a similar project at the 5th Summit of the OAU held in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, Libya, in September 1999. After the death of Nkrumah in 1972, Qaddafi assumed leadership of the Pan-African movement and became an outspoken advocate of African unity. “One Africa, One Hope” calls for the realization of the Pan-African ideal of African unity in order to achieve the elusive goals of peace, security, and development. Unfortunately, the relatively ineffective and powerless African union – modeled after the European union – that came into being in July 2001 was significantly different from the organization envisioned by Qaddafi.
In the world of Black Panther, Killmonger’s plan to arm African descendants across the globe represents the beginning stages of the Pan-African ideal, where Blacks all over the world fight for liberation by any means necessary.
T’Challa’s Liberalism
For centuries, Wakanda pursued a policy of isolation fueled by the desire to maintain its traditions and by the spirit of nationalism. Outside Wakanda were the scourges of colonialism, slavery, and wars of conquest. For Wakandans the question was whether to maintain their isolationist ways or to join the international community. Should they share their vibranium-based technology, or perhaps use it to support oppressed people across the globe? We get an answer at the end of Black Panther. T’Challa establishes an outreach center at the building where N’Jobu died, and he appears before the United Nations to reveal Wakanda’s true nature to the world.
The United Nations is based on the notion that the member states have sovereign equality.4 Each state, regardless of size or population, is legally recognized as equivalent with every other state. The inequalities between states, however, are codified through the veto power granted to the five permanent members of the security council: China, Russia, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. Notably, only international problems are within the jurisdiction of the United Nations. The UN Charter does not “authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”5 Increasingly, current wars have been civil wars, which do not legally fall under the provisions in the UN Charter. However, the prelude to and fallout from civil war can often demand UN attention: refugees seeking asylum often crossing international borders, and weapons of war being transported through transnational networks.
The UN is designed primarily to maintain international peace and security. Collective security is based on the proposition that potential aggressors will refrain from the use of force against another because they know ahead of time that their use of force will be met by all, or many, states joining together against the aggressor. The goal of achieving peace through collective security relies on several assumptions that will also help us understand why T’Challa believes that joining with the United Nations and building a community center is the best approach to solving the global oppression faced by people of African descent. The first assumption is that wars are preventable and will not occur if all parties exercise restraint. A second assumption is that aggressors, no matter who they are, should be stopped. This presumes that the aggressor can be easily identified by members of the international community. In many cases, though, it is difficult to tell who the aggressor is and who the victim is.6 Lastly, collective security assumes moral clarity, meaning that the aggressor is morally wrong because all aggressors are morally wrong. As a result, those who are right must act together to meet the aggression. This also assumes that the aggressors know that the international community will act to punish the aggressor, or those committing the initial injustice.
In practice, collective security has been difficult to achieve since World War II. In most cases, states dare not interfere in actions taken by an ally or foe, even if that state was the aggressor, for fear of starting another world war.7 The aggressor cannot always be easily identified and even if the aggressor can be identified, that party may not always be morally wrong. Trying to right a previous wrong is not necessarily wrong, nor is trying to make just a prior injustice always unjust. Ultimately, collective security in practice supports and maintains the status quo, leaving victims of oppression, both domestically and internationally, looking for answers.
Killmonger’s Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism represents the expression of shared values and common interests of Africans across the diaspora. Intellectually, it tends to view Africans and descendants of Africa as belonging to a single race and sharing cultural unity. This group has a shared historical experience of domination and nationalist struggles for their cultural, economic, and political liberation. Pan-Africanism was thus conceived as a liberation movement designed to regroup and mobilize Africans in Africa and the diaspora against racial discrimination, foreign domination and oppression, and economic exploitation.8
Pan-Africanists led by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and including Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Ahmed Sekou Touré of Guinea, and Modibo Keita of Mali, proposed, following the blueprint of “Africa Must Unite,” immediate political and economic integration in the form of a “United States of Africa.” This would consist of an African common market, African monetary union, African military high command, and a continent-wide Union government.9
Ignace Kissangou proposes the creation of a federation of African nation-states with a common defense and security policy, a continent-wide army, a common currency, and such Pan-African institutions as a security council for African development, an African parliament, and an African senate (or representative council of African institutions).10 In 2018, in response to the visit of the British Prime Minister Theresa May, Julius Malema, the leader of one of South Africa’s most significant opposition organizations, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), evoked the spirit of Pan-Africanism. Malema called for a united Africa with a common language and an end to Africa’s colonial borders. Ultimately, peoples of African descent, wherever they are, must take on the tradition of their forebear Pan-Africanists and unite their vision and talents to survive in the increasingly hostile global village.11
In a departure from liberalism toward a more realist theoretical approach, African Americans realized with frustration that the expectation that emancipation would end exploitation of Blacks and restore their dignity was mistaken.12 We can view Killmonger as realistic in this way. He was educated and had traveled the world, witnessing violence and destruction and the oppression of dark skin people everywhere. Killmonger was not out to dominate the world and become a global dictator. His goal was liberation.
When Competing Philosophies Collide
T’Challa and Killmonger each see their respective philosophy as superior. Whereas Killmonger wants Wakanda to free oppressed Black communities all over the world, T’Challa wants to work through global institutions and the international community.
There are many positive elements of Pan-Africanism, and one cannot deny the collective conditions and oppression of Black people around the globe. Should African countries do for self, or should they rely and depend on other countries and other groups to defend and work in their best interests?
History has numerous examples of Africans uniting to oppose oppression. In eighteenth-century London, for example, African writers and campaigners such as Olaudah Equiano formed the Sons of Africa, perhaps the first Pan-African organization. Its members asserted their pride in a common African heritage and campaigned against Britain’s role as the world’s leading human trafficker at the time. The most important event to undermine both racism and the slave system during the eighteenth century occurred when revolution broke out in the French Caribbean colony of St. Domingue in August 1791. The result was the creation of Haiti, the first modern “Black” republic anywhere in the world. The revolution produced new heroes of African descent, such as Toussaint L’Ouverture and Sanité Bélair. Moving into the nineteenth century, early Pan-Africanists included Martin Delany from the United States and Edward Blyden from the Caribbean. Delany, an abolitionist,
