Pan-Africanism: Towards renaissance, closer cooperation By making reference to “African Renaissance” President Mnangagwa is in one way or another calling for the creation of new and visionary African leaders who can hoist the flame of Pan-African liberty high to empower the people.

Gibson Nyikadzino-Zimpapers Politics Hub

At the inaugural Africa Peace and Security Dialogue hosted by the Thabo Mbeki Foundation in South Africa early this week, President Mnangagwa’s speech read on his behalf by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Ambassador Frederick Shava had critical nuggets from which Africans should think of in present and futuristic terms.

“As Africans…we were robbed of our human and personal integrity; our vibrant African institutions were compromised or destroyed; our value and knowledge systems were either violently suppressed or deliberately undermined. The need for an African Renaissance can, therefore, not be over emphasised,” President Mnangagwa said.

To summarise the speech, President Mnangagwa addressed the historical, contemporary and futuristic realities that the people are living through and will face.

The West has been able to sustain its fictitious image as a “civilisation” because of the enslavement of Africa, first via slavery, then through the extraction of Africa’s human resources, and currently through the extraction of natural resources.

The West has an existential imperative to keep Africa subjugated, repressed and destitute.

It is their only means of maintaining the appearance of their dominance. And this is when African Renaissance becomes more relevant.

Africa’s continuous fight for freedom, justice, and democracy is a part of a bigger discussion over African agency and whose interests governments should represent.

It is at the core of the message that the President highlighted that what is essential now is “the need for an African Renaissance”.

This need comes at a time when the greater part of the African contemporary generation is undergoing an ideological disorientation.

It is not disputed that the continent has gone through generational phases from the Pan-African, nationalist, globalist, nascent and renascent generations. In each generational phase since the globalists, the agency of African Renaissance has been explained with little importance.

For now, it is the ideas of Pan-Africanism whose importance should be stressed for it is a framework and because that has never been and will never be obsolete.

That is why today people still talk of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Guinea’s Sekou Toure, Mali’s Modibo Keita, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Mozambique’s Samora Machel, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, among other great luminaries and proponents of the philosophy.

What they advocated for, Pan-Africanism, is a broad category of African movements that share the objective of eradicating white supremacist and colonialism from the continent while also promoting African unity.

Pan-Africanism is arguably the most well-liked idea among the many ideas that have affected Black Africa since the continent’s independence movement in the 1960s, second only to democracy.

The long-standing legacy of Pan-Africanism as a framework for putting an end to colonialism and achieving human rights, peace, and people-based democracy is still essential for restoring citizen agency.

On many great occasions, these great men shaped masses on the importance of unity and the importance of believing in the true identity of being African.

The said reality is Africa’s pioneers and movers of the Pan African ideology are no longer in our midst.

By making reference to “African Renaissance” President Mnangagwa is in one way or another calling for the creation of new and visionary African leaders who can hoist the flame of Pan-African liberty high to empower the people.

African Renaissance, anchored on its key pillars of socio-cultural, political, economic regeneration will improve Africa’s geo-political importance, if all things are done collectively.

The task at hand is to create a new core of visionary African leaders from the young generation of leaders who also want to see Africa free; leaders who want to help Africans develop confidence in themselves, in their food, in their thoughts and in their identity.

At a time when other great powers are targeting Africa for its resources, African Renaissance yearns to raise leaders who, like their predecessors, want to encourage Africans to take full control of their resources. The task at hand is to engineer those leaders.

What is crucial for African policymakers is to understand and realise that the salvation of African aspirations through its renaissance also rests in Pan-Africanism, and leaders have to carve out the continent’s own way independently.

Conversations about the re-birth of the African continent through advocating for social cohesion, growth, development and promotion of values relevant to the people is the antidote to some of the challenges currently being faced.

So, where do we locate African Renaissance as the continent recreates leaders to hoist the Pan-African thought?

Many African youths are growing more conscious of the continent’s political and economic surroundings as globalisation’s force continues to erode national borders.

In the 21st century, among an educated section of middle-class Africans, Pan-Africanism has found a sustainable space for rejuvenation in this regard.

The new Pan-Africanism is calling for people-centred democracy, ideologically driven governance, and economic growth necessitated from the beneficiation of Africa’s resources rather than just identification.

For African Renaissance to be successful, greater trade between African nations, greater interactions among African institutions of higher learning, appeals for good governance across the continent, and the widespread and expanding presence of Pan-Africanist media platforms are all signs of the resurgence of this Pan-African mindset.

There is need for African leaders to make sure that Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance also produce noticeable benefits  through economic growth in anticipation of genuine African unity.

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