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The Osagyefo, the Mwalimu, and Pan-Africanism: a Study in the Growth of a Dynamic Concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Opoku Agyeman
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Extract

The notion of African continental government has run the gauntlet of criticism and ridicule in its day. Not a few African ‘moderate’ or conservative leaders and their agreeable tribe of western scholars have been only too keen to fire broadsides at it from time to time. Thus, Nigeria's Abubakar Balewa saw it as a ‘nightmare’; a union government, he said, ‘might come, so might world government’. To Dennis Austin the pan-African movement – ‘in its fundamentalist-Nkrumaistic sense of a united Africa’ – is ‘plainly chimerical’.1 And Scott Thompson, not to be outdone, saw the whole thing as ‘essentially a mirage’ – the ‘myth of Eden’ – and the endeavour towards it as one of ‘chasing the whirlwind ’.2

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Articles
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The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 653 - 675
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

Page 653 note 1 Austin, Dennis, ‘Pan-Africanism, 1957–1966’, in Austin, D. and Weiler, H. N. (eds.), Inter–State Relations in Africa (Freiburg, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 653 note 2 Thompson, Scott, Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957–1966 (Princeton, 1969), p. 432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 653 note 3 Ibid. p. 242.

Page 653 note 4 Nyerere, Julius K., ‘State Visit to Mali’, 04 1965,Google Scholar in Freedom and Unity/Uhuru na Umoja: a selection from writings and speeches, 1952–65 (Dar es Salaam, 1966), p. 327.

Page 654 note 1 Nyerere, ‘The Nature and Requirements of African Unity’, July 1965, in ibid. p. 350.

Page 654 note 2 Nyerere, , ‘Equality in Sovereign Relationships’, 06 1968, in Freedom and Development/ Uhuru na Maendeleo: a selection from writings and speeches, 1968–1973 (Dares Salaam, 1973), p. 43.Google Scholar

Page 654 note 3 All these threads of Kwame Nkrumah's thoughts on Union government have been taken from I Speak of Freedom: a statement of African ideology (London, 1962), pp. xi–xii, 220–1, and 248; and Africa Must Unite (London, 1963), p. 170. His 1963, 1964, and 1965 O.A.U. speeches are to be found in Revolutionary Path (New York, 1973), pp. 229–48, 276–97, and 298–309.

Page 655 note 1 See the following for Julius Nycrere's gradualist approach: Freedom and Socialism! Uhuru na Ujamaa: a selection from writings and speeches, 1965–67 (Dar es Salaam, 1968), pp. 214–15; and Freedom and Unity, pp. 20, 190–1, and 349. An abridged version of his 1963 and 1964 O.A.U. speeches are to be found in ibid. pp. 215–17 and 300–4.

Page 656 note 1 Nkrumah, , Revolutionary Path, pp. 229–48 and 276–97.Google Scholar

Page 656 note 2 Ibid.

Page 657 note 1 Nkrumah, , Africa Must Unite, pp. 214–15.Google Scholar

Page 657 note 2 Mazrui, Ali A., Towards a Fax Africana: a study of ideology and ambition (London, 1967), p. 17.Google Scholar

Page 657 note 3 Nkrumah, , Africa Must Unite, p. 215.Google Scholar

Page 657 note 4 Mazrui, op. cit. p. 71.

Page 657 note 5 See his letter to Douglas Rogers published in Nkrumah, Kwame, Deception of Africa (Accra, Ghana Ministry of Education, 1966),Google Scholar exhibit Z. For the opinion of The Ghanaian Times (Accra) on this matter, see Thompson, op. cit. p. 339. Cf. also Agyeman, Opoku, ‘Kwame Nkrumah's Impact on the East African Federation Proposal: a study in a negative form of external influence’, York University, Ontario, 11 1973.Google Scholar

Page 658 note 1 Nyerere, , ‘The Nature and Requirements of African Unity’, 03 1965,Google Scholar in Freedom and Unity, p. 348.

Page 658 note 2 But, one might ask, was this a sufficient basis on which to expect that regional loyalties would expand to encompass the continent? Besides, it is to be noted that in some cases it might be easier for a man to surrender his tribalism to a united Africa than to a nation or even a regional federation of nations. Thus, for instance, Pan-Africa: journal of African life and thought (Manchester), 15, 1 11 1963,Google Scholar pointed out that the Somalis were ‘more likely to abandon their dispute with Kenya if Kenya, together with Somalia and all her neighbours, is prepared to surrender on a reciprocal basis some substantial measure of sovereignty to Pan-African Unity’.

