Theoretical Influences in Music Therapy Research and Practice
2.15 Group music therapy
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Nations of the World” was issued and circulated to territories in which persons of African descents lived. Other resolutions of the 1900 conference included a written petition directly sent to the British monarch Queen Victoria which protested and condemned in the strongest terms the large scale injustices suffered by Africans and peoples of African descents in the British colonial empire. The conference also resolved to establish a permanent Pan-African Association with a secretariat that would replace the African Association with offices at 61-62 Chancery Lane, London. The 1900 conference ended its proceedings with an election into the key posts of the organization. This led to the emergence of the organization’s officers for a fixed term of two years each.102 In conclusion, it is important to note that while the African Association did not succeed entirely in its attempt to halt the trend of injustices that bedevilled the Black peoples across the world, it did however give an appreciable showing by being the first Black – led organization to have cohesively challenged the excesses of European colonialism. This help laid the foundation upon which subsequent conferences of this kind drew their inspiration from. Thus the 1900 conference was a propelling force against the established order of colonial servitude, racism, and economic exploitation.
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continent”.103 The 1919 Pan-African congress was held in Paris-the French capital from 19 and 21 February 1919. At the conference, far- reaching resolutions were made which further protested the degradation of Blacks across the world. The 1919 edition of the Pan-African conference demanded “in the interest of justice and humanity and for strengthening the forces of civilization that immediate steps be taken to develop the 200, 000, of Negros” world over.
Delegates at the conference thus resolved as follows:
- That the allied and associated Powers establish a code of laws for the international
Protection of the natives of Africa similar to the proposed international code for Labour;
- That the League of Nations establish a permanent Bureau charged with the special Duty of overseeing the application of these laws to the political social and
Economic welfare of the natives104
The concluding part of the 1919 Pan-African conference resolution demanded that peoples of African descent the world over be given their inalienable rights to be governed according to the principles listed below.
The Land:
The land and its natural resources shall be held in trust for the natives and at all times they shall have effective ownership of as much land as they can profitably develop.
Capital:
103 Cited in Clarence Cottee, Du Bois, the NAACP, and the Pan-African Congress of 1919, The Journal of Negro History, vol. 57, No.1 (Jan, 1972). p. 28, Published by Association for the study of African American Life and History, Inc. available online at: http//www.jstor.org/stable/2717070, accessed: 8/11/ 2014.
104 The 1919 Pan-African conference resolutions can be accessed online at: www.youthcouncil-namibia.org/docs/1stPanc.Pdf.
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The investment of capital and granting of concessions shall be so regulated as to prevent the exploitation of the natives and the exhaustion of the natural wealth of the country; Concessions shall always be limited in time and subject to state control; the growing social needs of the natives must be regarded and the profits taxed for the social and material benefit of the natives.
Labour:
Slavery and corporal punishment shall be abolished and forced labour except in punishment for crime; and the general conditions of labour shall be prescribed and regulated by the State.
Education:
It shall be the right of every native child to learn to read and write his own language, and the language of the trustee nation, at public expense, and to be given technical instruction in some branch of industry. The State shall also educate as large a number of natives as possible in higher technical and cultural training and maintain a corps of native teachers.
Medicine and Hygiene:
It shall be recognized that human existence in the tropics calls for special safeguards and a scientific system of public hygiene. The State shall be responsible for medical care and sanitary conditions without discouraging collective and individual initiative. A service created by the State shall provide physicians and hospitals, and shall spread the rules of hygiene by written and spoken word. As fast as possible the State will establish a native medical staff.
The State:
The natives of Africa must have the right to participate in the government as fast as their development permits in conformity with the principle that the government exists for the natives, and not the natives for the government.
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They shall at once be allowed to participate in local and tribal government according to ancient usage, and this participation shall gradually extend, as education and experience proceeds, to the higher offices of State, to the end that, in time, Africa be ruled by consent of the Africans.
Culture and Religion:
No particular religion shall be imposed and no particular form of human culture. There shall be liberty of conscience. The uplift of the natives shall take into consideration their present condition and shall allow the utmost scope to racial genius, social inheritance and individual bent so long as these are not contrary to the best established principles of civilization.
Civilized Negroes:
Wherever persons of African descent are civilized and able to meet the tests of surrounding culture, they shall be accorded the same rights as their fellow citizens; they shall not be denied on account of race or colour a voice in their own government, justice before the courts and economic and social equality according to ability and desert.
The League of Nations:
Greater security of life and property shall be guaranteed the natives international labour legislation shall cover the native workers as well as whites they shall have equitable representation in all the international institutions of the League of Nations, and the participation of the blacks themselves in every domain of endeavour shall be encouraged in accordance with the declared object of article 19 of the League of Nations, to wit: "The well-being and the development of these people constitute a sacred mission of civilization and it is
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proper in the League of Nations to incorporate therein pledges for the accomplishment of this mission.105
The 1919 edition of the Pan-African conference ended with a call on the League of Nations to ensure that the interest of African descents are well protected by ensuring that it brings to the attention of the world the unjust treatment of Blacks across the colonial world. There was noticeable improvement in the number of attendees at the conference as it was attended by 57 delegates from Africa and the diaspora, unlike the 1900 conference which had 37 delegates in attendance. The second Pan African Conference took place in August 1921, and a month later it reconvened in Brussels, Belgium. At these two conferences leading Black figures from Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe reiterated their resentment of the colonial system and its manifest features.
The speakers at the conference expressed their disapproval of racism against the Black peoples and other discriminatory tendencies unleashed by the white colonial authorities. In addition, the delegates called for domestic self-governance for the colonially traumatized peoples. The convener of the conference, Du Bois, underscored the importance of intensifying cross racial synergy between members of the black intelligentsia and those sympathetic to the parlous socio-political and economic political state of the colonial subjects. The conference ended with a resolve by delegates to work toward the pursuit of justice for peoples of African descents. The cities of London and Lisbon (in England and Portugal) respectively played host to the third Pan-African conference in 1923. The conference deliberations were in two sessions, one in London and the other in Lisbon. Both sessions of the 1923 edition of the Pan-African conference had in attendance prominent European intellectuals such as H.G. Wells and Harold Laski. The conference also paraded leading figures of the Pan-African movement who participated in previous conferences. The conference delegates called for the immediate termination of all discriminatory tendencies against the Blacks community across the colonial world.
105 Ibid.
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Therefore, the 1923 conference like others before it played an important role in the decolonization of the African continent and the Black world.
Next in the succession of Pan-African conferences of the 20th century was the 1927 conference held in New-York, United States. In an attempt to intensify pressure on the colonial masters, delegates met for the fifth time to assess the socio-political and economic status of the Black man in the colonies. The 1927 conference had an impressive attendance of 208 delegates from across twenty-two American states and ten foreign countries. Africa, the motherland continent of Black people was unimpressively represented at the conference; not by its own making but because of the travel restrictions imposed by the British and French colonial powers on the interested delegates. The colonial powers apparently worried by the rising tide of Pan-Africanist activities and the huge threat it posed to their imperialist activities on the continent, decided to frustrate further Pan-African meetings. Consequently, the African continent could only muster few delegates from Gold Coast, (Ghana) Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria as representatives of the continent at the conference. Participants at the 1927 conference were mostly Black Americans.
The bulk of the conference’s finance came from Addie W. Hunton a trained nurse and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom - across racial organization established in 1919 by the antagonists of World War I. Like the previous conferences, the conditions of Black peoples in the colonies formed the core of the discussion at the 1927 Pan-African conference. The conference ended with a call on the colonial authorities to stop all forms of discriminatory policies against Black people across the globe. This was in line with the demands made at prior Pan-African conferences. Due largely to the great depression of the 1920s, and its socio-economic impact on the global economy, the Pan-African conferences could not hold for a period of 18 years. However, this hiatus did not in any way weaken the spirit of the Pan-Africanists. It rather gave them the impetus to further galvanize their people world over against the colonial system. The long period was used to spread the Pan-African gospel across the entire Black world.
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After a long absence, Africanists converged in Manchester, England in 1945. The 1945 Pan-African conference was a milestone in the decolonization of Africa and the Black race for few reasons. First, it was at the conference that Africans would be leaders and their African diaspora brothers demanded without equivocation an end to European colonization. Secondly, the participation of Africans in World War 1 gave the impression that the time was ripe for political independence. The 1945 conference held between 15 and 21 October 1945 was considered by many as the most important of all the Pan-African conferences due to its impact on the decolonization process. It had in attendance frontline leaders from the Diaspora such George Padmore. Du Bois was deservedly named by delegates to the conference as president of the 1945 meeting. This was in appreciation of his historic role in the development of the Pan-African movement. Others were Trinidadian pan-Pan-Africanist George Padmore and Prominent Jamaican lawyer Dudley Thompson.
The Manchester Conference was attended by over 200 delegates from the coloured world. For the first time Africa was not only represented impressively at the Conference but Africans participated actively in its deliberations and proceedings. Also for the first time Pan Africanism and African Nationalism became synonymous and equally significant, and the necessity for a well-organized firmly-knit movements, as a primary condition for the success of the national liberation struggle in Africa, was sufficiently articulated.106 The 1945 Conference was attended by African nationalist such as Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta, Malawi’s Hastings Banda, Nigeria’s Nnamdi Azikwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Jaja Wachukwu among other African nationalist leaders of the time. The participants at the Conference were largely made up of intellectuals, political activists and scholars. There were 33 delegates from the West Indies while 35 others came from different organizations in Britain. This included the West African Students Union.
106 P, OlisanwucheEsedebe. The Growth of the African Movement 1893 -1927, Tarikh Vol. 6 No. 3, Pan-Africanism, Published for the Historical Society of Nigeria by (Longman Group Limited London) 1980. p. 40.
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The presence of Du Bois – the convener of the 1919 Pan-African conference, then 77-year old was symbolic as it helped to stimulate the new generation of Pan-Africanist that later took over the leadership of the movement from the pioneer generation of Pan-African leaders. The conference was under-reported by the British Press obviously because of the threat it posed to their imperial activities in the colonies. Other resolutions passed at the conference included the criminalization of racial discrimination and denunciation of imperialism and capitalism. As part of strategies to end colonialism, delegates resolved that colonial subjects should employ industrial actions such as strikes, boycotts and other mutinous acts to free themselves from economic, social and political subjugation imposed on them by the imperial forces.
The 1945 Pan-African conference had a tremendous impact on the decolonization of continental Africa as it aroused the consciousness of future African leaders who took the indoctrination received at the conference to their respective domain for prompt implementation. Thus the post-1945 era witnessed popular anti-colonial sentiments across Africa. For instance, between 1945 and 1960, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah took the initiative to domesticate the pan-African ideals on the African continent, a move which started yielding results in December 1945, with the coming together of Wallace Johnson, Bankole Akpata Kojo Botsio, Bankole Awoonor Renner, Ashie Nikoi, and Kwame Nkrumah himself to form the West African National Secretariat in England. The association intended to propagate the ideals of Pan-Africanism and foster the spirit of unity and solidarity initially among students of West African extraction in England and subsequently among Africans in general. More importantly, the association used its platform to sensitize Africans on the need to claim back their inheritance territorially, economically, socially, and politically from their European subjugators.
The activities of this association gathered momentum from the time of its emergence in late
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1945 to the late 1950s. It was largely as a result of this that Ghana became the first Sub-Saharan African country to obtain political independence in March 1957.107
The independence of Ghana acted as a catalyst for the independence of 17 African countries 13 years later as: Cameroon, Togo, Senegal, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin, Somalia, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Gabon, Congo and Mauritania all became independent.108 Prior to the independence of these countries in 1960, Dr Kwame Nkrumah – Africa’s foremost Pan-Africanist – hosted two Accra Conferences in 1958. According to Tondi, “the first two Pan-African conferences to be held on the African soil were held in Accra, Ghana in April and December 1958”.109 As noted above, these Conferences had profound impact on the decolonization of Africa as they helped galvanize African nationalists who, having drawn inspiration from Ghana’s independence breakthrough, intensified pressure on the existing colonial regimes on the continent.
In conclusion, from the brief episode presented above on the Pan-African movement and its activities vis-à-vis its challenge of the colonial order across the Black world, it is evident that the movement succeeded in its founding mission which was to put an end to colonialism and its accompanying effects across the entire black world. The mere fact that the European colonial powers such as the British and the French attempted to stop Africans from attending the Pan-African gatherings shows that the movement’s activities not only challenged their imperialistic actions on the continent but also posed a huge threat to their continued domination of the peoples in the colonies they administered. Thus the Pan-African ideology undoubtedly played a pivotal role in the transition of Africa and the entire Black world from colonially dependent states to a state of responsible independence. The next section will historically examine the role
107Marika Sherwood, African Conferences, 1900 -1953: What Did “African Mean? The Journal of Pan-African Studies, vol. 4, no. 10, January 2012, p. 2. www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol4no10/4.10 Pan-Pan-African.pdf
108 Hodgkin, T. 1957 “Nationalism in Colonial Africa” New York: New York University, p. 1.
109PakisoTondi. Pan-African Thought and Practice, Alternation Special Edition 2 (2005), pp. 322-324 ISSN 1023-1757. www.alternation.ukzn.ac.za/Files/docs/12.3.
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of Nigeria in African decolonization politics in the United Nations from 1960 upwards within the context of the title of this dissertation.
SECTION TWO: A FOCUS ON NIGERIA
4.7. The Role of Nigeria in African Decolonization Politics in the United Nations, 1960-1994