Pan-Africanism in a Time of Pandemic

By Mary Serumaga

There was a time, in the last century, when the under-privileged of the world shared a common
understanding of the causes of their condition. Today the causes manifest in vaccine Apartheid. That
the COVID-19 pandemic should find most African countries with less than one doctor and less than
ten beds per a thousand of their population shows the failure of the development efforts of the past
60 or so years. The same countries all struggle with unsustainable debt, which is still being paid
during the pandemic and has been increased by the COVID debt. When the global emergency was
declared in January 2021, development partners began to hoard personal protective equipment.
When vaccines became available a year later, there was insufficient production capacity to meet
world needs. The same development partners rejected the option of allowing African countries to
manufacture the vaccines on the continent. They hoarded their supplies until they were nearly
expired before donating them to African countries.

In the 1950s, there would have been a different reaction. By then, African and Asian countries were
moving inexorably towards independence. Organised by Indonesia, Myanmar (now Burma), Ceylon
(now Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan, African countries attended the Bandung Conference of 1955
with economic and social development in mind. Then as now, China and the United States were on
opposite sides of the Cold War and each sought to influence Africa while Africa sought non-
alignment in order to freely pursue her development goals.

For one week in Bandung, Indonesia, twenty-nine African and Asian heads of state and other leaders
discussed the formation of an alliance based on five principles: political self-determination, mutual
respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, and equality. The ten-
points in the communiqué released after the conference became the governing principles of the non-
aligned movement and they included self-determination, protection of human rights, the promotion
of economic and cultural cooperation, and a call for an end to racial discrimination wherever it
occurred. The alliance began to disintegrate when India and Yugoslavia shunned the radical stand
against Western imperialism, leading to the organisation of a rival non-aligned conference in 1965.
The 1965 conference was postponed.

While there was no follow-up to Bandung, the ideals it stood for were being espoused by other
formations. On the African continent, the Casablanca Group—the precursor to the Organisation of
African Unity (OAU)—had a membership of five African states: Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Libya,
and Morocco. The All-African Peoples’ Conference (AAPC) took place in Cairo in 1958 after the
founder, Uganda’s John Kale, was inspired by his attendance at the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity
Conference the previous year. It was a meeting representing peoples and movements and not just
states. The conference demanded the immediate and unconditional independence of all the African
peoples, and the total evacuation of the foreign forces of aggression and oppression stationed in
Africa.

The All-African People’s Conference recommended African co-operation in the interest of all the
Africans, denounced racial discrimination in South, East and Central Africa, and demanded the
abolition of apartheid in South Africa, the suppression of the Federation of Nyasaland (Malawi) and
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and independence for the two countries.

The Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO) organised a conference in Cuba in 1957.
The 500 delegates to the AAPSO conference represented national liberation movements as well as
states and after a number of such gatherings, AAPSO resolved to include Cuba and Latin America in
its membership. Thus was the organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Europe, Africa and
Latin America (OSPAAAL) born.

The activities of OSPAAAL included financial support for the anti-colonial struggle in Palestine and
for South Africa’s Africa National Congress (ANC). American aggression towards Cuba and its
blockade of Vietnam were denounced and global solidarity was shown to political activists under
threat of arrest. The movement solidified in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba.
The Solidarity movement established a think tank, the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research
which produced educational materials in the form of newsletters, articles and the now iconic
revolutionary art. This work continues to this day.

For the next decade, Cuba provided support to the armed struggle for independence in Angola,
Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Equatorial Guinea, and to South Africa’s ANC. Fidel Castro was a
familiar face on the diplomatic circuit and received Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and other leaders, in
Havana.

The United States government was caught between the expectations of its allies, the former colonial
powers and those of the soon-to-be independent countries whose alliance it sought. The civil rights
movement in the United States was a thorn in its side as it appealed to Africans in the Independence
movement. America chose her traditional allies and neo-colonialism put down roots.

Regardless of that, leaders of African and American movements interacted, learning from each
other; Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, and a number of other leaders of the day met Kwame
Nkrumah at Ghana’s independence celebrations in 1957. Martin Luther King was also there.
Reflecting on the cost of freedom and mentioning Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria,
Liberia and Kenya, King later wrote, “Ghana reminds us that freedom never comes on a silver
platter. It’s never easy. . . . Ghana reminds us of that. You better get ready to go to prison.”
Following a visit to Nigeria in 1960, King reported,

I just returned from Africa a little more than a month ago and I had the opportunity to talk to
most of the major leaders of the new independent countries of Africa and also leaders of
countries that are moving toward independence [. . .] they are saying in no uncertain terms that
racism and colonialism must go for they see the two are as based on the same principle, a sort
of contempt for life, and a contempt for human personality.

