ABSTRACT
In the early 1890s a small nucleus of African Americans and Africans living in Port Elizabeth established a multiregional economic manyano called the African and American Working Men's Union (AAWMU). The AAWMU is significant because it is the first and earliest evidence of the formation of a pan-Africanist economic alliance between African Americans living permanently in South Africa and black South Africans. The basis for the liberal alliance continued to erode as independent black polities around the Colony were conquered and the number of Africans under colonial jurisdiction increased. The AAWMU caught the imagination of Africans as a means of gaining a market share and so increasing their "material resilience and power". The formation of the AAWMU by members of the aspirant black middle class reflected an ideological shift away from dependence on liberal whites and a move toward pan-Africanism and nationalism.
