Pan-Africanism -- the Driving Force of African Culture  
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  Pan-Africanism by definition facilitates optimal material, spiritual and intellectual development of the African people. It provides the comprehension Africans require to refute and avoid embracing hostile, external definitions of African people and African people's relationship to the larger global human society and the general cosmology. As Kwame Ture, observed:  
 

Racist imperialism, which everywhere tries to impose inferiority complexes on us, would have us think that in order to make progress we must "catch up" with the unplanned monstrosities of London, Paris or New York. Some, so contaminated with this fatal disease, think that unless our village has at least one mini skyscraper we have not made progress. All conscious Africans treat this calumny with the contempt it deserves. Who, having the slightest understanding of history, can question the African s ability to construct, when the pyramids still stands! We cannot understand those who think progress equals western cities and life-styles.

  
  When we speak of progress in a society, it is not just the material aspect of life but more importantly the immaterial aspects, the values for example which demonstrate the true understanding of human nature and the role of woman and man in society to take more than they give or give more than they take.  
  In Consciencism Nkrumah tells us, ... in every society there is to be found ideology. In every society, there is at least one militant segment which is the dominant segment of that society. In communalistic societies, this segment coincides with the whole. This dominant segment has its fundamental principles, its beliefs about the nature of man, and the type of society which must be created for man. Fundamental principles help in designing and controlling the of organization which the dominant segment uses. And the same principles give rise to a network of purposes, which fix what compromises are possible or not possible. As Seku Ture observed every people have their own culture and their own ideology.  
  Seku Ture, like Dr. Nkrumah, recognized the urgency of providing Africa with the necessary revolutionary assets. He taught that the Pan-African revolution required a Cultural Revolution, that is the incorporation and application of dialectical materialism in the African cultural development process. President Ture penned many excellent works to this end, among them the classic, Dialectical Approach to Culture.  
  An example of his line of reasoning can be found in his view on the necessity for a Pan-African broadcasting system. He wrote ...we could therefore better organize our information systems through television programs featuring the lives of our Peoples. This would make our programs profitable to all, diversified and rich in content. But instead we are importing foreign programs which poison the minds of our People!  
  Here, President Ture echoes the general views of Kwame Nkrumah about the role of culture in the shaping of peoples' perceptions and apperceptions. Nkrumah, in Consciencism, wrote, “In African art, too, society was often portrayed. It is the moral philosophical preoccupation in terms of which this portrayal was done which explains its typical power. It is this also which explains the characteristic distortion of form in African art. In the portrayal of whether as forces of the world, of generation and death, or the force of destiny, it was essential that it should not be delineated as something assimilated and overcome. And this is the impression which the soft symmetries of lifelike art would have given. It is to avoid this impression of force overcome that African art resorted to distortion of forms.”  
  Nkrumah and Ture both had to do battle with African mercenary ideologues in the employ of the world systems hostile to Pan-Africanism. Negritude, African Socialism and the like are notable among the ignoble ideological creeds advocated and assumed by these individuals. The ideological struggle between such elements and Pan-Africanists is in reality the struggle between indigenous and allied elements, who work to see African culture develop on the basis of a positive enculturation, versus those who are paid or otherwise compensated, induced, or perhaps even coerced, to promote the diffusion of imperialist dogma and behavior in lieu of genuine culture. Such elements seek to enthrone alien institutions, behavior patterns, mores, ethos, ethics, values, arts and all else associated with human action and thought, on Africa and African people. These elements are agents of a perverted normative process designed to substitute the values, semiotic elements, system of meaning and so forth of Africa's history and future for the putrid ideological edifices associated with imperialism. In this battle Pan-Africanism will brook no thoughts of retreat, as it would be an abandonment of principle and all that we are and all that we hope to be. Kwame Ture described these elements thus,  
  Our bourgeoisie is the most corrupt in the world! Imbued with, inferiority complexes, they do not even dream of oppressing the African masses. Their highest aspiration is to be a paid servant of imperialism. Their lack of national pride makes corruption their only means of acquiring money. Investments in Africa are beyond their wildest imaginations. Travel and a Swiss bank account are the hallmarks of advancement for these bloodsuckers. They are totally alienated from their strong communalist past. They seek individual luxury in the midst of mass suffering. Too ostentatious, they are sickening, there are more Mercedes in Africa than any other continent!  
  Obviously then, Africa, and Africans, will never be fully free or completely independent, until and unless we resolve the contradictions internal to our society. As these collaborators are key to the success of neo-colonialist policies, which are the major shackles impeding Africa's progress, our culture has to be purged of such inappropriate approaches to life.  
 

In the Organization of Afro-American Unity Founding Rally, Malcolm X explained to the assembly that cultural revolution was a critical part of our struggle. He said:

  
  We will also have a cultural department. The task of the cultural department will be to do research into the culture, into the ancient and current culture of our people, the cultural contributions and achievements of our people. And also all of the entertainment groups that exist on the African continent that can come here and ours who are here that can go there. Set up some kind of cultural program that will really emphasize the dormant talent of black people.  
  When I was in Ghana, I was speaking with, I think his name is Nana Nketsia, I think he is the Minister of Culture or he's head of the Culture Institute. I went to his house, he had a -- he had a nice, beautiful place; I started to say he had a sharp pad. He had a fine place in Accra. He had gone to Oxford, and one of the things that he said impressed me no end. He said that as an African his concept of freedom is a situation or a condition in which he, as an African, feels completely free to give vent to his own likes and dislikes and thereby develop his own African Personality. Not a condition in which he is copying some European cultural pattern or some European cultural standard, but an atmosphere of complete freedom where he has the right, the leeway, to bring out of himself all of that dormant, hidden talent that has been there for so long.  
 

And in that atmosphere, brothers and sisters, you'd be surprised what will come out of the bosom of this black man. I've seen it happen. I've seen black musicians when they'd be jamming at a jam session with white musicians -- a lot of difference. The white musician can jam if he's got some sheet music in front of him. He can jam on something that he's heard jammed before. If he's heard it, then he can duplicate it or he can imitate it or he can read it. But that black musician, he picks up his horn and starts blowing some sounds that he never thought of before. He improvises, he creates, it come from within. It's his soul, it's that soul music. It's the only area on the American scene where the black man has been free to create. And he has mastered it. He has shown that he can come up with something that nobody ever thought of on his horn..

Well, likewise he can do the same thing if given intellectual independence...He can come up with a philosophy...He can invent a society, a social system, an economic system, a political system...He will improvise; he'll bring it from within himself. And this is what you and I want.

  
 

Proper agencies will flow from proper ideology - The political, social, economic and moral constructs necessary for Africa's complete redemption and the full flowering of Pan-African culture will spring from the African peoples' ideology. These necessary Pan-African institutions, structures, systems and organizations will be defined and constructed by the global African population and reflect the experience and knowledge gained from the cumulative struggles of the African people. The most prominent of these agencies will be political. Politics are the glue and defining element of all cultures. As Kwame Nkrumah stated, Seek ye first the political kingdom.