PAN-AFRICANISM: A PANACEA TO THE ERODING BLACK IDENTITY

Posted on December 23, 2015

Sometimes I feel that the Black race is irredeemable. Perhaps we were created to reign for a particular period in history and suffer after. The kind of things we even like are the things that will stagnate our development. We hate anything African and prefer everything foreign: foreign language, foreign accent, foreign cloths, foreign heir, foreign mannerism etc. If you ask an average African about Thomas Sankara, he/she will not know but they can tell you everything you need to know about American movie actors and celebrities.

It is getting increasingly difficult to draw Africans back to their roots in order for them to love and appreciate what is their own. Prominent Black personalities tried but their efforts were sabotaged by their very own Black brothers:
During the Early 1900s, Marcus Mosiah Garvey began the pan African movement in America; he was able to raise consciousness to a level but was betrayed by his fellow black brothers who were puppets of “Uncle Sam”. He was later deported to Jamaica and later died in London.

Malcolm X picked up the struggle but he was murdered by his very own Black Muslim brothers.

Kwame Nkrumah started the full implementation of Marcus Garvey dream for Africa. His intention was to remove the Berlin colonial boundaries and unite all Africans into what he called United States of Africa. While he was building on this philosophy, his government was toppled by Western surrogates in Ghana. He later died in exile.

Patrice Lumumba, having understood what his countrymen suffered under King Leopold II of Belgium (where more than 10 million Africans in the Congo area were killed), fought for the independence of his people and started building Congo to the path of prosperity. He was captured by his own people and handed over to the colonialists. He was killed and Western surrogate like Mobutu Sese Seko who was one of the conspirators, was rewarded to head the country.

Thomas Sankara was one of the best things that emanated from Africa. He led Burkina Faso and continued with the work of Nkrumah. He was young and articulate and pursued the dream of a prosperous Africa with vigour. He was killed by his best friend, Blaise Compaoré in collaboration with the colonialists.

Of recent, Muammar Gaddafi became a benevolent dictator and started a plan for Africa’s economic growth. Plans like building an African Bank that will rival the World Bank, use of one currency in Africa, removal of the colonial boundaries, introduction of trade by batter where oil will be exchanged for Gold etc. There was a gang up against him by those that hate Africa. This gang up was supported by some miscreants in Benghazi and promoted on social media by some ignorant and brainwashed African youths. At the end, he was brutally murdered.

We also had Steve Biko in South Africa, Amílcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissaua and others who were killed for their doggedness to liberate Africans. So from all indication, the Black man is heading to doom. We are just moving with no direction especially now that religion has eroded any iota of our reasoning ability. An average educated African is ignorant of the names I mentioned above. We can’t progress if we don’t study our history.

To save our present and future generation from ruin, Pan-Africanism should be taught as a compulsory course/subject in all the countries in Africa from primary to university level. Also, we should study Black history the way we study the Bible (Jewish history) and the Quran (Arab history).