On
25 May 2013 the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the
African Union (AU), will celebrate its Golden Jubilee. The date, also known as
‘African Liberation Day’ (ALD), is one that marks the fourth anniversary of the
sudden departure of Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem who was at the time of his
shocking death the deputy director for Africa of the United Nations’ Millennium
Campaign. Tajudeen, or ‘Taju’ as he was more popularly called, was a regular
contributor to Pambazuka News with his weekly ‘Pan-African Postcards.’ He died
suddenly and tragically in a road accident in Nairobi. Hence, in this special
issue we remember him and also reflect on 50 years of the OAU/AU and the
direction our continent must take in order to overcome the myriad socio-economic
and political problems it confronts.
If
Taju were alive today it is likely that he would have contributed many more
‘Pan-African postcards’ on contemporary African and global affairs with his
usual profound perspicacity and wit. One can only conjecture what he would have
made of the creation of South Sudan in July 2011; the Arab uprisings in North
Africa since Mohammed Bouazizi’s fatal action in December 2010 set in motion
the toppling of tyrannical dictators which Taju vociferously and consistently
attacked in many of his postcards; the prolonged war in the DRC as a
consequence of the backing of Rwanda and Uganda for insurgent groups in the
country; moves towards peaceful resolution of the conflict in Somalia with a
newly installed government; the overthrow of Gaddafi by NATO forces in 2011.
Similarly, what would Taju’s perspectives have been on the Tuareg desire for a
homeland in Northern Mali that has been hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists and
used as an opportunity for French intervention; the Marikana massacre of South
Africa in August 2012; the election of Africa’s second female head of state,
President Joyce Banda of Malawi in the same year, and in his own home country –
Nigeria, the rise of the fundamentalist group Boko Haram that has wreaked
deathly havoc in the last four years? What would he have made of the OAU/AU
50-year performance, the Haitian earthquake of January 2010 that led to pledges
of aid that have largely failed to reach the vast majority of Haitians; the
so-called ‘riots’ of England in the summer of 2011 ignited by the killing of a
black man, Mark Duggan, by British police, as well as Obama’s foreign policy
around the world, including Africa? These are all socio-political issues that
Taju would undoubtedly have had an ideological position on that embraced a
commitment to African people around the globe. Therefore, we remember Taju not
only for his razor sharp political analysis that is missed, but also his
relentless commitment to African unity, African people as well as social,
economic and political justice for all human beings.
In
this special issue SONNY ONYEBULA recalls the ‘indefatigable’ commitment of
Taju to Pan-Africanism in a personal reflection. As Taju once wrote about the
African continent: ‘The collective African experience is that we can only be
ourselves and we need each other to counter the threat of marginalisation,
rapacious globalisation and the consolidation of whatever little gains may have
been accomplished in a number of African countries. No one [African] country
can be a sustainable miracle if its neighbours are in hell.’ MOTSOKO PHEKO
contemplates in his piece ‘how far is the United States of Africa?’ and echoes
Taju when he writes: ‘Africa is a house with 54 rooms in it. When one room
catches fire, other rooms are endangered.’
As
DEDE AMANOR-WILKS points in another personal reflection on Taju, he was a
profoundly people-orientated person who engaged in laughter with young and old
alike. The depths of his own ubuntuness connected with others that made him a
human magnet. He had a way with words, appropriate proverbs and African stories
to illustrate his argument and communicate with ordinary people. His
high-pitched laughter was infectious and memorable just as his loud voice was
distinctive and could be heard at a distance.
Other
articles in this issue such as that by the journalist CAMERON DUODU look at the
origins of the OAU. MEHARI TADDELE MARU reflects on the positive and negative
legacies and lessons of the OAU/AU; its achievements, failures and constraints,
whilst TITI A. BANJOKO questions whether the jubilee is really worth
celebrating? Similarly YVES NIYIRAGIRA points out the missed opportunities of
the organisation but focuses attention on five steps that African leaders must
implement immediately rather than wait another fifty years to forge meaningful
integration and development. THEODORE MENELIK-MFUNI remembers growing up as a
child and how his father’s uncompromising commitment to the OAU positively
influenced him. He points out that it took centuries for Europe to build its
institutions therefore it will take centuries for Africa to constructively
address the myriad of challenges it faces.
