan African Congress were recorded in the text, Pan Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty First Century. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem was elected Secretary General of the Secretariat that was established in Kampala, and he exposed the differing ideological positions of the members who comprised the International Preparatory Committee of the Congress. Tajudeen and Babu worked diligently to ensure that despite the wide differences, the Congress could accommodate those who supported the progressive traditions of Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X. Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Amy Jacques Garvey, Bob Marley and Patrice Lumumba.

Betty Shabbazz, the widow of Malcolm X was one of the many prominent leaders who articulated the need for women’s leadership in the Pan African movement. This Congress reaffirmed the question of the full unification of Africa and established a permanent secretariat of the Pan African movement to advance the cause of African liberation and the total elimination of colonialism. The congress took place in the same month when the historic elections took place in South Africa in 1994 to end formal colonial rule and elect Nelson Mandela as president.

The Pan African Women Liberation Organization and the 7th Pan African Congress
In the meetings of the preparatory Committee there were intense debates about the history of the Pan African Movement and the silencing of women within the movement. Progressive women reminded the participants of the history of women in the movement and the lessons that should be learnt from the book, In Search of Mr. McKenzie. The Progressive forces of the IPC and the Progressive women worked hard for the Convening of the women’s Congress within the Pan African Congress. This Women’s Congress was held for one full day pre-congress, and out of this woman’s meeting emerged the Pan African Women’s Liberation Organization (PAWLO).

Organizing women in the context of Pan Africanism was not new. On the 31st July 1962 the Conference of African Women (CAF) was created in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Out of that meeting emerged the first Pan African Women Organization (PAWO). In July 1974 one month after the 6th Pan African Congress there was another Conference of African Women which was held in Dakar (Senegal) in July 1974. It was in Senegal where the 31st July was designated African Women Day. This division between Senegal and Tanzania in 1974 represented some of the same divisions that had existed between the Casablanca Groups and the Monrovia Group. In Senegal at the time there were leaders who were unsupportive of armed struggles against apartheid.

The major limitation of PAWO, however, was that by the time of the growth of the international women’s movement, PAWO became the forum for the wives of the very same repressive leaders who were oppressing African women. Miriam Babingida, wife of the dictator Ibrahim Babingida of Nigeria was the poster child of the first wives club that sought to speak on behalf of oppressed women. Her organizational vehicle for manipulating the principles of women’s liberation was “Better Life for Rural Women.”

PAWLO emerged from the ranks of the progressive women and men at the 7th Pan African Congress. Fatima Babiker Mahmoud, from Sudan, was elected the First President of PAWLO and in her address to the Congress she held that, “As African Women, we share a common history. We have similar challenges to face and a bitter future to look forward to. On this basis, it is important to stress our similarities rather than differences, if we are to achieve any meaningful change.”

PAWLO was established to implement the women’s action plans that had come out of the resolutions of the Congress. PAWLO brought together African women from the continent, from the oppressed societies in North America and Europe in a forum of their own for the first time in the history of Pan African Congresses. The resolutions of the PAWLO Congress agreed to bring together women with the objective of liberation in a common program and sustained action of work for improving the situation of African women.

The Road to the 8th Pan African Congress
The Resolutions and planning from the 7th Pan African Congress reinforced the stand for the full unification of Africa and the end of colonial rule. Apart from the emergence of PAWLO, the other major advance of the 7th Pan African Congress was to place the question of Reparations at the Center of the Pan African Congress Movement. The movement for Reparative justice has been a central component of the Pan African liberation movement and in every period of Pan Africanism the call for reparative justice rang out.

After the massive global struggles against apartheid the same forces that spearheaded the Free South Africa campaign spearheaded the Reparations Movement. This global struggle resulted in the establishment of the Eminent Persons Group on Reparations of the OAU chaired by Chief Moshod Abiola. It was this global pressure for reparative justice that pushed the South African leadership to host the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) in Durban in 2001.

Imperialism became alert to the progressive character of the Pan African movement that was informed by Pan Africanism of the people. Using pliant citizens of African descent within the imperial centers, such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, the USA worked hard to oppose the world conference against racism and to ensure that the program of action could not be supported among governments. It was in Latin America where the reparations forces among the Africa descendants caucus became a new force within the politics of Latin America. There were many efforts of the opponents of Pan Africanism in Africa but by far the most far reaching was to coopt the young and articulate in the NGO fad that became the weapon of neo-liberalism in Africa. Neo-liberalism opposed governments of all kinds and this anti-government positon served those who wanted to end state expenditures on social services.

