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Chadwick Boseman’s lantern

T’Challa is no more. Will we Africans of the diaspora let the pan-African light that Boseman kept burning in Wakanda go out?

Black Ink Activist

Chadwick Boseman, acclaimed for his leading role as T’Challa, the Black Panther, passed away on 28 August. Boseman was an African-American man striving for success on his own terms, who taught us not to allow our current circumstances to define who we are.

Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther

Boseman’s death undoubtedly came as a shock to ardent followers of the Marvel franchise, but more so to those who understand the political implications of such a film.

With its predominantly black cast and black director, Black Panther enjoyed global success of a kind that signalled a wave of social change, at a time when the lack of diversity in the US film industry is unashamed and glaring. It was a film made amid the beginnings of an uproar against systemic racism in America.

 

More importantly, Black Panther’s narrative is symbolic of the rebirth of African and African-American relations, particularly as the African continent and people of African descent in the Americas continue to mark the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade.

Symbol of a will to power

The origin of the Black Panther can be traced to the Lowndes County Freedom Organisation (LCFO), formed in 1965 as an independent political party to rival the all-white Democrats. Lowndes, Alabama in 1965 had an 80% black American population that was denied the right to vote. Against this backdrop, the LCFO was formed with the black panther as its insignia, which became a symbol for the Black Power Movement across America.

This in turn inspired the creation of the California-based Black Panther Party and its adoption of the panther as a symbol. In 1966, Marvel created and published the first issue of The Black Panther – featuring its first African action superhero.

Although the creator, Stan Lee, claimed a pure coincidence with his black panther character to that of the LCFO’s insignia, the political implications of the Black Panther superhero and its narrative may have more poignant inferences than its creator anticipated.

Indeed, the late 1950s into the 1960s in America were dominated by political and social turmoil. As the African-American struggle against political and socio-economic oppression reached a peak during these decades, Ghana gained her independence with other African countries following suit.

Kwame Nkrumah, who studied and worked in racially contentious America and had encountered the ideas of the activists Marcus Garvey, C L R James and other political thinkers, had become Ghana’s first leader. The conversation of pan-Africanism, which started at the first Pan-African Congress in 1900, was finally gaining ground. The beacon of hope that Ghana represented at the dawn of her independence attracted political leaders and civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Maya Angelou, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, who believed that “this birth of this new Nation will give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world”, in the words of Dr King.

And so Ghana did create that impetus, becoming home to the sociologist, author and civil rights activist W E B DuBois during his last years. The dream of a united black people was becoming plausible.

Follow the foresight

It has been about five decades since the political fervour of the pan-Africanist 1960s. Inasmuch as the African-African American Summit, Panafest and other events have managed to sustain the symbolism of pan-Africanism here in Ghana, actual progress towards a working Pan-African Congress leaves much to be desired.

Africa’s political and economic trials, our proxy wars and so forth, coupled with the negative media depiction of post-independent Africa, did not help to further the movement. In short, the intellectual curiosity and common political focus that existed between Africans and African-Americans had waned. We had each – for various reasons – turned inwards.

Today, there is a rebirth of curiosity heralded by the commemoration of 400 years since the end of slavery. The stark reality of unapologetic police brutality and killing of African Americans, coupled with the constant gnaw of systemic racism, has awakened black people in the United States to reach into their heritage. As such, the timing of Black Panther could not be more apt.

Boseman understood this. He had political foresight and “advocated for his character to speak with an African accent, so that he could present T’Challa to audiences as an African king whose dialect had not been conquered by the West”, as the director Ryan Coogler said in a tribute to the late actor. This fundamental decision by Boseman to sound African has created a new paradigm in film, but more so, it serves as a lantern directed towards Africa, signalling that African Americans are once again in search of Africa.

The onus is upon us to determine what sort of Africa they will find.

Zora Agyeman

* Asaase Radio 99.5 – tune in or log on to broadcasts online.
Follow us on Twitter: @asaaseradio995
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