This year, 2013, Africa celebrates 50 years of
the existence of the very first organisation in
the entirety of the existence of our continent,
the Organisation of African Unity (OAU),
established to assert and pursue the unity of
Africa among and despite its immensely diverse
nationalities, cultures, languages and religious
beliefs, and imposed national boundaries.
Thus must we understand that the historic
effort to achieve practically the unity of Africa,
expressed through the establishment of the
OAU, is only 50 years old, and is therefore in
its infancy.
In this context we must take into account the
first historic task the OAU correctly set itself
at its foundation. This was to unite in the
ultimately successful but otherwise complex
and protracted struggle to ensure the total
liberation of Africa from colonialism and white
minority rule. This objective was only achieved
in 1994, 31 years after the establishment of
the OAU, with the liberation of South Africa.
During the millennia before the colonisation of
our continent, we did indeed have a few
kingdoms as established state formations,
many of them with ill-defined jurisdictions in
terms of territory and sovereignty over distinct
ethnic groups.
The fact is that largely, as Africans, we did not
have the hard borders of individual “nation
states”, even in the Sudan, Egyptian and
Carthaginian antiquity. These were imposed on
the continent as a result of the infamous 1885
Berlin Conference, which carved up Africa into
geographically defined territories owned by the
various European colonial powers. These
boundaries largely serve as Africa’s current
state borders.
Over the millennia the Africans migrated freely
and widely across our continent, effectively
treating our continent as a common patrimony
and matrimony.
This is the reason that even today large
swathes of our continent, across and without
regard to the many colonially imposed
boundaries, share the same languages and
cultures, and therefore a common African
identity.
It is because of this common African identity
that we find that the various languages, such
as Hausa in Nigeria, the indigenous languages
in southern Africa, and kiSwahili in east Africa,
to some extent, share some common words,
proverbs and idiomatic expressions.
Indeed, in antiquity, some Africans, part of the
very first members of the species homo
sapiens, the global modern humanity, migrated
out of Africa, not bound by any physical or
political boundaries, to constitute the founding
base of today’s diverse world community of
peoples, in all continents.
In effect, by the time of the Berlin Conference,
the Africans had established the fact in
practice, through the millennia, that they were
bound together by a common identity, not
defined by any borders or boundaries.
With regard to our own country, South Africa,
many of us who were brought up politically by
the ANC have always known that the goal of
African unity has stood out as one of the
central objectives of our national liberation
movement. This is because of what we learnt
from our history, from the period of the
establishment of the “Ethiopian church” in our
country – a church independent of the colonial
European church towards the end of the 19th
century – and even earlier, to the moment of
the establishment of the ANC.
What emphasised this for us was that the ANC
was established with one of its specifically
expressed objectives being “to bury the demon
of tribalism” – the tribalism which had created
the African disunity that resulted in the victory
of the European project (which was disastrous
for us as Africans) to colonise our continent!
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere captured the all-Africa
sentiment for African unity when he said at the
World Assembly of Youth in Dar es Salaam in
1961: “I am a firm advocate of African unity. I
am convinced that, just as unity was necessary
for the achievement of the independence of
Tanganyika, or in any other nation, unity is
necessary for the whole of Africa, to achieve
and maintain her independence.”
Two years after Mwalimu Nyerere delivered the
speech, on May 23, 1963, Ethiopian Emperor
Haile Selassie I delivered his historic opening
address to begin the proceedings of the
Conference of Independent African States
which established the Organisation of African
Unity – the OAU.
This seminal speech was fully consistent with
what Mwalimu Nyerere had said. In fact it
defined in greater detail what should be done
to give content to the shared aspiration for the
unity of Africa. It might be that some readers
of this article may be surprised and amazed
that I will refer so insistently to what was said
by a feudal African monarch, Emperor Haile
Selassie I.
In this regard I would humbly advise these to
bear in mind that this feudal monarch
represented a millennia-old African kingdom.
During the period of colonialism in the 19th
and 20th centuries, like the rest of our
indigenous traditional African state formations,
throughout Africa, it occupied the front
trenches in the struggle to defend the
independence of the peoples of Africa.
In this context, specifically, inspired especially
by the historic victory at Adwa during which
the Ethiopian masses were led by his preceding
emperor, Haile Selassie had to lead the
resistance to the brutal Italian occupation of
Ethiopia during the period of World War II.
This process began with the Italian colonial
war in Ethiopia in 1935, and ultimately led to
the recovery of Ethiopia’s independence from
Italian colonialism in 1941.
In this struggle, Haile Selassie led his people
and country inspired by everything his
predecessors, particularly Emperor Menelik
and Empress Taitu, had done to defend the
independence of Ethiopia, including during the
Battle of Adwa, which resulted in the defeat of
colonising Italy in the aftermath of the Berlin
Conference.
This Italian invasion and occupation in the
20th century sought to reverse the humiliating
defeat which imperialist Italy had suffered in
the previous century, in 1896, at Adwa.
Thus it was that Ethiopia was one of the three
African countries which participated in the
establishment of the United Nations
Organisation (UN) at the end of World War II
these being Ethiopia, Liberia and South Africa.
What Haile Selassie said 50 years ago, at the
founding conference of the OAU, remains, to
this day, a defining statement in terms of what
Africa must do to realise her hopes. This
includes the achievement of her unity, the
defence of her independence, the
implementation of an independent
development programme, and constructing a
polity in favour of the emancipation of the
ordinary African people from poverty and
underdevelopment.
Having laid out a very clear road map, the
emperor sounded a warning and a call which
must surely be at the centre of our reflections
as we celebrate the OAU at 50.
