'Core' vs. 'Periphery'

...Not all observers will agree with Wallerstein's evaluation of Pan-Africanism...

...But built into the structure of the new organization were compromises and concessions to the fundamentally different concepts and objectives of the core and the periphery...

...Using these constructs, Wallerstein then appraises and details the events of recent years...

...He feels, too, that a revival of Pan-Africanism might well revive the more revolutionary Pan-Africanists...

...The realities of power, sovereignty and divergent self-interests in Africa somehow had to be reconciled with a general sense of African brotherhood and the desire for a transformation and revalorization of the continent...

...He is careful, though, to make clear that division, not unity, has been progressively more evident in Africa since the wave of independence began, and that the number of effective revolutionary voices has steadily diminished...

...Wallerstein's belief in the force of Pan-Africanism as a movement and his sympathy for the revolutionary approach of the core are apparent...

...Until World War II, Negroes from the Western Hemisphere, such as Henry Sylvester-Williams, Marcus Garvey and George Padmore were most prominent in the leadership...

...Wallerstein's core subdivided into discordant factions...

...He may be right...

...With more and more African states achieving independence, Pan-Africanism had to go beyond, or descend from, its broad denunciations of racial indignity and its reaffirmations of African values...

...Neither would everyone agree that the revolutionaries constitute the core of the effort toward unity...

...Uneasy and unsteady compromises had to be devised between the two principal viewpoints, with proponents of the system of sovereign states tending to prevail over the revolutionaries...

...It was at this time that in-tra-African "subversion" became a focal issue on the continent...

...He sees 1957-60 as a relatively hopeful period in terms of Pan-African advancement...

...Even in that first phase, however, profound disagree ment on the approach to African unity was evident...

...As a basis for his discussion of the complex pattern of federations, groupings, splits and quarrels that has characterized the African political scene since 1957, Wallerstein draws his own map of the Pan-African movement: It has two parts, a "core" and a "periphery...

...Then in 1963, according to Wal-lerstein, the prospects for Pan-Africanism revived with the formation of the oau in Addis Ababa...

...The object of his intensive examination is Pan-Africanism????a movement he believes represented the strongest indigenous political force in Africa during the period 1957-65...

...Despite the discouraging evidence to date, Wallerstein's confidence in the potentiality of Pan-Africanism remains firm...

...In his phrase, this group envisages unity as a broad movement among the peoples of Africa...

...Discontent with the pace of economic development could lead to the installation not of revolutionary but of highly disciplinary civilian or military regimes...

...It was further weakened by the frustrations growing out of the Rhodesian crisis in late 1965????which vividly demonstrated the oau's weakness as an instrument of liberation in the southern areas of the continent...

...and the various countries of North and Tropical Africa clustered into two distinctive blocs, the Monrovia and the Casablanca, named after the cities where the organizing conferences were held...

...Reviewed by waldemar a. nielsen President, African-American Institute Africa's rush onto the world scene has been accompanied by a deplorable rush into print of a multitude of non-books on the subject ????incomplete collections of random data, unstructured bundles of old scholarly articles, and anthologies stitched together from bits and pieces...

...In his view, the continuing difficulties of African economic development and the persistence of white domination in southern Africa will lead to frustration and discontent, which could fuel a new drive for unity...

...After the second Congo crisis in mid-1964, underlying disagreements sapped the vitality of the organization...

...Continuing development problems could lead to a still greater preoccupation with internal matters in the independent African states, at the expense of their material and substantial commitment to the liberation of the south...

...But he also may be quite wrong...

...Many, including a growing number of Africans, believe that while the dream of Pan-Africanism still exists, it is now little more than a sentiment, with little relation to the realities of African politics...

...Wallerstein traces the movement back to its psychological and historical beginnings at the turn of the 20th century...

...In general, the Casablanca powers represented the more radical and revolutionary leadership, while the Monrovia powers urged unity based on respect for the principle of noninterference by African states in one another's affairs...

...On the contrary, some would say that the revolutionaries have always been more interested in revolution and political domination than in unity, except on their own terms...

...The movement was forced to confront a series of concrete, practical political issues...

...it is thoroughly researched and documented, closely argued and gracefully written...

...A continent as complex, volatile and newly reborn as Africa, could move along one or several of many alternative routes in the coming few decades...

...The core is made up of those who seek a revolutionary transformation and a fusion of political units into a larger African entity...

...Wallerstein erects his vast and gleaming structure of interpretation and prognosis upon a base of assumptions about African unity that may be too narrow and too weak to support it...

...Those same frustrations could lead to more quarreling and factionalism...

...The periphery, on the other hand, is composed of those who support an alliance of nation states and feel African progress can best be achieved by strengthening and developing the component political units...

...This group envisages unity as alliance rather than a movement...

...As Diallo Telli, Secretary General of the Organization for African Unity (oau), has observed, Pan-Africanism was born at that time in the emotional atmos phere of "complete alienation, physical exploitation, and spiritual torment of black men...

...But subsequently African leaders, men like Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Ken-yatta, became predominant...

...Following the first Congo crisis in 1960, the splits intensified...

...Immanuel Wallerstein's latest book is an admirable exception to this welter...