Within the Pan African Movement the question of how to organize against oppressive governments gave way to the call for the end of big Congresses and instead to support the peoples movements in the streets, the villages and townships all over the Pan African world. By the end of the twentieth century the progressive wing of the Pan African movement had merged with the reparations movement, progressive workers movements, the anti-dictatorship movement, the peace movement, the anti-globalization movement, progressive women’s forum and the environmental justice movements.

The HIV AIDS pandemic dictated that there would be a strong movement for health care in the Pan African world and organizations such as the Treatment Action Campaign developed new techniques of mobilization and organization to oppose the western pharmaceutical companies that wanted the HIV AIDS virus to be a death sentence for Africans. Pan Africanists such as Wangari Mathai of the Green belt Movement embodied the maturation of such forces, and one new Pan African front that emerged in the 21st century was the Pan African Climate Justice Movement. In Latin America in societies such as Bolivia, Colombia and Brazil, the anti-racist and climate justice forces were making an impact on the progressive movements internationally.

The Libyan question, the unification of Africa and the Pan African Movement
Nelson Mandela worked hard after 1994 to oppose genocidal violence and genocidal politics in Africa. As a leader, who had been designated as a ’terrorist,’ Mandela mediated to end the sanctions against Libya. In appreciation, the President of Libya called the extraordinary meeting of the OAU at Sirte in 1999 and decided to set in motion the number one resolution of the 7th Pan African Congress, that there should be an African Union. Within two years the Constitutive Act of the African Union was written, ratified and the AU came into being in 2002. The major difference between the AU and the OAU was the right of the AU to intervene in cases of genocide, gross violation of human rights and crimes against humanity. By 2004 there was the establishment of the Pan African Parliament but the main political leaders of Africa were afraid of this Parliament becoming a representative body.
The AU represented the culmination of decades of struggle and work that had gone into plans such as the:

•Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) and the Final Act of Lagos (1980);
•The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (Nairobi 1981) and the Grand Bay Declaration and Plan of Action on Human rights.
•Africa’s Priority Programme for Economic recovery (APPER) – 1985: an emergency programme designed to address the development crisis of the 1980s, in the wake of protracted drought and famine that had engulfed the continent and the crippling effect of Africa’s external indebtedness.
•OAU Declaration on the Political and Socio-Economic Situation in Africa and the Fundamental Changes.
•The Charter on Popular Participation adopted in 1990:
•The Treaty establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) – 1991: commonly known as the Abuja Treaty.
•The Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution (1993)
•Cairo Agenda for Action (1995): a programme for relaunching Africa’s political, economic and social development.
•African Common Position on Africa’s External Debt Crisis (1997): a strategy for addressing the Continent’s External Debt Crisis.
•The Algiers decision on Unconstitutional Changes of Government (1999) and the Lome Declaration on the framework for an OAU Response to Unconstitutional Changes (2000).
•The 2000 Solemn Declaration on the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation: establishes the fundamental principles for the promotion of Democracy and Good Governance in the Continent.

One of the major advances of the AU over the OAU was the incorporation of the Global African Family (called the Diaspora) as the 6th region of the African Union. There were mechanisms set in motion to work out representation for the African descendants outside of Arica in the African Union.

The Pan African movement of the streets and villages did not wait on governments to give them the rights of freedom of movement. Traders and workers all across Africa claimed freedom of movement and opposed the maintenance of the borders erected at Berlin. Cultural workers and creative artists from Africa and in the Global African Family strengthened the bonds of the Pan African Movement. The enemies of Pan Africanism and Reparative justice went overboard to demonize the leader of Libya and to represent the goals of African Unification as if this came from the head of Gaddafi, discounting the long struggles for African redemption and Unity since the period of Marcus Garvey and Kwame Nkrumah. The demonization and opposition to the unification of Africa was seen on full display in 2007 when there was the Grand Debate about forming the Union Government and the United States of Africa. Under the Constitutive Act of 2001 there had been timetables for the development of an African Monetary System, the African Central Bank and the Common Currency.

Just as in the division between the Casablanca group and the Monrovia Group there were some leader who called for a gradual approach to establish the Regional Economic Communities (REC) as opposed to continental Communities of Africans. This faction of the African leadership argued for gradual unity. Whatever the differences, however, the political leaders of Africa were brought to an awareness of the plans of external forces when NATO invaded Libya in 2011 under the idea of humanitarian intervention. The military destruction of Libya and the assassination and humiliation of President Gaddafi created a new sense of urgency for the rekindling of a strong Pan African movement. From 2012 there were meetings and consultations about the holding of the 8th Pan African Congress.