Page 658 note 3 Nyerere, , ‘The Nature and Requirements of African Unity’, in Freedom and Unity, pp. 346–8.Google Scholar

Page 659 note 1 Nyerere, ‘Republic Day Broadcast, 1963’, in ibid. pp. 252–60.

Page 659 note 2 Nyerere, ‘African Unity – O.A.U. Cairo’, July 1964, in ibid. p. 301.

Page 659 note 3 Thompson, op. cit. p. 437.

Page 659 note 4 Ibid. p. 356.

Page 659 note 5 See Nyc, Joseph, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 95.Google Scholar

Page 660 note 1 For Nyerere's statement to the Trusteeship Council, 18 June 1957, see Freedom and Unity, pp. 45–7.

Page 660 note 2 Newsweek (New York), 20 05 1968.Google Scholar

Page 660 note 3 Nyerere, , ‘A United States of Africa’, 01 1963, in Freedom and Unity, p. 191.Google Scholar

Page 660 note 4 For Nkrumah's views on ‘sovereignty’, see Axioms (London, 1967), p. 13Google ScholarChallenge of the Congo (London, 1967), p. 193;Google ScholarAfrica Must Unite, p. 217; and his 1963 O.A.U. speech in Revolutionary Path, pp. 229–48.

Page 661 note 1 Nkrumah, , I Speak of Freedom, pp. 221–2.Google Scholar

Page 661 note 2 Thompson, op. cit. p. 350.

Page 661 note 3 Nkrumah, , Africa Must Unite, p. 205.Google Scholar

Page 662 note 1 Nyerere, , ‘The Nature and Requirements of African Unity’, in Freedom and Unity, pp. 340–1.Google Scholar

Page 662 note 2 Nyerere, ‘African Unity – O.A.U. Cairo’, in ibid. p. 301.

Page 663 note 1 Nyerere, ‘The Nature and Requirements of African Unity’, in ibid. p. 335.

Page 663 note 2 Nyerere, ‘A United States of Africa’, in ibid. p. 194.

Page 663 note 3 Nyerere, , ‘The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist’, 07 1966, in Freedom and Socialism, p. 252.Google Scholar

Page 663 note 4 Ibid. p. 211.

Page 663 note 5 Nkrumah's speech to the 1960 Positive Action Conference in Accra is cited by Cohn, Legum in Pan-A fricanism: a short political guide (London, 1962), p. 44.Google Scholar It was Nkruniah's wont to pronounce such a maximal commitment to this cause –for example: ‘I have always said that for me, the issue of African unity came before any other consideration.’ Dark Days in Ghana (London, 1968), p. 37.Google Scholar

Page 664 note 1 Nyerere, , ‘The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist’, in Freedom and Socialism, p. 216.Google Scholar This is a viewpoint that was to be invoked by a number of scholars to explain Nkrumah's domestic failures. Dennis Austin, for instance, was to say of the break in C.P.P. unity that this was the result of Nkrumah's own neglect: ‘He was absorbed in Pan-African schemes’. Politics in Ghana, 1946–1960 (London, 1964), p. 402.Google Scholar Peter Omari makes the point that if Nkrumah had expended ‘more energy on correcting domestic economic difficulties rather than on building an international image as the sole champion of African Unity, Ghanaians would have suffered him for several more years.’ Then, even more bluntly, he points out that ‘Nkrumah sacrificed Ghana on the altar of PanAfricanism.’ Kwame Nkrumah: the anatomy of an African dictatorship (Accra, 1970), pp. 162–3.Google Scholar Scott Thompson narrates, in relation to Nkrumah's preoccupations with the 1965 O.A.U summit in Accra, that ‘important objectives in the domestic sector were pushed aside, and Nkrumah told one visitor that this was done because they would be irrelevant or redundant when union government was achieved.’ Op. cit. p. 358. And from Selwyn Ryan: ‘Nkrumah did dream more of Africa than of Ghana which he saw as a showcase and an operational base for the advancement of his African ambitions’. ‘Socialism and the Party System in Ghana, 1947–1966’, in Pan-African Journal (New York), III, I, Winter, 1970.Google Scholar According to Richard Rathbone: ‘The remoteness from the domestic scene, indicated by a greater involvement in extra-Ghanaian affairs, undermined his [Nkrumah's] greatest personal and political advantages.’ Personality and Power: studies in political advancement, a B.B.C. radio series edited by Graham Tayar.

