Kwame Nkrumah
The question of African unity has been on some front pages this week
as the African Union (AU) reflects on 50 years of existence, with the
Organization of African Unity (OAU) being its earlier incarnation.
A unified Africa, under one continental government, remains the best
solution for dealing with Africa’s myriad problems, in this 21st century
and beyond.
A United States of Africa, with a continental army, would secure
control of the continent’s immense wealth for the benefit of its people
and for uplifting millions out of poverty.
Counting Africa south of the Sahara alone, the armed forces would
have about 2 million men and women under arms; combined with the north
African armies the total would be more than four million. By comparison:
India has 4.7 million; China has a total force of 4.5 million; Russia
3.5 million; the United States, about 2.3 million; and, Britain 400,000.
Africa is endowed with almost every type of natural and mineral
resource wealth. Yet these are currently primarily used to fuel the
economies of the industrialized countries, and the emerging ones such as
China’s, India’s and Brazil’s rather than for the benefit of African
countries.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone contains mineral and
natural resources whose value is estimated at nearly $30 trillion.
These include: high quality timber; gold; diamonds (30% of the
world’s reserves); coltan (70% of the world’s reserves); copper; cobalt;
and, many other minerals.
Yet Congolese remain impoverished. Foreign powers allow bandits
financed by Rwanda and Uganda to wreak havoc in Congo’s eastern region,
which contains most of its resources. Under this planned chaos, private
corporations enjoy absolute rent; they siphon off Congo’s resources
through Rwanda and Uganda without paying fees or taxes to the central
government.
In the meantime, the bandit militias have ethnically cleansed the
resource-containing zones through depopulation to make it easier to
plunder resources. Ten million Congolese have perished since Rwanda and
Uganda first invaded in 1997. The military and political elite in Rwanda
and Uganda have become wealthy under this profitable genocide: the
Western corporations that purchase the blood minerals have profited the
most.
The Western powers allow genocide in Congo without any consequences
to the political and military leadership in Rwanda and Uganda. The major
media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN and the BBC, which could
influence public opinion to demand that Western powers sanction Rwanda
and Uganda remain silent; they essentially aid and abet genocide in
Africa. The media outlets are very partisan when making demands that
suit their interests: such as calling for intervention in Libya and
Syria.
Congo’s tragedy is only one of many other illustrations of the type
of calamity that Kwame Nkrumah feared would beset the continent, if
Africa did not unite. Nkrumah himself had tried to prevent the earlier
attempt to dismember Congo, that led to the murder of Patrice Lumumba by
Belgian agents and Moise Tshombe’s collaborationist regime.
Nkrumah
appealed for continental unity when leaders of newly-independent
African nations first met on May 24, 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to
form the Organization of African Unity (OAU); the predecessor of the AU.
“Unite we must,” Nkrumah said. “Without necessarily sacrificing our
sovereignties, big or small, we can here and now forge a political union
based on defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy, and a common
citizenship, an African currency, an African monetary zone, and an
African central bank. We must unite in order to achieve the full
liberation of our continent.”
Nkrumah warned that decolonization on paper was not sufficient to
protect African countries. Western countries would still need the
continent’s vast mineral and natural resource wealth to continue fueling
their economies. He noted that half the gold at Fort Knox, in the
United States, originated from Africa.
So long as African countries remained weak and divided, their
economies would remain underdeveloped unless they could change the terms
of trade with the industrialized countries, Nkrumah warned.
This is because Western countries determined the price at which raw
materials from African countries were sold to the industrialized
countries; these same industrialized countries also controlled the price
at which African countries purchased manufactured products from them.
Nkrumah called this a “neo-colonial” relationship; he said it would
ensure that African countries remained impoverished. And without the
ability to protect their resources, eventually, African countries would
not be able to protect their national sovereignty, their boundaries, or
their formal independence from colonial powers such as Britain and
France.
African countries had to deal on equal terms with the industrialized
world, Nkrumah said. This could only be accomplished if the individual
African countries came together under one umbrella: with a continental
government; a continental currency; a continental national armed forces;
and, common foreign relations policy.
“No independent African state today by itself has a chance to follow
an independent course of economic development, and many of us who have
tried to do this have been almost ruined or have had to return to the
fold of the former colonial rulers,” Nkrumah had warned. “This position
will not change unless we have a unified policy working at the
continental level. The first step towards our cohesive economy would be a
unified monetary zone, with, initially, an agreed common parity for our
currencies.”
At the 1963 OAU conference two distinct camps emerged: those who, led
by Nkrumah, supported speedy move towards African unity; and, another
camp that supported a more gradual approach that would focus on regional
economic integration that would then broaden later.
Even if the gradualism approach had merit at some point, it comes at a
very high cost today. It’s so open-ended that it could take another 50
years with minimal success.