He said: “A century hence, when future
generations study the pages of history, seeking
to follow and fathom the growth and
development of the African continent, what
will they find of this conference?
“Will it be remembered as an occasion on
which the leaders of a liberated Africa, acting
boldly and with determination, bent events to
their will and shaped the future destinies of
the African people?
“Will this meeting be memorialised for its solid
achievements, for the intelligence and maturity
which marked the decisions taken here?
“Or will it be recalled for its failure, for the
inability of Africa’s leaders to transcend local
prejudice and individual differences, for the
disappointment and disillusionment which
followed in its train?”
We are half-a-century hence after the
establishment of the OAU. We must respond to
the questions and challenges which Emperor
Haile Selassie posed on the very eve of the
establishment of our continental organisation.
I believe that the fundamental question we
must consider, critically, as we celebrate the
OAU at 50, is – what have we done over half a
century to advance towards the achievement of
the objective of African unity?
This is particularly important because I believe
that the perspective advanced by Mwalimu
Nyerere and Emperor Haile Selassie, so many
decades ago, and even as early as the 19th
century by other African patriots is true and
correct – that as Africans we cannot achieve
our all-round liberation and renaissance unless
we act in unity.
This means that none of our countries can
achieve its individual fundamental objectives,
to guarantee its independence and to
determine its own independent path of socio-
economic development, acting on its own,
outside the context of united African action.
It is for this reason that I am convinced that
the task to reflect on the challenges and
opportunities to realise the objective of
meaningful African unity must stand at the
centre of our celebration of the OAU at 50.
In this context, in the address at the
conference which established the OAU we have
cited, Haile Selassie made important comments
which remain relevant to this day.
In fact, these served as the agenda of the
critical Grand Debate on the Union
Government of Africa, the theme of the AU
summit meeting held in Accra, Ghana in 2007,
which also celebrated the 50th anniversary of
the independence of Ghana.
In the 1963 address by Emperor Haile Selassie
we have cited, he said: “While we agree that
the ultimate destiny of this continent lies in
political union, we must at the same time
recognise that the obstacles to be overcome in
its achievement are at once numerous and
formidable.
“Africa’s people did not emerge into liberty
under uniform conditions. Africans maintain
different political systems. Our economies are
diverse. Our social orders are rooted in
differing cultures and traditions.”
For his part, and at the same founding
conference of the OAU in 1963, the
outstanding African patriot, Kwame Nkrumah
of Ghana, said: “We are fast learning that
political independence is not enough to rid us
of the consequences of colonial rule. The
movement of the masses of the people of
Africa for freedom from that kind of rule was
not only a revolt against the conditions which
it imposed.
“Our people supported us in our fight for
independence because they believed that
African governments could cure the ills of the
past in a way which could never be
accomplished under colonial rule…
To answer the vital and historic question –
“what is to be done?” – concerning the
challenge to achieve the unity of Africa, so
vital to the future of our continent, we will
have to respond honestly and frankly to the
stark summary of our condition which
Emperor Haile Selassie described when he said:
“In a very real sense, our continent is unmade.
It still awaits its creation and its creators.”
I am convinced that the centuries-long period
of the violent seizure and export of African
slaves to the Americas and Arabia, and the
European imperialist and colonial domination
of Africa, “unmade” Africa.
Accordingly, our striving to achieve the
renaissance of Africa must focus on the
“remaking” of Africa!
That “remaking” must aim to achieve exactly
the objectives which Mwalimu Julius Nyerere,
Emperor Haile Selassie and Kwame Nkrumah
set before and during the establishment of the
OAU.
In reality, the “boundary” that Kwame
Nkrumah was talking about was the divide
between “the popular and progressive forces
and movements within Africa” on one hand,
and the opposed tendency on the other, which
had coalesced as the “Monrovia” and
“Casablanca” groups, prior to the 1963
founding conference of the OAU.
In this regard, in a lecture delivered in Tripoli,
Libya, on September 23, 2002, one Abdalla
Bujra said: “Indeed two ideologically opposed
blocs of countries, the Casablanca and
Monrovia blocks, emerged – one stood for
development based on social planning and the
other for market-driven development. The two
blocs also had different approaches to external
relations – delinking and relinking as opposed
to strengthening inherited colonial links.
“Hence at the time the atmosphere throughout
the continent was militantly and passionately
discussing these issues. And the militancy and
passion over these issues expressed themselves
fully during the debates at the founding of the
OAU.”
In this regard, whatever the merits of his
broadly correct characterisation and argument,
we must of course also take into account the
impact on Bujra’s views of the simplistic and
militant views about African unity which were
consistently advanced by the then Libyan
leader, the late Colonel Gaddafi.
Nevertheless, the hard reality is that, if indeed
African unity is a fundamental condition for
the renaissance of Africa, then we must ask
the critical questions:
“What indigenous forces in Africa will serve as
the vanguard (organising) movement to lead
the African masses to engage in struggle to
achieve this unity; and
“Around what specific objectives would this
movement coalesce which would define the
content and purposes of this unity?
Our objective reality is that in fact and in
practice, we have not achieved the objective of
African unity. In a sense, to put this matter
broadly, we can say that we have not
succeeded in bridging the divide between the
“Monrovia” and “Casablanca” groups.
This is necessary to build the African political
coalition which would lead the sustained
offensive for genuine and durable African
unity, bearing in mind the African reality
which Haile Selassie detailed.
In this regard I would like to quote a famous
observation made by Karl Marx in his treatise,
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He
wrote: “Men make their own history, but they
do not make it as they please; they do not
make it under circumstances chosen by
themselves, but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted from the
past. The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the
living.”
Machapisho
Hakuna maoni:
Chapisha Maoni