Reflections on the 60th anniversary of the convening of the first AAPC conference in Accra

At that time Ghana was the fountainhead of Pan-Africanism where the previous year the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and its founder Kwame Nkrumah won independence from British colonialism.

Immediately after the declaration of liberation, Nkrumah proclaimed in his inaugural speech on 6 March 1957 that the independence of Ghana “is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total independence of the African continent”. Later in mid-April 1958 the first Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) was held in Accra with eight liberated governments in attendance.

Nonetheless, the AAPC was much different in character than the CIAS. There were approximately 300 delegates in attendance representing 65 different national liberation movements, trade unions and mass organisations from 28 countries.

At the time there were nine independent African states and all of them sent representatives to the AAPC with the exception of Sudan, which had just undergone a military coup on 17 November. Leading members of the anti-racist movement in apartheid Union of South Africa were not present either since many were ensnarled in the racist legal system, which had indicted over 150 Congress movement organisers for treason in 1956.