Today Dr King would probably have added predatory debt to that list.

Malcolm X visited Egypt and Ghana in 1959 and met Gamal Abdel Nasser and Kwame Nkrumah. In
1964, he spoke at the OAU conference in Egypt. He went to Tanzania and to Kenya where he met
Oginga Odinga and Jomo Kenyatta. Back in New York Malcolm X related his experience: “As long as
we think—as one of my good brothers mentioned out of the side of his mouth here a couple of
Sundays ago—that we should get Mississippi straightened out before we worry about the Congo,
you’ll never get Mississippi straightened out.” Prophetic words. Just this month the President of the
United States warned against a “Jim Crow assault” on the voting rights of people of colour and the
under-privileged that were won in 1965 after a long and hard civil rights struggle.

By the time the Bandung Conference was taking place, Frantz Fanon had already published Black
Skin, White Masks and was to follow it up with A Dying Colonialism and The Wretched of the Earth.
Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa would appear in 1972. There was an explosion
of global awareness of Africa. Musicians like Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Letta Mbulu, and
Caiphus Semenya and others became known in Europe and America as they raised awareness about
apartheid. African fashion became the signature of the civil rights movement. On the African
continent, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (Festac77) was held in
Lagos, attracting 59 countries. Exhibits ranged from David Aradeon’s African architectural
technology to work by the Chicago Africobra arts collective. The welcome given to the American
diaspora contingent at the venue is testament to the sense of oneness that prevailed at the time.

Yet here we are in the new millennium facing identical existential crises. Palestine has lost over half
the territory it had in 1966. The televised ethnic cleansing taking place in the country is openly
supported by American aid. The Republic of South Africa has found that the end of apartheid may
only have been the beginning of the struggle for human development. The country is just emerging
from three days of looting and burning by impoverished citizens. Cuba is still under a US embargo
and there was even an attempt to blockade medical supplies being shipped to Cuba for the fight
against COVID.

Cold War tensions between China and the West have been revived with the United State’s growing
opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. China has remained faithful to the non-interference
principle, to the extent of transacting business with African leaders without regard to that other
principle, the observance of human rights.

While most African countries are nominally independent, this has not brought development as they
had envisaged it. Now, as in 1966, the main economic activity is the export of raw commodities.
Africa’s Asian partners in the Bandung Communiqué have long since moved out of the realm of what
used to be called “The Third World”. Malaysia, at number 62 out of 189 countries listed on the
Human Development Index, is ranked as a Very High Human Development Country. Indonesia, the
host of the Bandung Conference, is in the High Human Development category, with a ranking of
107. India, which abandoned the spirit of Bandung, is a medium human development country
(ranked 131) while Yugoslavia ceased to exist. Only eight African countries are highly developed,
while 30 fall in the Low Human Development category. Within that category, Uganda slipped down
one place in 1997 and is ranked 159.

Solidarity conferences have been replaced by aid conferences called by “donors”. They are no longer
organised by activists like the Moroccan Mehdi Ben Barka who, together with Chu Tzu-chi of the
People’s Republic of China, organized the Tricontinental Conference (Ben Barka was abducted and
“disappeared” in 1965 before the conference took place.) or John Kale. Recent conferences have
been organised by European heads of state or United Nations bodies. India and China organise their
own conferences for Africa, having transitioned to the ranks of developed countries. Attending
delegates are the residual wretched.

The India–Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) inaugurated in 2008 is scheduled to be held once every three
years. The France-Africa Finance Summit is an initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron
whose various remarks about Africa on his tour of the continent were perceived as racist and
disparaging.

At the Forum on China-African Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg in 2015, China offered

US$60 billion in development assistance, US$5 billion in the form of grants and the rest in loans.
Attendance by African heads of state was higher than for the most recent African Union Conference;
only six did not turn up (but were represented).

Attending delegates are the residual wretched.

The following year FOCAC was held in Beijing. On the first day, members of the American Congress
issued a statement condemning China’s predatory lending to African and Asian countries. They
argued that the recipient countries eventually wound up needing to be bailed out by the IMF, mostly
with American money, thereby transferring American capital to China. For his part, the beleaguered
president of economically battered Zimbabwe received the offer of another US$60 billion with
fulsome gratitude, saying President Xi Jinping was doing what “we expected those who colonised us
yesterday to do.”

The International Development Association for Africa: Heads of State Summit held on 15 July 2021
was a World Bank exercise. The agenda, according to their website, was “to highlight the
importance of an ambitious and robust 20th replenishment of the International Development
Association.” In other words, it was about increasing members’ debt. These days “cooperation”
means aid – with strings attached – not solidarity. This year there will also be a virtual African
Economic Conference (AEC) to discuss “Financing Africa’s post COVID-19 Development”. It is
organised by the United Nations Development Programme, the African Development Bank and the
Economic Commission for Africa.

Of the original anti-colonial activist countries of the 1960s, most Asian countries are in a position to
offer solutions to economic questions; they compete in the global arena manufacturing
pharmaceuticals and agricultural technology. China has mastered all of the foregoing as well as
dominating foreign infrastructural development investment. The African bloc stands alone in not
being organised enough to participate in the global discourse except as receivers of aid.

It is true that together with Latin American countries, resource-wealthy African countries have
endured Western-engineered coups d’état and other debilitating interference but the dynamism of
Gamal Abdel Nasser, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral is missing. In its place
is the renewed use of the once hated colonial public order laws to quell dissent against corruption
and repression.

These days “cooperation” means aid – with strings attached – not solidarity.

Two decades after Lumumba’s assassination, the less wealthy Burkina Faso lit the path to self-
sufficiency before the country’s radical president, Captain Thomas Sankara, was assassinated with
French connivance. Three months earlier, Sankara had called for the repudiation of debt at an
Organisation of African Unity Conference. The delegates were stunned as can be seen from the
expression on the late Kenneth Kaunda’s face.

The last African-Asian Conference organised by Africa may or may not be more of a memorial than
the birth (re-birth?) of the solidarity movement. On the 50th anniversary of the original Bandung
Conference, in 2005, Asian and African leaders met in Jakarta and Bandung to launch the New
Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP). They pledged to promote political, economic, and
cultural cooperation between the two continents. An interesting outcome was their communiqué to
the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council concerning the development of
Palestine. On the cultural front, there is talk of a third Festac.

Then there is Cuba, host of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference. Cuba ranks as a high human
development country and has the highest doctor-patient ratio in the world—more than double the
concentration in the US—and the most hospital beds per 10,000, nearly double what is available in
the US. Cuba also has the highest pupil-teacher ratio in the world. Out of necessity due to the
economic embargo imposed on it, and being unable to import fertilisers, Cuba pioneered
vermiculture, a technique now in use globally. The country manufactures 80 per cent of its vaccines
and has five COVID-19 vaccine candidates (two are being used under emergency licence like
AstraZeneca, J&J and the other Western products). While Western pharmaceutical manufacturers
took an early decision to bar Africa from manufacturing its vaccines on intellectual property
grounds, Cuba is willing to transfer its technology to countries that need it. Funds should have been
no object as the African continent is awash with COVID Emergency Response funds borrowed from
the World Bank and the IMF. This is the kind of development that has been sought for the last sixty-
plus years.

The dynamism of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Amilcar
Cabral is missing.

But Africa is not talking to Cuba about developing vaccine capacity. African leaders are waiting for
UNICEF, appointed by the World Bank, to procure Western-made vaccines for them with funds they
shall have to repay. In Uganda, delivery is expected in six months. Meanwhile, Norway and others
are donating small amounts of vaccine, hardly enough to cover the twenty-nine million Ugandans
that will give us immunity. The Indian-manufactured brand, AstraZeneca, is not recognised in
Europe and will prevent recipients travelling there.

The Conscious Era began to wind down with the accession of leaders of independent African states
more interested in the instant gratification of cash inflows than in the principles of the past. Yoweri
Museveni had the opportunity to learn from the Cuban model when he met Castro in the early
months of his rule. As it turned out, he was only wasting El Comandante’s time. Despite condemning
his predecessors’ SDR177,500,000 debt to the IMF during the Bush War, Museveni’s
SDR49,800,000 structural adjustment facility was signed on 15 Jun 1987—he had been in power for
just eighteen months. Since then he has extended his credit to SDR1,606,275 (US$2,285,199.26)
from the IMF alone. New debt to the World Bank (contracted since 2020) amounts to
US$468,360,000.00. A separate COVID Debt owed to the World Bank amounts to US$300 million so
far while over US$31 million is owed to the African Development Bank. These funds have not been
used to purchase vaccines.

The Black Lives Matter movement has echoes of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. The
movement is strong on showing solidarity with persecuted activists and victims of racism through
online campaigns. BLM chapters are in solidarity with Ghanaian activists. Like the Tricontinental
Institute, BLM has made attempts to educate, for example via the Pan-African Activist Sunday
School. What is needed is another Pan-African conference organised by movements and individuals
committed to human development.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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