Trade Union Pan-Africanism and Non-Alignment at the founding conference of the All-African Trade Union Federation 1961 in Casablanca

Abstract

At the end of May 1961, the trade union world focused on Casablanca and the founding of the All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF). Initiated by the Pan-african movement of the time, characterized by Kwame Nkrumah, the Moroccan trade union leader Mahjoub Ben Seddiq invited to Casablanca. The conference was held in light of the transitions of the decolonization processes in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, the networking of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist actors, as well as the global systemic competition of the Cold War. The conference represents an expression of an intermediate space in the phase of decolonization, in which paths for a postcolonial and pan-african future were negotiated from a trade union perspective. The central conflict at the conference was the question of non-alignment. The outcome of the conference is exclusive membership of the AATUF and thus a sign of independent trade union organization in Africa, which explicitly opposes the influence of the international trade union confederations of the West and East. Not to exclude internationalist cooperation, but to determine pan-african developments themselves.