Four Nocturnes and John Akomfrah’s practice more broadly is of particular relevance to me as a Black artist who is similarly interested in historical reckoning via archival intervention. As I watched the film, I asked myself: Where does Akomfrah call upon Pan-Africanism in Four Nocturnes and to what end?

Four Nocturnes was commissioned for the Ghana pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Over the course of its fifty minute run time, Akomfrah illustrates the relationships between colonialism, environmental disaster, climate change, and migration. As you’re watching the film, you’ll see that it consists of four different chapters. I found myself drawn to the third part, titled “Water,” as it presents a breaking point where Akomfrah shifts from using his own footage and nature documentary clips to archival footage from the African continent. Building up to this point, you’ll see that he has curated a selection of archival images from the colonial era to be incorporated into his own shots, and these scenes are interspersed throughout the video. This considered, the sequence consisting entirely of archival footage presents an interesting rupture that one could argue is the climax of the film.

The archival footage that I refer to is a collection of scenes from important political moments from the postcolonial era, most notably Ghana’s Independence Ceremony in 1957, the All-African People’s Conference of 1958, and the Ceremony of the Proclamation of the Congo’s Independence in Kinshasa, DRC, in 1960. Among these scenes we see brief appearances from a variety of political figures, including but not limited to Richard Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gamal Adel Nasser. Most important, however, are Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba, who served as the first Prime Ministers of an independent Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, respectively. Nkrumah and Lumumba are regarded as two of the foremost Pan-Africanist figures owing to their unparalleled commitment to self-determination, not only for their own nations but for the entire continent.^[1],[2] This commitment to universal liberation lies at the heart of Pan-Africanism, which acknowledges the common struggles and insists upon organizing around the shared interests of Black and African people who suffer under colonial, imperialist, and capitalist dominion.

For context, Pan-Africanist thought originates in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Western Hemisphere and was largely developed by members of the African diaspora both from the West Indies and the United States. Nkrumah himself studied in the United States and Britain, where he worked alongside the likes of George Padmore and C.L.R. James (two activist-intellectuals from Trinidad) before returning to Ghana to organize his countrymen toward independence.

Likewise, John Akomfrah moved from Ghana as a child, then briefly to the United States before ultimately settling in England with his mother. He recounts how his parents both worked for the Convention People’s Party, founded by Nkrumah in 1944, and how his mother knew Malcom X through her proximity to Nkrumah.^[3]

Here and now, we can only ask: what became of the Pan-Africanist movement? And the answer lies in part within the tragic fates of the individuals who championed it. Malcolm X was assassinated shortly after taking a six-month trip to Africa, at which time he met with many Pan-Africanist organizers, Nkrumah among them. Here I must mention that three of Malcolm’s daughters sued the CIA, FBI, and NYPD in November 2024 for their alleged role in his 1965 assassination.^[4] Martin Luther King Jr., who held the Ghanaian struggle for independence as a source of inspiration in Montgomery, was assassinated in 1968 after years of being harassed by the CIA. Kwame Nkrumah was deposed in a military coup in 1966. Akomfrah recalls how, following the coup, “Everything that that moment stood for was wiped away. […] Many Pan-African institutions had been shut down for being communist and Marxist.”^[5] These regressions are ultimately what sent his family into exile. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated alongside Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo by Belgian and CIA-backed forces in Katanga in 1961. Akomfrah includes clips of their capture and torture in the film, paired with clips of fire consuming an open plain. Not caught on film was Lumumba’s execution by firing squad, after which his body was dissolved in acid. In 2022, Belgium returned his remains, a single tooth, to his children. Toward the end of this chapter in the film, we are left with Lumumba’s portrait propped in a lone tree in the desert. He returns to the realm of ghosts.

What these stories suggest, and what Akomfrah makes clear, is that history lives on in the present. His own experience of being forced to migrate following the 1966 coup is only a microcosm of the catastrophe caused by Western colonialism and political destabilization. The ousting of Nkrumah and the brutal assassination of Lumumba, paired with an overwhelmingly clear continuation of exploitation (both of African resources and people/labor) would suggest that Pan-Africanism is a dream deferred, and self-determination a work in progress. Through their inclusion in the film, Akomfrah simultaneously contends with the many cruelties of past and present and suggests that we should analyze and build upon previous efforts as we continue toward an increasingly grim future. He states, “Growing up in a house of the vanquished, of the dismissed, I am aware of what I would call the thing to come, which is the thing that stalks all powerless lives. It’s the coming of the disaster, really.”^[6] Pan-Africanism, though it has failed before, encourages us to imagine and ultimately work toward the liberatory ideals that it puts forward, irrespective of the extent and degree of our material challenges.