Pressures for clarity of the goals of the Pan African Movement
Just as how at the 7th Pan African Congress in Kampala there were other initiatives such as the Lagos Initiative, so since 2014 there were parallel initiatives for the Pan African Congress movement. The governments of South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica and Senegal held numerous meetings that brought together intellectuals, economists and other branches of the Pan African Movement. In 2006, there was a major initiative to host a Pan African congress in in Zimbabwe but there was very little agreement about the efficacy of Zimbabwe hosting Pan Africanists of all political persuasions. There were many new formations in the Pan African world such as the African Mathematical Union and African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) that focused on building continental networks among Africans at home and abroad.

As in the Kampala meetings of 1994, one continuing debate was about who is an African. Although the emergence of PAWLO had in many ways settled the new challenges, there were those who opposed the continenatalist line of Pan Africanism. This brand of Pan Africanism based on exclusion went about the organizing of a meeting in a room with specially invited guests and called this the 8th Pan African Congress. It was the view of many of those attending that the AU and its membership of African governments cannot be part of the Pan African movement. The question of the relationship with Africans who lived in the North of Africa was a major point of difference between the forces that claimed the mantle of the 8th Pan African Congress.
The African Union and the Call for the 8th Pan African Congress.

In 2009, Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, the General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement passed away. Even before his passing the future of the Pan African Secretariat was in limbo as a result of the nature of the politics of Uganda. This politics polluted the goals of the movement and diminished the Global Pan African Movement in the eyes of many. Wars in the Congo and military clashes between the armies of Rwanda and Uganda in the Democratic Republic of the Congo exposed how far these leaders had departed from the goals of peace and reconstruction.

At the 2012 meeting of Pan Africanists to remember Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, there was a committee established to work to build the 8th Pan African Congress in Accra, Ghana and to link the movement back to the Nkrumah goals of full unification and emancipation. This goal was reaffirmed in 2013 when the AU celebrated its 50 years of unity and explicitly determined to bring back the Pan African Movement and Pan African agenda into the AU. These meetings in Addis Ababa brought out the reaffirmation of the vision of the African Union as that of: “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in global arena.”

A series of meetings were held with the surviving members of the International Governing Council and it was agreed to request the government of Ghana to host the 8th Pan African Congress and for a relocation of the Secretariat from Uganda to Accra, Ghana. By June 2014, there was an agreement on the Call for the 8th Pan African Congress emanating from the IGC.
Stressing the mantra of the 7th Pan African Congress that there should be mass based organization, the call went out to all organizations and individuals to participate at the congress scheduled to be held in Accra, Ghana, 4-9 November 2014. The Call noted that “in keeping with the broad character of all previous congresses, 1900-1994, will be open to all shades of opinion, groups and individuals in the whole Pan African world. In addition, African governments on the continent and in the Diaspora will participate on an equal footing with other delegates. The African Union and its organs and institutions as well as regional economic blocs and platforms will also participate.

Recognizing the African Union vision of “Peace, Prosperity and Unity”, the broad theme of the Congress is: “The Pan-African World We Want: Building a people’s movement for just, accountable and inclusive structural transformation.”

Although there are 19 different agenda items mentioned in the “Call” there is considerable overlap. Democracy, governance, popular democracy, African citizenship, justice, social justice, reparative justice, ecology and environment, are all mentioned in at least two separate agenda points. It is possible to cluster the agenda points to the following ten main points.

1. The Full Unification of the Continent of Africa and complete freedom of Movement of the people with accelerated planning for the Union Government.
2. Global Rights for the African at home and abroad. Thus includes the rights to collective bargaining, the access to health care, to decent and relevant education, the rights to decent housing, rights to water and social and economic rights
3. Environmental repair and work to reverse the destruction of planet earth along with the environmental racism of the current social system.
4. Gender Equity, of Women – Emancipation of women and humanization of the male Gender Equity and the reconstruction of the African family
5. Peace, Anti-imperialism and demilitarization of Africa and African communities globally
6. Infrastructure for sustainable transformation: including canals, roads, rail, bridges ICT connectivity and an interconnected grid for energy generation
7. The anti-racist struggles and struggles for the Global African Family living outside of Africa, especially the disenfranchised Africans in South America and other parts of the Americas.
8. Reparative Justice and building of the Reparations movement for the claims of those who suffered from enslavement and other crimes against humanity
9. Ending colonialism- especially the last outstanding vestiges of colonialism in Africa and the colonial outposts in the Caribbean.
10. Secularism and the rights of peoples for religious freedom and expression without coercion.

