What Pambazuka News means to the Pan-Africanist in me

It has been five years since I was introduced to Pambazuka News. Back then it was just one of those newsletters your boss tells you to read and brief him about. Things have changed.

Every Friday morning I wake up looking forward to reading the electronic newsletter. It is as if Pambazuka - which means ‘awaken’ in Kiswahili - is the one that wakes me up. In a way it does.

Since I started following it out of volition I have been awakened to the fact that there is more to the ‘pan-African world’ than meets the eye. It is a very complex mosaic of people of all shades and ideas.

As such, Pambazuka News is not a melting pot of ideas. Rather, it is a potpourri of praxis. In other words, what unites its readers and writers is not a singular idea of what Pan-Africanism is. Rather, it is how we can translate our contested ideas to liberate Africa and Africans.

Note, for instance, the clash of ideas between two seasoned Pan-Africanists that was sparked by the 400th Issue of Pambazuka News. In the 403rd Issue, Kwesi Kwa Prah questions Issa Shivji’s assertion that the ‘new pan-Africanism is rooted in social (popular) democracy’. If by this we mean ‘democratic socialism’ as defined by left and centre-left political positions, Prah queries, then it has adherents throughout the world. But, to him, this ‘is certainly not pan-Africanism’.

Prah then comes up with this counterpoint which indicates that the ideological battles on what is Pan-Africanism and who is a Pan-Africanist will rage on in Pambazuka News and elsewhere: ‘Some pan-Africanists are doubtlessly social democrats, but not all social democrats are pan-Africanists. Some pan-Africanists are right-wing conservatives while others are to the left of social democracy, indeed many have been, or are, Marxists (including Nkrumah in his final years). Indeed, pan-Africanists can be found within the whole spectrum of political colouring.’

It is this fact, that Pan-Africanism remains an ideological contest, which informs my current engagements in Pambazuka News. Sometimes it appears as an exercise in banality. However, it is an honest attempt to engage its whole spectrum of political colouring so as to come up with a workable Pan-African praxis. That is, to translate the idea into an action that is truly pro-Africa.

But how can you translate an idea into action when what you actually have is ideas? Do you then translate these ideas into actions? But how is that possible if such praxes are mutually exclusive?

For instance, when it comes to Sudan, how can one possibly translate the idea of another seasoned Pan-Africanist, Mahmood Mamdani, in tandem with that of Prah? Pambazuka News has been a battleground between what they theorise - and thus call for practice - on Darfur. Let’s relive it.

In the 425th issue of Pambazuka News Mamdani invokes Pan-Africanism as he call for the use of ‘the lessons Africans have learned in the struggle for peace and justice over the past several decades. He asserts that contrary ‘to what many think, this lesson is not that there needs to be a trade-off between peace and justice’. Rather, the ‘real trade-off is between different forms of justice’. He insists this ‘became evident with the settlement to end apartheid’ which ‘was possible because the political leadership of the anti-apartheid struggle prioritised political justice over criminal justice’. That lesson, he affirms, ‘has guided African practice in other difficult situations’.

But Mamdani’s call culminated in this suggestion – which Prah predicted, in the 430th issue, that many would swallow even though it left a bad taste in the mouth - in relation to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir: ‘The rationale was simple: where there was no victor, one would need the cooperation of the very leaders who would otherwise be charged with war crimes to end the fighting and initiate political reforms. The essence of Kempton Park [South Africa - SA] can be summed up in a single phrase: forgive but do not forget. Forgive all past crimes - in plain words, immunity from prosecution - provided both sides agree to change the rules to assure political justice for the living [in SA].’


To Prah, here Mamdani is pleading on behalf of al-Bashir and thus once again involved in what he dubbed ‘The Politics of Apologetics: Genocide Denial, Darfur Version’ in the 305th issue. In Prah’s invocation of Pan-Africanism, the problem is the foul ‘Arabisation of Africa’ in which al-Bashir is one, if not the prime, culprit. As such for him ‘a’ solution is an ICC ‘Judgment Day’.

Mamdani’s Darfur, as Prah calls it, is thus very different from Prah’s. So are their respective understanding of Sudan and Africa. In fact, in the 305th issue, Prah thus asserts: ‘Mamdani’s understanding of the so-called inclusive definition of an African makes Africanness very cheap. I say, “if everybody is an African, then nobody is an African”.’ Surely their Pan-Africanism must also be very different.

So, how does one explain these competing praxes which both claim Pan-Africanism? How does one make sense of them when they are coming from those who had or used to share more or less the same spectrum of intellectual-cum-ideological colouring? Is it because one of them has undergone a ‘methodological drift towards postmodernism’ in the other’s own ‘estimation’?

It is these kinds of contestations that make Pambazuka News such an important platform for making sense of what Africa is and ought to be for the sake of Africa. It is a space that helps me reflect on my roles and dilemmas of a Pan-Africanist in this age of ‘Out of One, Many Africas.’

© Chambi Chachage

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Chambi Chachage is an independent researcher, newspaper columnist and policy analyst, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.