Pan-Afrikanism Or Man-Afrikanism?

Pan-Afrikanism Or Man-Afrikanism?

- Tshepo Mvulane Moloi

The bulk of literature concerning Pan-Afrikanism is mired with flaws, particularly in relation to its institutionalisation phase, which dates back to the commencing convention in London, England in 1900. The two gravest shortcomings include the lack of acknowledgement of its original scholar-activist founders and a strikingly sparse recognition of women as participants, in its historical trajectory. If one may be allowed to be blunt, then questions such as follows, need to be asked - What is known about the chief convenor and founder of the initial 1900 Congress, the Caribbean Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester- Williams (1869-1911)? Furthermore why has so little been said about Sylvester-Williams’s co-convenors in the form of the Haitians, Joseph Antenor-Firmin (1850-1911) an anthropologist, journalist and politician and Benito Sylvain (1868-1915), who was also a politician and diplomat?

Secondly from the sparse pioneering coterie of Pan-Afrikanists, were there any female participants?

If the response to the second question posed above, is in the affirmative then why are the identities of such female torchbearers overwhelmingly anonymous from the vast scholarship concerned with narratives of Pan-Afrikanism? Although both questions posed above are crucial and critical, for scholars seeking to secure a better command of the history of Pan-Afrikanism, this article however opts to focus on the latter question, on the basis of recurring women’s invisibility, in the historical outline regarding Pan-Afrikanism. This focus aims to acknowledge their contribution as scholar activists; and in the process also to set the record straight, about their due place in the discourse of Pan- Afrikanism.