The OAU institutionalized an anti-revolutionary Pan-Africanism that preserved colonial-era structures

Evidence

In many respects the OAU [the Organization of African Unity] is the culmination and embodiment of that Pan-Africanism which Padmore has chronicled. Starting as a political movement in exile, and handed on to a group of aspiring and dedicated African leadership who led their several countries to political independence, Pan-Africanism had been a movement carried out over the heads and at the expense of the African peoples themselves. At Addis Ababa [in 1963] this breed of African leadership determined to constitute itself as a new kind of Holy Alliance to preserve the existing status quo which they had inherited from their colonial masters. Their abhorrence of political revolution is total. As one of them stated, with brutal frankness: ‘Speaking for ourselves, we prefer things as they are.’ — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2429

Categorization

• XREF: Directly addresses the reader’s question about the Black radical tradition’s downfall.
• SEED: The OAU as a ‘new Holy Alliance’ to preserve inherited colonial status quo is a strong angle for an essay on the co-optation of liberation movements.