Conclusions
After the 1935 invasion of Abyssinia by the Italians, there was urgency within the Pan African Movement to build the independence movement. The 5th Pan African Congress brought an alliance between the differing forces to inspire the decolonization process. Many of the leaders of the 5th Pan African Congress went home to their societies and reneged on one of the cardinal principles of Pan Africanism, ’that the peoples of one part of Africa are responsible for the freedom of their brothers and sisters in other parts of Africa and, indeed black people everywhere were to accept the same responsibility. “In his document written on the eve of the Pan African Congress, Walter Rodney wrote that the “African petty bourgeois leadership since independence has been an obstacle to the further development of the African revolution.”

Rodney himself was assassinated in Guyana in 1981, by a political leadership which claimed to be in the forefront of Pan African ideals. By 1980, Walter Rodney had made the clear point that Pan Africanism cannot be based on exclusion, because everywhere in the Pan African world there were Africans living in multi-ethnic and multi-racial societies. In South Africa a new philosophy of Ubuntu emerged to anchor the Pan Africanism of the 21st century to affirm the position that Pan Africanism was linked to human emancipation. This concept of the liberation of humanity became even clearer when big companies claimed the right to patent life forms and the convergence of biotechnology and nanotechnology gave corporations power to invent life.

At the end of the Cold War there had been a resurgence of radical Pan Africanism with the progressive African women at the forefront. The struggles against gender violence, warfare, destruction, and violation had taken the Pan African discussion to a new level. With the emergence of fundamentalist forces who wanted to control the minds and bodies of women, there was also the clarity of the need for a secular Pan African movement that was rooted in deep African spirituality. When a militarist groups such as Boko Haram emerged in Nigeria and promised to sell young girls into slavery, the progressive women were re-energized and began to build new pan African networks against the oppressive governments and the women who legitimized these governments. Pan Africanists such as Ifi Amadiume and Micere Mugo sought to, as it were, re-envision Pan Africanism. Micere Mugo in her essay on Re-Envisioning Pan Africanism: What is the role of gender, youth and the masses,” noted that,

“…though not cited in intellectual discourses that have so far come to be the literary cannon on Pan-Africanism, in their activism, as well as participation, women were and have always been the heart of the Pan-Africanism’s essence, or if you like, substance. My point is that Pan-Africanism may be seen as manifesting itself in two major ways, which are equally important: through the movement itself and through its lived aspects. As a movement, Pan-Africanism has been characterized by fluctuation, registering bouts of life and dormant lulls. On the other hand, its lived aspects, actual substance, or essence, have always remained alive and persistent over historical time. Ordinary people, or the masses, including the majority of Africana women, have been the key keepers or carriers of this essence.”

It is this emancipatory approach to Pan Africanism that is informing one section of the forces that carry forward the Pan African Movement. Cultural workers in all parts of Africa are in the leadership and carry forward the traditions of creativity that had bene expressed by cultural artists such as Fela Ransome Kuti, Paul Robeson, Hugh Masakela, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Tupac Shakur and Bob Marley. It was Bob Marley who, through both the medium and the message, called for a conception of African unity and human freedom which was linked to the emancipation from mental slavery. Bob Marley was another notable Pan-African spokesperson of the century, who wanted to transcend racial divisions, with a universal message of African unity, love, peace and human emancipation. Africans and non-Africans alike embraced his music and ideas and his message of Pan African emancipation was an inspiration to all of humanity. The challenge for Pan Africanism in the twenty first century is to take the conception of emancipation beyond the material plane to grasp the limits of the human potential imposed by the eugenic civilization of the contemporary period.

In 2011 the peoples of Egypt and Tunisia launched a new phase of popular struggles for global rights. Since these interventions external forces have doubled down to hijack the liberatory processes in Africa. War situations, the arming of militias and external forces plundering Africa dominated the news out of Africa while among Africans overseas the rise of racism, xenophobia and exclusion demanded new forms of solidarity in the struggles for peace and social justice. The call for the 8th Pan African Congress offered now opportunities to rebuild the emancipatory traditions.

There were many new and creative forms of organizing and communicating that emerged in the period of the information revolution. After the destruction of NATO the imperial forces doubled down to harness the tools of social media to create confusion, doubt and insecurity among the youth. Conservative and militaristic leaders employed tools of regionalism, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation to disorient the producing classes. Schools and places of learning became centers for intimidation and obscene competition while religious zealots torment communities with divisive energies. It was from Latin America with more than 150 million Africans where there was a call for a new movement for emancipation and transformation. The social forces that are coalescing for the 8th Pan African Congress are seeking to learn the positive lessons of the movement in order to build a strong force for the full freedom of Africa in the 21st century.

*Dr. Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. A member of the Pan African Congress International Planning Committee, he is the author of Rasta and Resistance From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. His most recent book is Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya: Lessons for the Forging of African Unity. Dr. Campbell’s other books includes Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation.