Padmore remains relevant
OVER the weekend I learnt that Thursday would mark the 114th birth anniversary of a certain George Padmore, a pan-Africanist-born in Trinidad.
Padmore’s name won’t jump out at you as a historical figure in the continent’s story for liberation.
Today, Padmore cuts a lonely figure in the larger story of African resistance to the empire, especially in comparison to leaders such as Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta or even Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere.
But those who are familiar with him know he was a vehement figure of anti-colonialism and a symbol of principled resistance.
Born Malcolm Nurse to a middle-class family, Padmore moved to the US when he was 24 to study law. In 1928 he dropped out of law school and joined the American Communist Party and embarked on a journey of vociferous anti-colonial writing and activism. He moved to the USSR in 1929 to lead the Comintern’s (International communist organisation) International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers.
Padmore was foremost a journalist and a prolific writer. He became a central node in a vast network of anti-imperial journalists. His work appeared in the 1930s in the US, the West Indies and across Africa. His work was so influential at one point that his books often faced censure by colonial authorities.
For instance, when his book Africa: Britain’sThird Empire was published, it was banned in Ghana , Gambia and Kenya. Later, when the Soviet Union joined the allies against Nazi Germany, he was asked to temper his tone against the British and the French, but he refused. Stalin threw him out in 1934 and Padmore accused the communists of using black pain as “political mileage”.
“When once a Negro’s eyes are opened, they refuse to shut again,” Padmore famously said.
In 1945, he helped organise the 5th Pan-Africanist Conference in Manchester. It was at that conference, that figures like Nkrumah and Kenyatta were spurred towards mobilisation for African independence.
In his book about Padmore, Leslie James says that the rebel journalist was part of a move that harnessed “a new mood or feeling of unity” (that) viewed empire, racism and economic degradation as part of a system that “fundamentally required
Anti-imperialist obscure hero would baulk at SA cosying up to China and Syria
the application of strategy to their destruction”. Padmore was unequivocal in his belief that it was the responsibility of the oppressed to rise up and secure their liberation. Anything gifted would be piecemeal. For this, he was seen as “dogmatic”.
Naturally, I find Padmore particularly fascinating because he challenged the very narrative of imperialism. Crucially, he identified how race was used as a tool to govern. He also challenged the paternalism of the empire, which also came later to define apartheid, under the guise of “separate development”. He rejected the idea that the empire had anything beneficial for its subjects and defined it as a “political and economic system of violence”. In other words, Padmore was of a generation of black women and men who challenged whiteness itself, through their writings, speech and actions.
I think about Padmore today not because I want to commemorate his birthday. This would be useless. Padmore has been dead since 1959. Instead, I think about Padmore today as I look at the state of our nation, and how we are veering further from the end game: justice, equality and liberation. In other words, Padmore was committed to long-term gains, not shortterm tenders.
I think of Padmore today when I peruse South Africa’s foreign policy. So desperate to appear anti-imperialistic, we are willing to partner with China, (even talk about it at our State of the Nation address) India and Russia in their ambitions to become the new sheriffs in town.
Instead of chartering our own unique sense of justice, we are friends with the Syrian government. Likewise, instead of pushing for more justice, we are willing to circumvent the little that exists, for the sake of fraught friendships and exit the International Criminal Court.
I think of Padmore today because of his unique ability to make global connections and understand tyranny in its different forms; to draw inter-sectoral linkages and to avoid a victim’s myopia.
The fact that so few people know about him sheds light on our current condition.
It is the function of the empire to decide on our heroes, to elevate them and to often masquerade them as our liberators. George Padmore is a relatively obscure hero. And you don’t have to dig much to know why.