Congo has been a hotbed of conflict, civilian casualties, and labor exploitation for decades (really since Lumumba’s assassination) as global superpowers in the West and the East look to secure access to the rare minerals that power our technology. Across the continent, humanitarian crises are perpetual, and arise wherever foreign elements stand to gain power, influence, and economic benefit. With this in mind, it’s important that we understand colonialism, migration, and refugee crises as being inextricably linked, that we might shift our geopolitical understanding of the relationship between Africa and the West from a pre- & postcolonial framework to one that acknowledges the ways that colonial efforts and attitudes have evolved rather than dissolved.

Nkrumah warned at the All-African People’s Conference, “Do not let us also forget that colonialism and imperialism may come to us yet in a different guise-not necessarily from Europe. We must alert ourselves to be able to recognize this when it rears its head and prepare ourselves to fight against it.”^[7] This was proven to be true when he, Lumumba, and many other leaders were betrayed by their own countrymen at the behest of foreign entities that held only their own interests in mind. It is further proven true by the fact that African labor and land is equally exploited in the contemporary world; corruption, greed, and indifference ensure that vast swathes of African people are left at the bottom of the global supply chain, and are more immediately affected by the environmental crises that capitalism exacerbates. These phenomena are shown and alluded to at different points in the film, such as contemporary scenes that show people scavenging in a garbage dump, or Akomfrah’s migrants who become emblematic of the thousands of real people who embark on strenuous, and often fatal, migratory journeys.

Despite all of this, there have been interesting developments in recent years and months. This winter, Chad, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast have announced their intentions to cut ties with the French military, following closely in the footsteps of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.^[8] A clip in the film that shows a sea of people each holding their own Ghanaian flag during independence celebrations mirrors images from recent months as hundreds of people belonging to the African diaspora have been granted Ghanaian citizenship.^[9] Frantz Fanon, a famed anti-colonial psychiatrist and philosopher, writes in The Wretched of the Earth, “Europe has gained such a mad and reckless momentum that it has lost control and reason and is heading at dizzying speed towards the brink from which we would be advised to remove ourselves as quickly as possible.”^[10]

Holding Fanon in the context of a widespread Western turn toward far-right rhetoric, these recent severances are perhaps indicative of the beginning of a new and truly postcolonial chapter in African history. In any case, there is work to be done. In the ending sequence, we see people pointing up toward the stars, and flowers blooming, which can signify a search for guidance and new beginnings. Here, Akomfrah includes a final archival clip of Nkrumah signing papers at his desk. I offer my interpretation of this gesture, which is that it is a reminder that we desperately need to stay in conversation with those who have worked, struggled, and died before us. They have provided a roadmap that we must build upon. Despite previous defeats, Pan-Africanism can be adapted to present times wherein we face similar challenges.

 

Bibliography

^[1] Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (Frederick A. Prager Inc., 1963) https://ccaf.africa/books/Africa-Must-Unite-Kwame-Nkrumah.pdf

^[2] Patrice Lumumba, “(1959) Patrice Lumumba, “African Unity and National Independence,”” Black Past accessed January 17, 2025,  https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1959-patrice-lumumba-african-unity-and-national-independence/

^[3] Vanessa Peterson, “How John Akomfrah’s Videos Tell a Story of Migration and Belonging,” aperture, November 6, 2023. https://aperture.org/editorial/how-john-akomfrahs-videos-tell-a-story-of-migration-and-belonging/

^[4] Tesfaye Negussie, “Malcolm X’s family files $100 million wrongful death lawsuit, claims cover-up of his murder” ABC News, November 15, 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/US/malcolm-xs-family-files-100-million-wrongful-death/story?id=115894702

^[5] Peterson, “How John Akomfrah’s Videos Tell a Story of Migration and Belonging.”

^[6] Peterson, “How John Akomfrah’s Videos Tell a Story of Migration and Belonging.”

^[7] Kwame Nkrumah, “Speech by the Prime Minister of Ghana at the opening session of the All-African People’s Conference, on Monday, December 8, 1958,” Columbia University, accessed January 17, 2025, https://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/mann/w3005/nkrumba.html

^[8] Monika Pronczuk, “Senegal and Chad say ousting of French troops was their sovereign decision,” Associated Press, January 7, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/macron-france-africa-military-withdrawal-fcef0463b916b39364f60319579fe801

^[9] apofeed, “524 Diaspora Members Gain Ghanaian Citizenship In Historic Ceremony,” African Business, November 21, 2024, https://african.business/2024/11/apo-newsfeed/524-diaspora-members-gain-ghanaian-citizenship-in-historic-ceremony

^[10] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (Grove Press, 1963), 236, https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf