AiW note: In 2016, writer, editor, academic, and publisher Kadija Sesay developed the ‘Modern Pan-Africanist’s Journey’ app as part of the Research and Development funding (UK) that she received from Arts Council England, for her second poetry book of the same title The Modern Pan-Africanist’s Journey.
In 2021, the AfriPoeTree SIV (Selective Interactive Video), a new multimedia platform based on Sesay’s Modern Pan-Africanist’s Journey app, was developed by Yorkshire based digital media and theatre company 2b Acting. The AfriPoeTree platform aims to provide a space to promote equality, inclusion and diversity, and be an antidote to negative portrayals of Black art, culture, and history. Fully interactive print, audio, and video content, including interviews and performances, will be accessible on the platform via mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers.
Featured poets include Tony Medina, Rashidah Ismaili, Bernardine Evaristo, Zena Edwards, Rosamond King, Fred D’Aguiar, Ama Ata Aidoo, Inua Ellams, Nick Makoha, Natalia Molebatsi, Niyi Osundare, Rommi Smith, Sonia Sanchez, Dorothea Smartt, and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Another section of 50 Poet (Ancestors) starts with E.W. Blyden and includes activists and political leaders who were published poets.
As AfriPoeTree takes root – with 60 poetry rooms already established and a crowdfunder campaign open until April 2, to support further SIV development and enable its full branching to interactive spaces for 100 poets to nest among (follow the link or see below for further details from Sesay of how to donate, support and be a part of this growth) – AiW’s Davina Philomena Kawuma spoke with Sesay about decolonisation and how she’s become a more staunch Pan-Africanist, the importance of networks in managing a literary festival, gatekeeping and reading practices, and curating ‘In this space we breathe‘, an exhibition of the late British-Gambian photographer Khadija Saye (who was killed in the Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017), among other things…
Davina Philomena Kawuma (for AiW): Thinking through the context of academic engagement in the US, in his interview with Francis Ohanyido, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ spoke of his 2003 book, Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change, as his “attempt to try and contextualize contemporary Africa in the tradition of radical politics”:
The framework I use is Pan-African. In the book I look at the role of the Africanist and African scholar. There is a fascinating discussion that brews under the radar in academia. That is the Africanist scholar (mostly white and American) and the African scholar (African and elite) do not get along because they are in competition of who speaks for Africa. The irony of course is that they both, even as they pretend to speak for the continent, long abandoned it. But juxtaposed to these kinds of intellectuals are others who have seen their role in more political terms – Fanon for the African intellectual and Basil Davidson for the Africanist.
He later speaks of African writers as being “the single most important facilitators of Pan-Africanism”:
People like Du Bois and Nkrumah might have provided the theory, but it is the writers that humanize Africans to each other. We see each other through their works.
Although the interview in question was conducted fifteen years ago, in many ways there remains much competition about who should speak for Africa, and why.
I’m interested in what Mũkoma says about how different intellectuals view/frame their roles; in what terms do you view your role as a scholar/academic? And have you, in the course of your PhD research, encountered any fascinating brewing-under-the-radar discussions?
Kadija Sesay: I see myself as a scholar-activist, with the emphasis on activist! I see my role as the need to marry the two. As Walter Rodney explained, why would a scholar who has expert knowledge on African history not want to share it with the people to help them to emancipate themselves, in a space that they are comfortable in? Therefore, it is better to do such work in their own space, rather than within academic institutions.
Whoever considers themselves to be a scholar-activist needs to read Walter Rodney’s The Groundings with My Brothers even if they do not implement their activism in the same way. I have also read and listened to Professor Horace Campbell on modern Pan-Africanism.
With regards to “brewing discussions,” ones which I don’t think are necessarily under the radar – as I don’t sit still in institutions long enough to get involved – are those around decolonisation (particularly of literature and publishing). Those – and renewed discussions around Pan-Africanism – interest me, although I’m not interested in reviewing or being involved in discussions which ask “is Pan-Africanism still relevant?” I don’t perceive that as being a useful or productive approach.
