The West and the Rest of Us?

A number of the luminaries of the Pan-African movement such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, W.E.B Dubois, C.L R James and Eric Williams as anti-colonial thinkers and political leaders cherished aspirations of an alternative international order. Their anti-colonial struggle was not just nationalistic and continentalist in outlook but was inspired by visions of “world-making” (Getachew 2019). Their project of African Independence as undergirded by Pan-Africanism sought to challenge the West as the embodiment of slavery and colonialism (Chinweizu 1975) not only on the continent where it created colonies but the post-World War II dispensation. Many of them propagated socialist sentiments and objectives. W. E.B. Dubois was a Marxist until the moment of his transition. It was in this sense that as Marxist in ideological outlook and socialist in political praxis, they were anti-capitalist in orientation. They embraced the Afro-Asian call of cooperation (Bandung spirit) to challenge the world hegemony of the West which characterised “the long twentieth century” (Arrighi 2010). Thus, a foundation of the “global South” as a victim of underdevelopment by the West was laid. They wanted to challenge the hegemony of the political economy of the imperialist West.