Comment & analysis

8th Pan African Congress needed to redeem movement

Vincent Nuwagaba

2009-07-02, Issue 440

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/57388

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cc xrichxThe Global Pan African Movement is a ’dying institution’, writes Vincent Nuwagaba, and the whole continent and Africans in the diaspora must ‘rededicate their efforts to revive it’. Dismayed by its half-hearted commemoration of the day of the African child, Nuwagaba writes that the problem is that the Uganda-based ‘global’ secretariat ‘has been reduced to a branch and extension of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and State House’. In order to de-link a mass movement from a partisan movement, argues Nuwagaba, ‘all Africans of goodwill must demand the holding of the 8th Pan African Congress and a shift of the ‘global’ secretariat.’

The mess at the Pan African Movement secretariat in Kampala Uganda has reached extreme levels. This calls for all Pan Africanists to stand up in unison and save the institution and the movement that was started to push for the welfare of the African and black people wherever they are. While the rest of the world was celebrating the day of the African child on the 16 June, the ‘Global Pan African Movement secretariat’ teamed up with two little known NGOs in Kampala to mark the celebration of the day of the African child. While there is nothing wrong with doing that, I maintain that a genuine Global Pan African Movement secretariat would have the capacity to do far more than that. It would use the opportunity to make strenuous demands for the African child who is relegated, denigrated, abused and neglected and the whole continent would realise the Pan African Movement. As we stand now, the Pan African Movement is not even visible in Kamwokya where the secretariat is housed.

I wrote an article about the African Child that was published in the Daily Monitor. As I reached Serena Hotel before the function began, I engaged some of the organisers, decrying the current shape and form of the Pan African Movement and Trade Union Movement. Thereafter, I went to parliament briefly and had to go back to Serena Hotel before the function started. As I reached the entrance of Katonga Hall where the function was to take place from, Mr Othieno who masquerades as the executive assistant to the general secretary asked me, what brings you to Serena Nuwagaba? I replied, ‘What has brought you is what has brought me, the Day of the African Child’. I went and sat with the Member of Parliament Hon Toskin and we started a conversation.

Around twenty minutes later, someone I suspect to be an Internal Security Organisation (ISO) operative appeared and told me I need to talk to you outside briefly. I left behind my diary and notebook with all my contacts and my human rights research work I have been doing since February. Once we were out, security guards were called, pulled me by the collar and without any sense of decorum threw me out of the function, leaving my valuable diary and notebook. When I told them I needed to pick my diary and notebook, the touts became too much.

I was later told by Othienno Stephen himself that the reason I was embarrassed and manhandled that way is because I was mudslinging the leadership of the secretariat. I have reported the matter with the police but I also thought it prudent to raise this matter in this medium so that the whole mess at the Global Pan African secretariat can be known thereafter all of us prescribe a cure for the dying institution. I am a Ugandan but I feel it is high time the secretariat shifted to another place because it has not only desecrated the Pan African Movement but also has portrayed it in such a picture that whoever is associated with Pan Africanism has the problem of moral turpitude.

This is not the first time Othienno is doing such a weird thing to me. In April last year, I went to share with the Pan Africanists my ordeal at the hands of police and medical staff who wanted me dead and he ordered goons to beat me. I think this is utterly inhuman and unexpected of a Pan Africanist. Pan Africanism denotes love for Africa and Africans. Sadism and Pan Africanism are not concomitant.

I am an ardent believer and promoter of Pan Africanism. A Pan Africanist I am, a Pan Africanist I will die. The problem we have is that the Pan African Movement has been reduced to the branch and extension of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and State House respectively, which I vehemently oppose. In order to de-link the two movements; the mass movement and the partisan movement, all Africans of goodwill must demand the holding of the 8th Pan African Congress and a shift of the ‘global’ secretariat. I put global secretariat in inverted commas for I don’t see anything global about it.

Some of us – the genuine Pan Africanists – commit our meagre resources-time, money and knowledge to influence and redirect the trend of Pan Africanism so that it can reflect its ideals of fighting for social justice, social welfare and the common good of the African people and the entire black race, the ideals espoused by people like Marcus Garvey, W.E Dubois, Rossa Parks, Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere; the ideals that came to fruition with Africans getting rid of slavery, attaining self determination in form of political independence and recently having our very own off-spring in the USA White House. I would not at all write about Stephen Othienno in this celebrated paper, but I am sure because he occupies an office that reflects on the entire continent and the Africans in the diaspora there is no better place to write about his character. I pray that this article generates debate about Pan Africanism, its present state and what future we would want for it. Stephen Othienno is a son of a senior military officer in the Uganda People’s Defence Forces. This is what entitles him to head the secretariat. I am sure that by the time Comrade Tajudeen died, he was already disenchanted with the manner in which Pan African Movement was being abused by the powers that be in Uganda. Possibly that partly explains why he had started being scathingly critical of the Ugandan president in his writings.

Mr Othienno and the group he hobnobs with, which masquerade as the leaders of the Pan African Movement Uganda chapter, are engulfed in fear and paranoia because of the scam they have effected and orchestrated at the Global Pan African secretariat. They have also been uneasy because of what I wrote in Pambazuka because they are averse to the truth because of what they do. Instead of repenting and putting right what has gone wrong – for many genuine Pan Africans view them as enemies to the Pan African Movement – they view Vincent Nuwagaba as their enemy. They are stark wrong for I never have time to concentrate on trivia. I am no simple mind who focuses on personalities. I believe we should focus on issues and these include giving accountability for the Ugandan tax payers’ money which they have constantly and consistently pilfered.

I state without any fear of contradiction that Uganda has failed the test by running down the Pan African Movement secretariat whose offices are no better than a local community based organisation that has been in place for less than a year. I am convinced that we can only organise and refrain from agonising if we have clearheaded people with clean track records. I am sure we are not suffering from a dearth of genuine Pan Africanists who are guided by the Ubuntu philosophy. Let the whole continent and Africans in the diaspora rededicate their efforts to revive the Pan African Movement. A luta continua!

* Vincent Nuwagaba is general secretary of the Pan African Movement Uganda Chapter
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

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