Pan-African Congress

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The Pan-African Congress was a series of five meetings in 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945 that were intended to address the issues facing Africa due to European colonization of much of the continent.

It won the reputation of a Pace maker for decolonization in Africa and in the West Indies. It made significant advance for the Pan African cause. One of the demands was to end the colonial rule and end to racial discrimination, against imperialism and it demanded human rights and equality of economic opportunity. The Manifesto given by the Pan-African Congress which were the political and economic demands of the Congress was for a new world context of international cooperation.

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[edit] Background

There was a general assumption in Africa that the Colonial powers wanted Africans to wait patiently for limited political concessions and better career opportunities and due to this all the ex-servicemen and the educated urban classes became disillusioned. They were only willing to listen to socialist ideas of equality and new world order.

There was a letter from Jamaican writer and socialist, Claude McKay to Trotsky in 1922 talking about the black soldiers:

“ They had been disillusioned with the European war, they kept on having frightful clashes with English and American soldiers, besides the fact the authorities treated them completely differently from the white soldiers... I was working at that time in London in a communist group. Our group provided the club of Negro soldiers with revolutionary newspapers and literature which had nothing. ”

In 1909, the First Pan-African Conference was held. In 1919, the first Pan-African Congress was organized. There were 57 delegates representing 15 countries. Their main task was petitioning the Versailles Peace Conference which was held in Paris at that time. These were some of their demands:

  • The Allies should be in charge of the administration of former territories in Africa as a Condominium on behalf of the Africans who were living there.
  • Africa is granted home rule and Africans should take part in governing their countries as fast as their development permits until at some specified time in the future.

[edit] The London Manifesto

In 1921, the Second Pan-African Congress met in several sessions in London, Paris and Brussels. There was a Indian Revolutionary who took part, Shapuiji Saklaatvala, and a journalist from Ghana named W.F. Hutchinson who spoke. This session of the Congress was the most radical of all the meetings they had so far. At the London session, London Manifesto was created declaring to the world:

“ England, with all her Pax Britannic, her courts of justice, established commerce, and a certain apparent recognition of Native laws and customs, has nevertheless systematically fostered ignorance among the Natives, has enslaved them, and is still enslaving them, has usually declined even to try to train black and brown men in real self-government, to recognise civilised black folk as civilised, or to grant to coloured colonies those rights if self government which it freely gives to white men. ”

The only dissenting voice was that of Blaise Diagne who was a French politician of African origin. He represented Senegal in the French Chamber of Deputies. He soon abandoned the idea of Pan Africanism because he thought that the London Manifesto declaration was too dangerously extreme.

[edit] The third and fourth Congresses

In 1923, the Third Pan-African Congress was held in London and in Lisbon. This meeting was totally unorganized. This meeting was also a repeat of the demands such as self-rule, the problems in Diaspora and the African-European relationship. The following was addressed at the meeting:

  • The development of Africa should be for the benefit of Africans and not merely for the profits of Europeans.
  • There should be home rule and a responsible government for British West Africa and the British West Indies.
  • The Abolition of the pretension of a white minority to dominate a black majority in Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa.
  • Lynching and mob law in the US should be suppressed

In 1923, The Fourth Pan African Congress was held in New York and adopted resolutions which were similar to the Third Pan-African Congress meetings.[1]

[edit] The final Congresses

In 1945, the Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester, UK. Africans again fought in World War II. After this war, many felt that they now deserved independence. This Congress is widely considered to have been the most important. Organised by the influential Trinidadian pan-Africanist George Padmore and Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah, it was attended by many scholars, intellectuals and political activists who would later go on to become influential leaders in various African independence movements and the American civil rights movement, including the Kenyan independence leader Jomo Kenyatta, American left-wing activist and academic W. E. B. DuBois and Nigerian statesman Jaja Wachuku, as well Nkrumah and Padmore themselves. It also led partially to the creation of the Pan-African Federation, founded in 1946 by Nkrumah and Kenyatta.

At the fifth Pan-African Congress in 1945, there were 90 delegates; 26 were from all over Africa. Several were them who would become the political leaders of their countries including Hastings Banda, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Obafemi Awolowo and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya.

There were Thirty-three delegates from the West Indies and thirty five from various British Organizations such as the West African Students Union. The meeting was also attended by the 77 year old man W. E. B. DuBois, who organized the First Pan-African Congress in 1919.

The British Press scarcely mentioned the conference despite its huge turnout. There were number of resolutions passed such as racial discrimination to be made as a criminal offense and the main resolution decried imperialism and capitalism. [2]

[edit] The significance of the Pan-African movement and the fifth Congress

Pan-Africanism is aimed at the economic, intellectual and political cooperation of the Afrcian countries. It demands that the riches of the continent be used for the enlistment of its people. It calls for the financial and economic unification of markets and a new political landscape for the continent. Even though Pan-Africanism as a movement began in the 1776, it was the fifth Pan-African congress that advanced Pan-Africanism and applied it to decolonize the African continent.[3]

The people in Manchester were politically conscious and that was one of the reasons why it was selected as the venue for the fifth Pan-African congress. The fifth congress was organized by people of African origin living in Manchester. According to the Mancunian historian Simon Katzenellenboggen it has a great significance. It was an important step towards the end of those imperial powers in Africa, so it’s imperative for everyone, not just those of African descent, to be aware of the conference. Unlike the four earlier congresses, the fifth one involved people from the African Diaspora; not just Africans, but Afro-Caribbeans and Afro-Americans. Manchester had a significant part to play in helping the African countries to march forward in their fight to independence.[4]


[edit] References

  1. ^ The Pan-African Vision. The Story of Africa: Between World Wars (1914-1945). BBC News. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.
  2. ^ http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/index-fa.html 1945-Pan-African Congress and its Aftermath
  3. ^ Road to Pan-Africanism. Road to Pan-Africanism. The Sowetan. Retrieved on 1999-11-15.
  4. ^ Black History Month. It began in Manchester. BBC News. Retrieved on 2005-10-14.
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