Page 664 note 2 Nye, , Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, pp. 198–9.Google Scholar

Page 665 note 1 Nyerere, , ‘The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist’, in Freedom and Socialism, p. 211.Google Scholar

Page 665 note 2 Nkrumah, Kwame, Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare: a guide to the armed phase of the African revolution (London, 1968), p. 25.Google Scholar

Page 665 note 3 Nkruxnah, , Africa Must Unite, p. 189.Google Scholar His all-out commitment to continent-building was very much endorsed by Rustow, Dankward A., World of Nations: problems of political modernization (Washington, 1967),Google Scholar in which he argues that the world is moving into a crisis where the continuation of its modernisation depends on finding new institutions that transcend and transform the nation-state; that the parts of the world which have both the greatest need and the best chance to devise them are those where the nation-state has developed least; and that of all such parts, Africa has the greatest need and the best chance of all. ‘A nationalist economic policy, in the sense of “nationalist”, is one which seeks to foster first and foremost the presumed common economic interests of citizens against those of outsiders; such a policy is simply not compatible with establishing wider economic ties and larger units. You cannot have it both ways.’ See Oburoni Muntu's review of this book in Legon Observer (Accra), V, 10, 05 1970, p. 10.Google Scholar For a contrary opinion, see Legum, Cohn, ‘Nationalism's Impact on Pan-Africanism’, in East Africa Journal (Nairobi), 04 1965.Google Scholar Although in European thinking the two forces of nationalism and pan-Africanism are automatically seen as irreconcilable, in the African context, Legum points out, this is not so because in their origins they are not antagonistic. ‘They stem not from different but from the same ideas and feelings – a desire to be free from alien rule, to create a new role for the African in Africa and for Africa in the world, and to build new states and societies in Africa… Each of these two forces should therefore be seen to be intrinsically concerned with ideas of political unification, though at different levels.’ In 1963, for instance, it was African nationalism ‘which produced a Pan-Africanist organisation – the O.A.U.– which seeks to regulate the affairs and promote the interests of the entire continent. To this extent it must be conceded that despite the obvious paradoxes between African nationalism and Pan-Africanism these two forces are still moving in the same direction with each influencing the other and often strengthening it.’ But is it not the case that the pan-Africanism of the O.A.U. is the kind which postulates no direct threat to national sovereignty, since all the O.A.U. does is to provide for continental co-operation as between sovereign independent states? Will pan-Africanism. be able to maintain its thrust once the nation-states have had a chance to become stronger, when nationalism begins to freeze into nationality, when frontiers have become permanent, and sovereignty has become sovereignly important? It is on this crucial question that Legum's thesis of ‘harmonious paradoxes’ founders.

Page 666 note 1 Nkrumah, , Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, p. 28.Google Scholar

Page 666 note 2 Hodgkin, Thomas, ‘What It Would Be Like To Live in an African Union’, in Africa and the World (London), I, 10 1964.Google Scholar

Page 666 note 3 Cited by Thompson, op. cit. p. 347.

Page 667 note 1 See Nye, op. cit. p. 45.

Page 667 note 2 Mazrui, Ali, ‘Ideas and Idolatry in African Diplomacy: the age of Nkrumah and the last years of Charles de Gaulle’, Makerere University, Kampala, 1971, mimeographed.Google Scholar

Page 667 note 3 Ghana Today (Accra), VIII, 21, 16 12 1964.Google Scholar

Page 668 note 1 Grundy, Kenneth and Weinstein, M., ‘Nkrumah and Political Uses of Imagination’, inTransition (Kampala), VI, 30 04/05 1967.Google Scholar

Page 668 note 2 Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) was ‘the first great’ American nationalist.

Page 668 note 3 Grundy and Weinstein, loc. cit.

