Speaking at the 40th anniversary of Ghana’s independence, Mwalimu Nyerere said that his generation of African nationalists had set themselves two tasks: liberation and unity. In the first task, that of liberation, they had succeeded, but in the second they had failed. It was now the duty of the post- independence generation to bring about African unity.

By liberation Mwalimu meant formal independence from colonialism. In our youthful days we greatly underestimated the importance of formal independence. Yet it was an earthshaking event for a people who had been oppressed and humiliated for four centuries of slavery and a century of colonialism. As C.L.R. James said of Ghana’s independence in 1957, it had 'raised the status of Africa and Africans to a pitch higher than it had ever reached before'.

The neoliberal onslaught of the last two or so decades has dramatically brought home to us the significance of Uhuru. But it has also made us wonder, Where is Uhuru? Liberation without unity is incomplete; some would say, not possible. And they would have ample evidence from the neoliberal episode which has proved to be an unabashed attack on African sovereignty, both of the state and the people.

Pan-Africanism, African unity, is back on the historical agenda. I would say so is liberation. The new generation of African nationalists can only be pan-Africanists and in pan-Africanism we have the ideology and vision of African (not Tanzanian, or Burkinabe or Algerian) liberation. The twin tasks of liberation and unity are now combined.

With the wisdom of hindsight and the experience of half a century of African independence, we should critically reflect on what Nyerere said 50 years ago: ‘African nationalism is meaningless, is anachronistic, and is dangerous, if it is not at the same time Pan-Africanism.' The territorial nationalism of African states, what Nyerere derogatively used to call in Kiswahili 'vinchi' (statelets), is ‘the equivalent of tribalism within the context of our separate national states’. Has he been proved right?

The Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week will hopefully provide us with a forum to begin to reflect critically on the pan-Africanist message of the first generation of African nationalists and the experience of independence from the standpoint of the African working people.

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* Where is Uhuru? by Issa G. Shivji is now available from Fahamu Books.
* Issa G. Shivji is the Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.