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Pan-African ideals vs. Domestic Realities: How Xenophobia Undermines Africa’s United Nations Ambitions
By Fritz Pointer
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegalese physicist, historian, anthropologist and politician, must be rolling and tumbling in his grave, along with Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. DuBois and Frantz Fanon, as we witness the Xenophobia or Afrophobia taking place in South Africa these days in 2026. These giants of Black intellectual preeminence championed the project of a continental state of Africa. For Diop, “a continental federation is an urgently vital necessity for the totality of African peoples…it is the precondition for our collective survival” (Great African Thinkers, Ed. Ivan Van Sertima, Transaction Books, Oxford, 1987, p. 252).
When the United Nations Organization was founded in 1945, African nationalism was of little consequence. Since then, however, many former African colonies have received independence: Ghana, under the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah being the first in 1957. At the end of 1961, African states occupied more than a quarter of the seats in the UN. The proportion has risen to almost a third as the entire African continent became free.
But the dramatic increase in the international importance of independent Africa, though it may at first sight appear to demonstrate strength, in fact reflects weakness, since it is based in the fragmentation of the continent into many states, few of which are truly viable. The most populus countries in the world, India, China, Russia and the U.S.A have one representative each at the United Nations. As Nkrumah notes: “There is no reason, therefore, why Africa, with its approximately 300 million people, once united, should not send a single representative to the United Nations” (Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 195). Surely, a single representation, resting on the strength of a whole continent, would be more positive in its influence than all the separate representations of the African states put together.
Cheikh Anta Diop was haunted by what he had foreseen as the “South-Americanization” of the African continent- with coup after coup; haunted by Simon Bolivar’s failure to unite the South American continent into a single bloc. Diop avers that what has been lacking are national leaderships which could set an example. “Political selfishness” he states, “is killing Africa; it’s the basis of the problem. Once African interests become merely a pretext for individual selfishness, instability necessarily rears its head (Van Sertima, p.149). One might recall the Zulu chauvinists Gatsha Buthelezi of the 1980s and the corrupt and still trouble-making former President of South Africa Jacob Zuma, in the 2000s, whose Zulu mob-followers are, apparently, behind the March-and-March movement to expel migrant workers and small shopkeepers from Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique and other African countries. More than 53,000 undocumented migrants have reportedly left the country as enforcement intensified.
It also appears that one of Jacob Zuma’s many children is a leading semi-literate spokesperson for the March-and-March vigilantes. I recommend that she and her throng of misled renegades read the works of Njabulo Ndebele (South African literary critic, author of South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary) who points a finger at the “real” problem. For example, Ndebele states concerning current South African reality that:
Whites are still in government; they control the army and
the police: they still enjoy what must be one of the highest
standards of living in the world; they still manage the
economy, although they will grudgingly let in competent
blacks: they still dominate the privileged universities and
research institutes. Their overall power is still pervasive
(A Passion to Liberate, Fritz Pointer, Africa World Press 2001, p.236).
In other words, the end of apartheid seems to represent for the white minority a defeat in which they have lost nothing. In fact, they still control over 90% of the land. Now that this destructive mob has vandalized, brutalized and even killed their small shop owning African brothers and sisters their lives should be measurably better. Right? Well, we shall see.
Dr. Diop asserts that “Continental citizenship is a must. No African should need anymore than an I.D. card for travelling to and from any part of the continent” (Van Sertima, p.253). Diop shares with Kwame Nkrumah this goal of continental African unity. Both understood that America and its western allies will use any and every device to halt and disrupt the growing will among the masses of Africa’s populations for unity. Dr. Nkrumah states that:
Just as our strength lies in a unified policy and action for pro-
gress and development, so the strength of imperialism lies in
our disunity. We in Africa can only meet them effectively by
presenting a unified front and a continental purpose
(Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, PANAF, London, 1963
p. xvi).
Nkrumah, like Diop, understood that when the African colonies were originally created, at the Berlin Conference of 1884, the rights of indigenous Africans were completely disregarded. Territorial boundaries were arbitrarily created by people who never set a foot on African soil. The boundaries had no relation to ethnic realities. In many cases boundaries cut across cultures and even villages. As Nkrumah notes, “Problems resulting from the cynical parceling-out of Africa still remain and can only be settled by continental union” (Nkrumah, p.7).
Diop also addresses the divisive issue of North versus sub-Saharan Africa. Former President of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser articulated the idea of the formation of a federation of North African and Asian-Arab states as a single political and economic entity. A project, at first glance, in conflict with that of a federal continental African state. For Diop, however, “there already exists a continental African consciousness” (Van Sertima, p. 259). At the same time, he still understands that “For lack of a precise Pan-African project…certain North African Arab countries might be tempted to group separately with Asian Arabs” and that “North African Arab states might indeed be instinctively tempted to seek fusion with their Middle Eastern brethren” (Van Sertima, p. 259). Nevertheless,
Africans to the north and south of the continent must think
In terms of uniting because it is in their global interests to
do so. If we can overcome prejudices and fears through in-
formation and open discussion, then the advantages of a
continental federal state are apparent…. To begin with,
there could be a federation of the Maghreb (Morocco,
Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) on the one hand, while on
the other hand, a federation of all the sub-Saharan African
countries. A confederation of these two federations could
be envisioned. With time, both entities could fuse so as to
arrive at a true continental federal state (Van Sertima, p. 259).
The myopic, xenophobic, Afro-phobic embarrassing malaise on display today in South Africa is totally oblivious to this vision, or any Pan-African or global vision at all that would give more leverage to Africa’s voice in the United Nations. It is rather an atavistic, backward narrow-minded tribal consciousness in need of immediate reeducation and excision.
Works Cited
Ndebele, Njabulo. South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery
of the Ordinary. Manchester, Manchester U. Press, 1994.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Africa Must Unite. London, PANAF, 1963.
Pointer, Fritz. A Passion to Liberate: La Guma’s South Africa -Images
of District Six, Trenton, N J, Africa World Press, 2001.
Van Sertima. Great African Thinkers. “Cheikh Anta Diop,” Vol. 1.
Oxford, Transaction Books, 1987.
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