Page 668 note 4 Nkrumah's, 1964 O.A.U. speech in Revolutionary Path, pp. 276–97.Google Scholar

Page 668 note 5 Nyerere, , ‘African Unity – O.A.U. Cairo’, in Freedom and Unity, p. 302.Google Scholar

Page 668 note 6 Nyerere, , ‘The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist’, in Freedom and Socialism, p. 212.Google Scholar

Page 668 note 7 Nyerere, , ‘The Nature and Requirements of African Unity’, in Freedom and Unity, p. 346.Google Scholar ‘Directive imagination and enlightened debate’, write Grundy and Weinstein, loc. cit. ‘are to a great extent, functional alternatives. The one uses emotionally-charged symbols and the other an appeal to reason to accomplish the same purpose of mobilsation.’ In an era when the pace of change is so much more rapid than it was in the eighteenth century, there is much to say for leaders who increasingly turn to the symbolic even if they would prefer the rational approach. ‘It is in the context of the exigencies of modernisation that Nkrumah must be understood’. As also Frankel, Joseph writes, ‘Emotions and not intellect provide the dynamic force in history’, in The Makings of Foreign Policy (London, 1963), p. 170.Google Scholar

Page 670 note 1 Franck, T. M., ‘East African Federation’, in Franck, (ed.), Why Federations Fail (New York, 1968), p. 31.Google Scholar

Page 671 note 1 Nyerere, , ‘A New Look at Conditions for Unity’, 04 1967, in Freedom and Socialism, p. 298.Google Scholar

Page 671 note 2 Nyerere, , ‘The Nature and Requirements of African Unity’, in Freedom and Unity, p. 346.Google Scholar

Page 671 note 3 Nyerere, ‘East African Federation’, June 1960, in ibid. p. 88.

Page 671 note 4 Ibid. pp. 92–3.

Page 671 note 5 Ibid. p. 93.

Page 672 note 1 The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 22 07 1964.Google Scholar

Page 672 note 2 West Africa (London), 16 03 1968, p. 310.Google Scholar

Page 672 note 3 The Nationalist, 11 November 1966.

Page 672 note 4 Nyerere, , ‘A New Look at Conditions for Unity’, in Freedom and Socialism, p. 291.Google Scholar

Page 672 note 5 Nyerere, , ‘Addis Ababa Conference, 1963’, in Freedom and Unity, p. 217.Google Scholar

Page 673 note 1 Nyerere, , ‘A New Look at Conditions for Unity’, in Freedom and Socialism, p. 292.Google Scholar

Page 673 note 2 Ibid.

Page 673 note 3 Ibid. p. 298.

Page 673 note 4 Ibid. pp. 291–2.

Page 673 note 5 Ibid. p. 294. Or, as he put it in the Ivory Coast the following year, ‘It is no use our waiting for differences of approach, or of political belief, to disappear before we think of working for unity in Africa. They will not disappear.’ The Nationalist, 27 02 1968.Google Scholar

Page 674 note 1 Ibid. 4 March 1968.

Page 674 note 2 Nyerere, , ‘Unity Must Be Worked For’, 01 1968, in Freedom and Development, p. 16.Google Scholar

Page 674 note 3 Interview with Jeune Afrique just before the O.A.U. meeting in Accra, referred to by Wallerstein, Immanuel, Africa: the politics of unity (New York, 1967), pp. 103 and 171.Google Scholar

The link between Africa's total liberation and unity is, of course, obvious. At the 1964 O.A.U. meeting in Cairo, Nkrumah had taken the Liberation Committee – based in Dar es Salaam – to task, saying that he would be failing in his duty to the freedom fighters, and to the cause of African liberation, if he remained silent about the ‘general dissatisfaction’ which existed regarding the functioning of it. The work of the Committee was ‘admittedly one of stupendous magnitude with stupendous difficulties’, yet some of its failures were ‘inexcusable because they were unnecessary’. In short, the ‘frequent and persistent’ reports from freedom fighters about the shortcomings of the aid and facilities for training offered to them ‘makes it impossible for the government of Ghana to turn over its contribution to the Committee until a reorganisation has taken place for more effective and positive action.’

In reply, Nyerere proposed to pay little attention to ‘these accusations…made by the only country which has not paid a single penny to the Committee since its establishment. Nor did Nkrumah's decision not to pay, as Nyerere saw it, have anything to do with the in efficiency of the Committee: ‘It was taken before the Committee started its work and the reason was extremely petty’, being that the inaugural Conference committed the ‘unforgivable crime’ of not including Ghana in the Committee and of choosing Dares Salaam as its headquarters:‘This is the reason for the petty peevishness which prevents one brother country from paying funds to help our brothers in Mozambique, Angola, and Portuguese Guinea.’

Page 675 note 1 The Nationalist, 6 March 1968.

Page 675 note 2 Africa and the World, IV, 44, 06–07 1968.Google Scholar

Page 675 note 3 Ibid. II, 14, November 1965.

Page 675 note 4 Legum, loc. cit.