July 1-3 African Heads of State and Government will be assembling in Accra for the 9th Ordinary Sumnmit of the African Union. There is only one item on the agenda: the formation of a government for the union of Africa. The official title says this is a ‘Grand Debate on a United States of Africa’. This is unfortunate because even those of us enthusiastic about the unity of Africa would wish that the leaders are a bit more creative than just wanting to create another USA. Given what one USA is doing, it would be a disservice to humanity to want to inflict another USA on the world. Our values should be made of better ethics and love for humanity and affirmation of life with dignity than to be copying the United States of America whose unity is based on a genocide against indigenous Indians, the slavery of people of African origin, and a continuing plunder of the rest of the world.

The agenda has pitched leaders against leaders and different sectors of our informed and ill-informed publics against one another. But basically there are two broad positions- those who want a united government and those who aim to have union of states later; with a third position essentially calling for a Federal Government. None disagree about the need for Africa to unite. So if there is no disagreement about the goal what is the debate about?

Calling it a Grand Debate about USA is both a misnomer and also unhelpful characterization which has diverted people’s attention from the actual concrete proposal on the table and invited acrimonious ‘debates’ about form instead of content.

So delegitimised are many governments on this continent, in spite of the fact that an overwhelming majority are now ‘elected’, that when Africans hear about a United States of Africa or an African Union government they run. They instinctively think that what is being said is a transferring of the tyrannical, insensitive, anti-people state and government that many of us have experienced and in some cases continue to suffer, even in the guise of democracy, to a continental level. What a disaster that would be. However it is a baseless fear. Even if the leaders all voted for a Union Government in Accra it does not mean that it will be formed immediately. All these states as we know them will not disappear by summit fiat and many of the presidents need not fear that they may return to their principalities as ministers of the Union or district commissioners or be consigned to the dust-bin where some of them definitely belong. Were this possible I am not sure many Africans will mourn their passing since quite a number of them already willingly act as agents of imperialism and shop keepers for foreign interests against their peoples anyway! And others have just continued to tire their fellow
citizens.

From the inception of organised Pan Africanism by Africans in the diaspora in the latter years of the 19th century, but gaining more prominence and political legitimacy in the first half of the 20th century through the first five Pan African Congresses (1900-1945, all held outside Africa), and subsequently brought home to Africa through the All-African People’s Conferences of 1958, and much later the 6th and 7th Pan African Congresses held in Africa in Dar 1974 and 1994 in Kampala, the destination has always been total unification of Africa under a common government, common citizenship and a common market, from Cape Town to Cairo and full participation for Africans in the diaspora.

This ambition inspired the anti-colonial movement in Africa and got formalised by state expression in the formation of the OAU in 1963. Even though the OAU compromise was to respect the colonially imposed borders, they were not meant to be permanent detention centers or garrisons on our way to total liberation and unification. But this is what the states became under the multiple pressures of neocolonialism, cold war authoritarianism, militarism and opportunistic elites.

The formation of the AU was meant to correct some of the weaknesses of the OAU, especially in the areas of state sovereignty that operated as a ‘sovereignty of dictators’ that induced official indifference to the suffering of other Africans, including genocide. The AU charter envisaged collective security instead of regime security; a people-driven or at least people-friendly union instead of a leader-centric OAU; and finally the coordination of African responses to global developments and a building of African consensus instead of allowing ourselves to be picked up individually to the slaughter house whether in trade, commerce or diplomacy.

But after five years of the AU we have made progress in some areas but are still struggling in many areas. The full and positive democratic impact of the union is still not being felt.

The Grand Debate is therefore about what more needs to be done to accelerate the process of unity which we have all agreed on. It is not a debate about the desirability of a Union Government because by signing up to the ideals of Pan Africanism, the OAU and AU, all of our states have already agreed to that goal.

The reason why the AU may not have performed to the highest expectation has to do with the lack of political authority, enforcement powers and adequate resources to discharge its responsibility. If unity is our goal therefore the leaders have to decide on a few key areas. One, the Study Group on Union Government for Africa identified 16 strategic areas (including aspects of foreign policy, defense, security, finance, global negotiations, etc) in which the leaders have to agree to cede some powers to the AU to effectively act in our collective interest. There is no point in us having a Union while many states still deal with the world individually. It undermines the AU and undermines the states themselves. Two, for too long OAU/AU leaders have talked about rationalizing regional economic communities- but they keep proliferating even if most of them are struggling. Yet they are supposed to be ‘the building blocks’ of the AU. How many styles of blocs do we need for the foundation of our unity? If we spent so much time on the foundation when would the building get off the floor? In Banjul July 2006, they put a moratorium on forming new ones but the existing or limping ones are still too many. The suggestion is cut them down to the five regions recognized by the AU Charter (the diaspora is a sixth region but is not a regional Economic Community). Africa of five main blocks will be better coordinated. Three, many decisions are made at the AU level but there is no proper mechanism for implementation at the local and national level and do not even have enforcement capacities. If there is agreement on the 16 priority areas then the confusion at the national level can be eliminated and AU decisions become mandatory. Four, the big issue of funding, the overall budget of an effectively functioning AU may not be more than 1 billion dollars per annum annual. It is an insult that 53 states in a continent so rich in human and material resources cannot raise this money and more. It is less than what corrupt leaders routinely loot from our various treasuries monthly! Just imagine if JUST 5% of all our national budgets automatically go into the Union budget. That can only come with political authority being given to the union through an accountable government.

Which leads me to my final point about the cynicism of many Africans about the political will and commitment of Africa’s current leaders. A genuine worry, but these leaders are produced from amongst us and therefore we can and should change them where necessary. In addition we need to make sure that the potentially democratic and democratising institutions of the AU like the ECOSOCC and the Pan-African Parliament have real power to oversee the work of the executive. It means actively taking part in the ECOSOCC at your national level so that it is no longer the invited spasce controlled by AU bureaucrats and their cronies in civil society. It means campaigning for the Pan-African Parliament to be elected on a basis of universal African suffrage and the parliament to have full legislative powers. That way we will become active African citizens instead of the vocal or passive cynics that many are turning to.

There is a three-way division on this issue. One, United States of Africa. Two, Union of African States. Three, a Union Government of Africa. The advocates of two and three claim they do not disagree with the goal as contained in the first proposal but they want a slower pace. These gradualists may have forgotten that the OAU was the outcome of previous graduualism and we know where it has led us so far. If gradualism worked we would not be discussing African unity again fifty years later in Accra where Nkrumah declared that ‘the independence of Ghana is meaningless withouth the total liberation of Africa’. Those propagating a Union of States have also failed to appreciate the salutary lesson of our painful post-colonial experience that you cannot declare sovereignty over states created for the interest of others. That will be trying to co-own your oppression. We have tried this with calamitous consequences all over. Sovereignty belongs to the people. Therefore A Union of African Peoples is what our people are prepared for but the leaders are holding us back. Leaders can choose to be like giraffes, firmly standing but with the neck held so high that they can see far, instead of pandering to Afropessimism and defeatism by saying ‘we are not ready’. If not now then when?

It is a false choice to posit the issue as one between gradualists and radicals. The choice should be between fast and faster! Africa has waited too long and we should all be tired of the stagnation. If indeed we are serious about union.

“Forward ever , backward never”…..Kwame Nkrumah (1909 – 1972)

………………DON’T AGONISE!…………………..ORGANISE!!…………….

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 10:41 am and is filed under Thursday Postcard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.