Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the role played by the popular pan-African publication Drum magazine in the promotion of a 'decolonizing' political discourse in the 1950s and 1960s. The paper argues that Drum was a significant popular media tool through which African leaders of the pre-independence and the early independence years articulated their vision of a multiracial and multicultural society. Through interviews, speeches and letters appearing in the pages of Drum one discerns an attempt by the various African leaders such as jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkurumah, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere to construct a transnational postcolonial African image of peaceful co-existence between different races and nations.