In the meantime, many recent incidents confirm that Nkrumah’s worst
fears continue to be fulfilled: collectively, a continent of millions
exercises minimal control over its own affairs and the will of African
leaders can be ignored with impunity.
The former colonial powers are now brazenly involved in the continent’s affairs with impunity.
In 2010, it was primarily France, Britain and Italy, all former
colonial rulers, that successfully advocated for NATO’s military
intervention and aerial invasion of Libya. The United States joined the
campaign.
The months of uninterrupted indiscriminate bombing led to: deaths of
countless Libyan civilians; destruction of the country’s impressive
infrastructure built with its oil wealth; and, the brutal murder of the
long-time ruler Muammar al-Quathafi who in recent years had become the
most vocal advocate of African unity.
The Libyan debacle demonstrated Africa’s political impotence to the
entire world. When the AU tasked South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma
with leading an African-supported peace plan, he needed permission from
NATO command to travel to Libya. Under the no-fly zone his plane could
have been shot down.
Zuma convinced al-Quathafi to sign on to the AU plan which called
for: a ceasefire; a humanitarian corridor for civilians; and,
internationally-monitored elections. The NATO powers instructed their
insurgents not to sign on. The powers had no interest in democracy in
Libya; each coveted the country’s vast oil and natural gas supplies.
Today Libya is in chaos — no one is talking about democracy or
accountability and liability for NATO’s destructive war which replaced a
stable state with anarchy and also promoted the ethnic cleansing of
Black Libyans, including the annihilation of the city of Tawargha.
Similarly, in the Ivory Coast, it wasn’t an African solution that
broke the stalemate between Alasanne Quatarra and Laurent Gbagbo, both
of whom claimed they had won presidential elections. France’s air-forces
turned the tide in Quatarra’s favor and routed Gbagbo’s army; the loser
is now at the Hague, awaiting trial by the International Criminal Court
(ICC), which has become an agency for enforcing the political will of
Western countries. Quattara’s own armed forces continues to commit
atrocities, without a murmur from the ICC since he’s the anointed
Western leader.
After the collapse of the al-Quathafi regime, radicals seized
sophisticated weapons from his destroyed army’s armory and invaded Mali,
seizing nearly half of the country. France sent an intervention army to
clean up the mess it had helped precipitate since some of the radicals
who invaded Mali were the same forces that NATO had empowered in Libya.
In the Central African Republic (CAR), France maintains an army in
the capital of Bangui. In Mali, the French army was decisive in helping
to repel the invaders, including from Timbuktu. Yet, in the CAR, the
French army stood by and allowed rebels to seize control of the capital;
clearly the deposed regime no longer fulfilled France’s own interests.
In Libya, France and Britain still hope to be rewarded, when the
smoke clears, with favorable terms for oil and natural gas concessions;
in the Ivory Coast, as in Mali, France has re-established a neo-colonial
relationship; and, the CAR has always been a French neo-colony.
These are the kind of conflicts, conducted by weak and myopic African
rulers and role players on one side; and their accomplices, Western
regimes and unscrupulous corporations on the other side.
As other regions of the world, in Asia, Europe, South America, move
towards regional economic and political integration, in many parts of
Africa the politics are retrogressing and conditions resemble the
“banana republic” era that once bedeviled South America.
We now see how Nkrumah’s fears have come to fruition when even an
eroded power such as France can exercise such disproportional control
and influence over Africa’s destiny and over events on the continent.
Until China became unified in the 1950s, Western countries used to
treat China the same way as African countries are dealt with today: Now
China has emerged as a major economic and political power globally.
There is no question that a United States of Africa offers the key
for Africans to seize control of their destiny and this is what the
younger generation of Africans must demand.
Young Africans must demand for elected progressive governments that
are accountable to voters and then push these governments to embrace
African unity as an imperative.
A United States of Africa would eliminate many of the conflicts,
including the most bloody ones such as the ones between Hutus and Tutsis
in Rwanda and in Burundi; and the genocide in Congo by Rwanda’s and
Uganda’s armies and militias. Moreover, Rwanda’s Gen. Paul Kagame and
Uganda’s Gen. Yoweri Museveni would no longer have the powers to order
illegal invasions of any territory in Africa.
A United States of Africa would allow the continent to negotiate for
fairer terms of trade since Africa would speak with the clout of a
powerful government and a huge single market for goods and services.
A United States of Africa would combine all the militaries into one
powerful continental Armed Force capable of repelling any foreign armed
transgressions. Africa would also be able to demand the removal of
foreign military bases from the continent.
The choice is clear: Africa must embrace Nkrumah’s vision.
Africa must unite.
Source: Libya diary
Kwame Nkrumah is the Way. Enjoy!.
AfricasonAfricason is a die-hard believer in Africa.
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