Pan-Africanism.
Today, we had the pleasure of having an online lecture by Prof. PLO Lumumba who was speaking on Pan-Africanism. I'm a Pan-Africanist by nature myself despite coming from a very reserved background where the people around me did not appreciate anything foreign.
The problem with the way many people speak of Pan-Africanism today is that it's almost self-defeating. Just because we're all black, doesn't mean we'll all get along. As I write this blog atrocious crimes are happening in Ambazonia in Cameroon by the government of President Paul Biya. The Ambazonia killings are not even because of ethnic differences, they are between French speakers & English speakers. Both groups are black, English & French are European languages to top it off. Africans can be divided by something as petty as that. As much as we dream of this "United States of Africa", it just simply won't work in a continent where people still practice & believe in witchcraft.
Another example was in Zimbabwe where the Ndebele were killed by the government of Robert Mugabe. The ZANU-PF did the Gukurahundi Massacres in Zimbabwe. Again, these were ethnic squabbles.
My point here is I think we need a plan, if we simply do away borders in Africa (even though they were imposed by foreign powers) we could have a bloodbath. It's just going to be ugly & will lead to the very same nationalist sentiments that are so strongly rejected by many of Africa's leftist governments.
Perhaps getting rid of Africa's borders is a clever plan by those in rule to relinquish responsibility of their mistakes & have random foreigners competing for the already non-existent resources in the more affluent African countries to take attention away from their misgovernance because they have resources to leave the continent if things go bad for them.
Before a United States of Africa though, I think we need to decolonise Africa & revert back to our former selves & get the colonisation dirt off of us so we can start anew from where things are said to have gone wrong for us. This includes creating nation states that:-
• Have their own writing systems
• Have their own dress code
• Embrace their own indigenous languages
• Have their own systems of governance
If we wean ourselves off of Western systems as in the above four points, it could be the first step in reclaiming our dignity as the black (brown) race. If we can decolonise ourselves, it will be easier for us to embrace other Africans as well as other foreigners.
The problem with the way many people speak of Pan-Africanism today is that it's almost self-defeating. Just because we're all black, doesn't mean we'll all get along. As I write this blog atrocious crimes are happening in Ambazonia in Cameroon by the government of President Paul Biya. The Ambazonia killings are not even because of ethnic differences, they are between French speakers & English speakers. Both groups are black, English & French are European languages to top it off. Africans can be divided by something as petty as that. As much as we dream of this "United States of Africa", it just simply won't work in a continent where people still practice & believe in witchcraft.
Another example was in Zimbabwe where the Ndebele were killed by the government of Robert Mugabe. The ZANU-PF did the Gukurahundi Massacres in Zimbabwe. Again, these were ethnic squabbles.
My point here is I think we need a plan, if we simply do away borders in Africa (even though they were imposed by foreign powers) we could have a bloodbath. It's just going to be ugly & will lead to the very same nationalist sentiments that are so strongly rejected by many of Africa's leftist governments.
Perhaps getting rid of Africa's borders is a clever plan by those in rule to relinquish responsibility of their mistakes & have random foreigners competing for the already non-existent resources in the more affluent African countries to take attention away from their misgovernance because they have resources to leave the continent if things go bad for them.
Before a United States of Africa though, I think we need to decolonise Africa & revert back to our former selves & get the colonisation dirt off of us so we can start anew from where things are said to have gone wrong for us. This includes creating nation states that:-
• Have their own writing systems
• Have their own dress code
• Embrace their own indigenous languages
• Have their own systems of governance
If we wean ourselves off of Western systems as in the above four points, it could be the first step in reclaiming our dignity as the black (brown) race. If we can decolonise ourselves, it will be easier for us to embrace other Africans as well as other foreigners.
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