The discussions around decolonisation have become increasingly strong as it’s realised that decolonisation applies to all aspects of our lives – it is not limited. The tumbling of statues seemed to be the public face of this so the term became common parlance. Is it overused? Misunderstood? I don’t think so, as it is a hidden evil that runs through the foundation of our lives. So I have to view my work in that vein rather than ‘postcolonial,’ which is not a term that I am endeared to, and which I try to avoid using otherwise it feels as though we can never shake off the cloak of colonialism if we always see ourselves in relation to it.
I also veer away from using the term ‘race,’ because as a Black Scholar in Britain there is an expectation that whatever you do, the focus will be on race. I didn’t want that, so I didn’t engage in those discussions. One reason is because I concern myself more from the standpoint that when I am in Africa I don’t feel that it’s necessary for me to engage in issues of ‘race’ and ‘identity.’ That’s what freedom feels like to me.
DPK: Growing up, here in Kampala, it seemed to me that the existence of solidarity between African and Black people was taken for granted. I usually heard Pan-Africanism spoken of in very formal contexts, when perhaps the president invoked it in his Independence Day Celebrations speech. It seemed then that Pan-Africanism could only and only should mean one thing to everyone.
More recently, however, I’m learning that in some spaces, disputes remain about whether Pan-Africanism originated on the continent or in the diaspora; and that historical tensions linger, the result of what Pan-Africanists based on the continent perceive(d) as patronising behaviour from Pan-Africanists based in the diaspora. I’m also learning that it is perhaps more accurate to speak of Pan-Africanisms, following Hakim Adi’s argument that Pan-Africanism assumes different forms at different times in different spaces.
How has your perception/awareness of Pan-Africanism/s evolved over the years?
KS: There is only one Pan-Africanism, I’d say, but there are different definitions, precisely because as Adi says, “Pan-Africanism might be more usefully viewed as one river with many streams and currents.” Adi also added that the core aspect is “the belief in some form of unity or of common purpose among the people of Africa and the African diaspora and the notion that their destinies are interconnected.”
The useful thing about being an academic researcher is that you have to consider aspects of your specialisation in deeper, more nuanced considerations and you learn how to do that. That’s what I enjoyed about my PhD – I have referred to myself as a Pan-Africanist for a long time yet it is clearer to me what I mean by that now and what I expect of myself. I can view and apply it to my life better than I could before. I have become a stauncher Pan-Africanist.
If you believe in the strength, beauty, development of the continent, then you believe in Pan-Africanism or even if you feel the same way just about the African country you reside – it is still Pan-Africanism as you must be a nationalist to be a Pan-Africanist.
John Henrik Clarke paraphrased Blyden at the end of his essay Pan-Africanism: A Brief History of an Idea in the African World, in which he indicated that a true Pan-Africanist should be an African person engaged in a restoration mission that will lead his people back to respectful nationhood.
My perception of it now is to view Pan-Africanism through the beliefs and actions of Walter Rodney. It took a scholar-activist in the mode of Rodney to show how this theory of Pan-Africanism could and should be realised in practice. He was born in Guyana – a country that is part of South America but which is classed as being in the Caribbean – a country whose population is almost equally made up of people of Asian descent as it is of African descent. So how do you bring them together for their individual good and for the common good of their country?
For Rodney, Pan-Africanism at its root was to make obvious the shared commonalities of the oppressed, to fight for equality and unity. Those are the core elements of Pan-Africanism whichever definition of Pan-Africanism is used.
What that means is that modern Pan-Africanism today is not necessarily just about being of African descent although the ‘movement’ and the progress must be led by people of African descent. That is something I have taken from T. Ras Makonnen, also Guyanese, who to me, when I look at his achievements, was more of an action-orientated Pan-Africanist than George Padmore. But he is often less considered perhaps as he did less writing and there is less written about him, but the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester would not have happened without him. Pan-Africanism from Within, which was edited by Kenneth King, is a biography on Makonnen, written from interview transcriptions.
DPK:…
