The discrimination African refugees fleeing Ukraine faced is a recurring reminder for those who believe in a post-racial world that anti-black racism is alive.
Recent global events involving Africans at the Ukraine-Russia border and previously in Wuhan China, the United States of America, and Saudi Arabia have raised two critical questions for Pan-Africanism: first, what is the role of Africa, the African Union (AU), and African leaders in tackling normalized and globalized systemic anti-black racism? Second, is there an urgent need for a complete overhaul of global multilateral systems and global governance to reflect contemporary reality? Implied in this are the collective agency and transnational solidarity of all persons of colour, Africans, and Afro-descendants. Against persistent patterns of anti-blackness, African inertia, and excessive complacency in the face of serious attacks on Blacks, communal agency and transnational cohesion have become even more crucial. These critical tasks require concerted and deliberate efforts on several fronts and are urgent and long overdue.
On 25 May 2023, the AU will be marking its 60th anniversary. This is no small feat; it marks two generations of African liberation. At its inaugural summit in 1963 the AU (then the Organisation of African Unity) was faced with five key tasks: decolonization and liberation; unification and integration; socio-economic transformation; development and self-determination; and defining Africa’s role in the world. Hence, the poignant resolutions establishing the OAU Coordinating Committee for the Liberation of Africa in May 1963; and the OAU’s first Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government held in July 1963 that condemned apartheid and colonialism. Moreover, the ensuing continental efforts to pursue a social agenda, an economic agenda, a cultural agenda, and a broad unification and integration agenda. These were meant to assure Africans and Africa equal humanity following centuries of subordination through slavery, colonialism, and apartheid.
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