Pan-Africanism is the idea that peoples of African descent have common interests and should be unified. Pan-Africanism is also described as the attempt to create a sense of brotherhood and collaboration among all people of African descent whether they lived inside or outside of Africa.
Pan-Africanist ideas first began to circulate in the mid-19th century in the United States, led by Africans from the Western Hemisphere. The most important early Pan-Africanists were Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel, both African Americans and Edward Blyden, a West Indian.
Those early voices for Pan-Africanism emphasized the commonalities between Africans and black people in the United States. Delany, who believed that black people could not prosper alongside whites, advocated the idea that African Americans should separate from the United States and establish their own nation.
Therefore Pan-Africanism ideology was headed and moved on by Africans both inside and outside the African continent, however during this mission, many Pan-Africanists faced opposition from groups that were anti-Pan-Africanits because many people didn’t want to see a united black race, many supremacist groups that have been oppressing Black community have always tried to block Pan-Africanism ideology, and many of pan africanism leaders have been targeted and some eliminated over the years, below we look at some of those leaders have been assassinated and murdered during the cause of redefining and uniting the Africans community.
Frederick Allen Hampton
Fred Hampton was U.S. civil rights leader and deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party’s Illinois chapter who formed Chicago’s first “Rainbow Coalition.” He was a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, a secret operation intended to discredit and neutralize organizations that the agency considered subversive. In 1968 Hampton joined the Black Panther Party as one of the Illinois chapter’s original members.
In December 1969, Hampton was drugged, shot, and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment. O’Neal was Hampton’s trusted friend and bodyguard and was in charge of security the night of Hampton’s murder. During the night of December 3, it is widely believed that he drugged Fred Hampton to ensure that he would not be able to defend himself.
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba was the leader of the Congolese National Movement (MNC) from 1958 until his execution in January 1961. Ideologically an African nationalist and pan-Africanist, he played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent Republic
Lumumba had risen to become prime minister at the age of 34. Elected in the final days of colonial rule, he headed the cabinet of the newly independent nation. The assassination of Lumumba was a brutal and squalid atrocity. It was engineered by Mobutu and by the Belgian government in an effort to re-establish its influence and protect its interests in the Congo.
The assassination was condoned by the United States, which feared that Lumumba was becoming an African Fidel Castro. The UN, with its policy of non-interference in the internal politics of the Congo, failed to rescue Lumumba at one point — his arrest at Mweka — when it might possibly have been able to do so. Nobody comes out well in this story.
To this day, especially for oppressed minorities, Lumumba stars as a martyr to colonialism and to Western capitalism.
Thomas Sankara
Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was a Burkinabè military officer, Marxist revolutionary, and Pan-Africanist who served as President of Burkina Faso from his coup in 1983 to his assassination in 1987.
Sankara’s revolutionary programmes for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africa’s poor, and Sankara remained popular with a considerable majority of his country’s citizens, though some of his policies alienated elements of the former ruling class, including the tribal leaders — and the governments of France and its ally the Ivory Coast. On 15 October 1987, Sankara was assassinated by troops led by Blaise Compaoré, who assumed leadership of the state shortly thereafter and retained it until the 2014 Burkina Faso uprising.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the Black community.
On stage at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down as his pregnant wife and four daughters took cover in the front row.
Dedan kimathi
Dedan Kimathi was a rebel field marshal fighting the British colonial authorities in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. The violent rebellion remains a controversial part of Kenyan and British history.
His execution was by hanging.
Kamukama Rukundo Clinton is a Ugandan freelance journalist, book author, and columnist for 1cananews who can be contacted via WhatsApp at +25670439540 and rukundopeter33@gmail.com
