THE UNIA & ACL IN AFRICA By Shaka Barak, President, The Marcus Garvey Institute By the 12th year of its founding in 1926, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA & ACL), under the leadership of its founder and first President General, the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey (born. August 17, 1887-died June 10, 1940) had UNIA & ACL Divisions and Chapters in Africa. The locations included the Gold Coast: Accra, and Amanpupong, Liberia: Monrovia, Nigeria: Lagos, Sierra Leone: New Hope, Freetown, and a chapter in West Ward, South Africa: Basutoland, Capetown, Claremont, Woodstock, Evaton Goodwood, Pretoria, West London, South West Africa: Luderitz, Windhoek.At almost every West African port you would find interest in the UNIA & ACL business enterprises, and the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey that they saw as a “Black Moses’ who must come and liberate the African people in South Africa from white oppression and domination.”The UNIA & ACL was a means for Africans in the interior, the rural areas as well as those in the industrial centers to express their many grievances against colonizers, exploiters and to regain their national manhood. They not only paid their UNIA & ACL dues but tried to erect their meeting place, the Liberty Halls. Some names that come to mind in Africa that endorced the program of the UNIA & ACL include, Solomon T. Plaajite of South Africa, Josiel Lefela of Lesotho, South Africa; Mr. and Mrs. Wilfred A Wilson of Senegal; Headman Hosea Kutako of Namibia; Tehodore M. Kakaza from Healdtown South Africa; James S. Thaele from Cape Town South Africa; Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria; Ladipo Solanke of Nigeria; Fitz Herbert Headly of Luderitz, South West Africa; Chief J. Akinpelu Obisesan of Nigeria; and Wellington Butelezi of Transkei, South Africa.According to the author, Thomas Hodkin, “The impact of Garveyism can be traced in British and French West Africa, and the Cameroons, as well as South Africa, particularly during the period of unrest and revolt that immediately followed the First World War.”The UNIA & ACL’s slogan, Africa for the Africans, Those at Home and Those Abraod, was not just a slogan but a principle of opposition to the control of Africans by Europeans politically, economically and spiritually. The UNIA & ACL supplied the ideological framework for nationalism as well as for spiritual movements that kept up resistance to white domination as it supported Africans desires for self-governance.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 13:19:28 +0000
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