ABSTRACT
If one compares the Pan-African revival of the 1990s and 2000s with the peak of the political movement in the mid-twentieth century, one notices continuities as well as striking differences. In a deeply emotional language, racial commonality is presented as an unfailing link between people belonging to a joint stock; as a directed stream that in its perpetual flow will eventually absorb all differences between them. Even though it monopolizes Kwame Nkrumah's charismatic personality, this approach has abandoned the political doctrine of his time. Herzfeld argues that it is important to take the official rhetoric and ideology seriously, because it constitutes the main battleground on which different interests are asserted by different groups of people within a society. In addition, the skepticism toward African-American attempts to gain a voice in Ghanaian local and/or national politics can also be interpreted as fear that a colonialist settler-mentality might motivate the desire for repatriation on the part of African Americans.
