Paul Panda Farnana

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Paul Panda Farnana in 1921

Paul Panda Farnana M'Fumu (1888 – 12 May 1930) was a Congolese agronomist and expatriate who lived in Europe in the first decades of the 1900s. He has been considered to be the first Congolese intellectual.

Early life and education[]

Paul Panda Farnana was born in Zemba-lez-Moanda, Bas-Congo Province, Congo Free State in 1888. He was the son of Luizi Fernando, a government-appointed chief,[1] and a woman named N'Sengo.[2] A Belgian official, Lieutenant Jules Derscheid, offered to bring Farnana to Belgium to receive an education. He accepted, and they arrived in Brussels on 25 April 1900.[1] Once there, Dersheid turned custody of Farnana over to his sister, Louise. Farnana was brought up in an upper-class setting. Louise educated him in music and drawing and sent him to the Athénée Royal d'Ixelles for a secondary education.[3] In 1904 he passed an entrance exam and was enrolled in a horticultural and agricultural school in Vilvoorde, graduating three years later with distinction. In 1908 Farnana studied at an institute for tropical agriculture in Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris, France. That same year he studied English in Mons.[1] This education made him the first Congolese to ever receive a diploma of higher education in Belgium.[4]

Career and activism[]

In 1909 Farnana was hired as an agricultural specialist by the Belgian colonial government which had since transformed the Congo Free State into the Belgian Congo. In June he was assigned to the Botanic Garden of Eala, near Coquilhatville.[1]

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I Farnana was living in Belgium. When Belgium was invaded by Germany in 1914, Farnana enlisted in the Belgian Army.[5] He served with the Korps der Congolese Vrijwilligers (Congolese Volunteers Corps) during the Siege of Namur. On 23 August 1914 he was taken prisoner in Liège and deported to Germany where he spent the remainder of the war.[6] After his release, he founded an association known as the Union Congolaise to advocate for the interests of other Congolese veterans of the war.[5]

Farnana participated in the first and second Pan-African Congresses in 1919 and 1921, respectively. He also attended the in 1920.[7] He actively criticized Belgian colonial practices, arguing that the ban on forced labour in the Congo was not being consistently applied and education for the native population was inadequate. He also called for the Congolese to be granted political rights.[8]

African-American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois described meeting Farnana at the second Pan-African Congress and carrying on correspondence with him subsequently.[a][9]

In 1929 Farnana went to Matadi to manage an oil mill. He died there nine months later.[10]

Legacy[]

Farnana is considered by historians to be the first Congolese intellectual.[7] Following his death, Belgium forbade any further Congolese from studying in Belgium.[4]

Farnana's work was largely forgotten by the public until Congolese historians began uncovering details about his life in the 1970s and 1980s. A Belgian documentary was made about him in 2008.[11]

See also[]

Citations[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Akyeampong & Gates 2012, p. 348.
  2. ^ Coosemans 1952, p. 668.
  3. ^ Brosens 2014, paragraphs 6, 8.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b "Panda Farnana, un Congolais qui dérange de Françoise Levie". Africa Vivre (in French). August 2014. Retrieved 29 December 2016.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Doumanis 2016, Moving People and Exporting Conflicts.
  6. ^ Brosens 2014, paragraph 9.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b Vanthemsche 2012, p. 63.
  8. ^ Bobineau & Gieg 2016, p. 20.
  9. ^ Du Bois 1925.
  10. ^ Du Bois 1930, p. 312.
  11. ^ Akyeampong & Gates 2012, p. 350.

References[]

Footnotes[]

  1. ^ THE SHADOW OF BELGIUM: There is a little black man in Belgium whose name is Mfumu Paul Panda. He is filled with a certain resentment against me and American Negroes. He writes me now and then but fairly spits his letters at me and they are always filled with some defense of Belgium in Africa or rather with some accusation against England, France and Portugal there. I do not blame Panda although I do not agree with his reasoning. Unwittingly, the summer before last, I tore his soul in two. His reason knows that I am right but his heart denies his reason. He was nephew and therefore by African custom heir of a great chief who for thirty years, back to the time of Stanley, has coöperated with white Belgium. As a child of five young Panda was brought home from the Belgian Congo by a Belgian official and given to that official's maiden sister. This sister reared the little black boy as her own, nursed him, dressed him, schooled him, and defended against the criticism of her friends his right to university training. She was his mother, his friend. He loved her and revered her. She guided and loved him. When the second Pan-African Congress came to Brussels it found Panda leader of the small black colony there and spokesman for black Belgium. He had revisited the Congo and was full of plans for reform. And he thought of the uplift of his black compatriots in terms of reform. All this the Pan-African Congress changed. First it brought on his head a storm of unmerited abuse from the industrial press: we were enemies of Belgium; we were pensioners of the Bolshevists; we were partisans of England. Panda hotly defended us until he heard our speeches and read our resolutions.¶ The Pan-African Congress revealed itself to him with a new and unexplicable program. It talked of Africans as intelligent, thinking, self-directing and voting men. It envisaged an Africa for the Africans and governed by and for Africans and it arraigned white Europe, including Belgium, for nameless and deliberate wrong in Africa. Panda was perplexed and astonished; and then his white friends and white mother rushed to the defense of Belgium and blamed him for consorting with persons with ideas so dangerous and unfair to Belgium. He turned upon us black folk in complaining wrath. He felt in a sense deceived and betrayed. He considered us foolishly radical. Belgium was not perfect but was far less blood guilty than other European powers. Panda continues to send me clippings and facts to prove this.¶ In this last matter he is in a sense right. England and France and Germany deliberately laid their shadow across Africa. Belgium had Africa thrust upon her.
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