The
writers TUNDE JEGEDE, DELE MEJI FATUNLA, ADE DARAMY all focus on the
imperatives of how culture and communication in its diverse mediums are
fundamental to forging greater continental unity and understanding. They also
provide stimulating constructive and positive strategies as to how this
cultural rebirth can be realised.
Pambazuka
News provides a number of audio interviews with Commissioners of the AU who
give their views of the accomplishments and missed opportunities of the
organisation. Among them is the audio interview with DEPUTY HEAD OF
COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION, WYNNE MUSABAYANA who reveals there are plans on
the part of the AU to establish a radio and television station that will
disseminate news direct from the AU, deliberations from the summits and various
gatherings of the AU bodies to inform African people directly as well as
extending its use of new social media forms and strategies. This is undoubtedly
much needed, for if what is new about the AU from its predecessor is that on
paper it has sought to involve ordinary African people in its processes, it
must implement ways in which ordinary people can dialogue with the
Commissioners and participate in the Pan-African Parliament and Economic,
Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) debates. Otherwise it risks being a
top-down institution like its predecessor the OAU. Other interviews include an
exchange with the DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON, ERASTUS MWENCHA who not only candidly
identifies some of the missed opportunities as Africa’s dependency on raw
materials for its economic development without adding value but there has until
the formation of the AU been a ‘suppression of gender parity for human
development.’ COMMISSIONER FOR SOCIAL AFFAIRS, DR. MUSTAPHA S. KALOKO
emphasises how the AU will seek to innovatively use culture and particularly
sports to advocate social and political issues on the continent; DESIRE
ASSOGBAVI who is head of Oxfam International in Addis Ababa discusses how Oxfam
works with the AU and also gives an opinion on the achievements of the OAU/AU
as well as its challenges and obstacles.
The
AU has selected the theme for the year-long jubilee celebrations as
‘Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance.’ As ANTONY OTIENO ONG’AYO writes,
celebrations should also involve candid discussions among and between
continental Africans and Africans in the Diaspora in terms of what this ‘Renaissance’
means. He argues that part of that discussion should be around the question of
identity for this issue remains a pertinent one currently undermining
continental unity. For example in Ivory Coast and in the DRC notions of
‘Ivorite’ and attacks on the Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsis) in eastern Congo
seriously challenge notions of integration in Africa. In addition to this, we
must challenge the notion of ‘illegal immigrants’, xenophobia, deportations and
targeting of Africans residing in other African countries if we consider Africa
and African people to be one. Consequently a Pan-African citizenship must be
created on the lines of a free movement of goods and particularly people as in
the ECOWAS states. This must also extend to abolishing visas for children of
the African Diaspora travelling to Africa.
SAMWIN
BANIENUBA rhetorically asks: ‘where is Kwame Nkrumah’s United States of
Africa?’ He is of the opinion that the reality is that the vested interests
since the formation of the Monrovia and Brazzaville block, who sided with a
gradualist approach to African unity, have predominated and that was is lacking
on the continent is a ‘will of steel’ to implement Pan-Africanism.
Peace
is fundamental to any future African unity and development, argues ONYEKACHI
WAMBU. He points to the three principles adopted by the OAU which was intended
to lead to peace and justice (guaranteeing the existing colonial boundaries;
non-interference in the internal affairs of member states; and support for
armed struggle via the Liberation Committee) not only led to peace and justice
but produced further conflict. He argues that we must continually seek symbols
of peace in our cultural practices as a means to resolve conflict and build
permanent peace.
MGONGENI
NGULUBE poses: what has happened to the agriculture sector of many African
countries in the last 50 years and what will become of it in the next five
decades – particularly as many African countries continue to be net importers
of food? The writer points to the need for greater attention to be paid to
agriculture in Africa if food security and hunger that give rise to instability
and disunity are to be addressed. Moreover, the AU needs to address the serious
question of ‘land grabs’ in Africa. What is the AU position on this race to
grab agriculturally rich lands by Gulf oil sheikhs, Chinese and Indian
entrepreneurs, Western speculators, among other investors, that dispossess
ordinary Africans in parts of Africa? How can countries that are not able to
adequately feed the masses of their own populations be leasing land to
foreigners?
OTSIENO
NAMWAYA and ELIZABETH EVENSON contend that ‘the broader relationship between
the African Union and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has not been an
easy one.’ They argue that the AU should fully cooperate with the ICC and
honour its own commitment in its organisational Charter to human and people
rights by not supporting the shielding of any individual sought by the ICC to
answer to the charge of crimes against humanity.
We
carry the address given by DR. DLAMINI-ZUMA, Chairperson of the AU to the Third
Pan African Parliament on 6 May 2013 in Addis Ababa. In her State of the Union
address Dlamini-Zuma identifies some positive achievements including the
optimistic rate of economic growth in several African countries; the reduction
of conflicts from 15 during the 1990s to 5 countries between 2000-2010 and
increases in educational provision. However, there remain other herculean tasks
to accomplish which are outlined in the Third Strategic Plan for 2014-2017 in
which eight priorities are outlined. She insists that the year-long
celebrations must ‘reflect on the lessons from our past and our current state,
in order to grapple with our destiny.’
ABAYOMI
AZKIKIWE surveys five decades of Africa’s flag independence within an
internationalist and Pan-Africanist perspective. He makes a number of important
arguments including that: ‘in order for Africa and its people to develop there
must be a decisive break with the imperialist system of finance capital’ and
secondly that ‘the crisis in Africa and the Diaspora is by no means isolated
from the broader struggle of the peoples of the world.’ This latter point is
essential for the AU and all African people to remember and act on today.
Malcolm X reminded heads of state of this point when he addressed the OAU
summit on 17 July 1964 and told the African heads of state: ‘Our problems are
your problems.’ Since the AU has formally recognised the African Diaspora as a
Sixth region - unlike its predecessor, the OAU, the AU has often failed to take
up the plight of Africans in the Diaspora and their issues. These issues are
many and include the disproportionate number of people of African descent in
the US and UK who are incarcerated in the prison system; killed by racist
police; discriminated against; and killed whilst being deported e.g. Jamaican
Joy Gardener in 1993, and Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga in 2010 – both
individuals (among many others) have died at the hands of the racist
immigration and security officials respectively. Or what of the case of the
many Trayvon Martins and Stephen Lawrences killed by racists in the UK and US
respectively? What happens to any African across the globe should be of concern
to all Africans both on the continent and in the Diaspora. However, our unity
should make us also seek solidarity with other oppressed peoples around the
world, particularly in the global south, whether they be garment workers in
Bangaladesh or elsewhere struggling to earn a living, and people of African
descent in the Caribbean, Latin America, including the poor of the
industrialised nations suffering under the weight of an inflicted economic
austerity in which the working classes are paying for the rich to continue to
live on the backs of the poor in these developed nations.
WHICH
WAY AFRICA?
As
several of our writers point out there remain many enormous challenges in
forging a meaningful African unity. Among those challenges is the opportunity
that African people in the diaspora have to advance their organisational level
in the Caribbean, North, South and Central America as well as in Europe if they
are to fulfil their role and contribution as the Sixth region of the AU and
fully participate in the AU structures. They have also more to contribute in
various ways to Africa’s economic development in a number of fields such as
technology transfer, education, health and in the sciences.
An
equally important issue for the AU is the financing of the organisation, which
currently depends on substantial outside funds that is a serious impediment to
African unity and the meaning of independence in its broadest sense. No
continent or union can be genuinely independent if it is tied to the dictates
of those who finance it. Moreover, surely with the new found oil wealth of
several African countries such as Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya – and
the untapped wealth in gas, minerals and agricultural resources of the
continent, the potential of Africa to finance its economic, technological and
scientific development in the next 50 years is realisable? Neither does such
self-reliance mean Africa becomes an autarkic continent and does not engage in
partnerships with other nations. But it is necessary that economic planning and
partnership with other nations are co-ordinated and principled.
Fundamentally,
in the next 50 years, the AU and African people have to engage with what kind
of ‘development’ do we want for Africa. How do we define ‘development’? It
seems the kind of development envisaged by the AU is one that continues to be
committed to the logic of neoliberal capitalism, eternal privatisation; one
that speaks the language of ‘foreign direct investment’ (which is essentially
privatisation and capitalism via the AU’s much touted Nepad). I recall in
personal discussions with Taju his reference to Nepad as a neoliberal ‘kneepad’
to continue the economic subservience of Africans to the North. Similarly, the
existence of trade liberalisation; the reduction of the role of the African
state; adoption of the IMF imposed Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs)
which have replaced the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s and 1990s
are policies that AU members tacitly appear to support. In essence, it seems
the kind of development that many supporters of the AU, heads of state and
member countries with their commissioners and various officials of the AU are
in favour of a kind of development that considers catching up with the West as
the ideal; that is, becoming a mirror image of the West is the aspiration,
standard and goal. Yet, for this to happen Africa would need a continent to
enslave and colonise for the reality is that the West was able to industrialise
and ‘develop’ by underdeveloping Africa through enslavement and colonisation.
In short, this path is not open to Africa as a possibility. Such a path will
only contribute to the continued destruction of the earth through rapacious
consumerism and brutal capitalist exploitation of its finite resources and
failure to lift the masses of African people from poverty.
Hence,
new forms of socio-economic development and particularly the equitable
redistribution and creation of wealth that is not harmful to the environment
but sustainable, need to be created by Africans in the next 50 years. In
addition to this break with exploitative neoliberal capitalism must be a break
with neo-colonialism and imperialism in its reconfigured manifestations on the
continent, as Kwame Nkrumah called for. Those manifestations remain in aid and
the continued implementation of IMF and World Bank programmes that have done
nothing to lift Africa out of poverty in the last 50 years; the presence of
Africom and the joint military training exercises under the auspices of both
Africom and other Western nations; the operations of multinational companies;
unfair trade enforced by the World Trade Organisation (WTO); tax avoidance,
secret mining deals and financial transfers that deny African people basic
provisions such as health, education, electricity and good infrastructure.
Neoliberal
capitalism is incompatible with social and economic justice and therefore
ordinary and progressive Africans must push to transform the system, ultimately
creating a fairer economic system of producing wealth in which the majority and
not the minority benefit. It must be one in which people’s basic needs come
before profits. Such principles should underlie the meaning of socio-economic
‘development’ in the next 50 years.
Finally
in the next 50 years, Africa must unite in a way that its voice is heard and
respected on the global stage. The Libyan debacle in which African countries
were disunited and France, Britain and the US were able through the UN and NATO
to marginalise and disregard the AU’s roadmap for a negotiated political
settlement in Libya, indicated the imperialist arrogance of the West as well as
the AU’s weakness in its inability to mobilise and command the attention of the
international press on its position as divisions among those African countries
who supported Gaddafi and those who did not seriously hampered the continental
body. Consequently, the Western media pundits rallied to the position of their
Western governments in seeking to carry out regime change in Libya and the AU
was completely ignored. The maxim ‘African solutions to African problems’ has
instead given way to a dangerous imperialist and neo-colonial precedent of
‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) that NATO employed as pretext for regime
change. In the next 50 years will the AU allow/prevent another African country
to be victim to a NATO-imposed ‘regime change’ under R2P?
On
24 May 1963 Nkrumah gave a long and passionate speech to his 31 contemporaries
imploring them to ‘unite now or perish.’ That speech remains astonishingly
relevant 50 years later – perhaps more so today. His emphasis was on a
political union based on a common defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy, an
African currency, an African monetary zone, and an African central bank but
also based on a profoundly socialist framework in the ethos and economic
organisation of African societies. Such a framework remains valid today and
specifically in Africa after 50 years of SAPs and neoliberalism that has
instead privatised social provision out of the reach of ordinary people. Some
may argue that some of these institutions Nkrumah called for are in embryonic
form today and need to be advanced and in ways that are meaningful to ordinary
Africans. However, there is still a long way to go to in achieving the kind of
Continental Union Government of Africa that Nkrumah envisioned – if this is the
image of unity the AU seeks to realise in the next 50 years. If it proves not
to be the vision, Africa’s current generation of young people who comprise over
half the population of many countries, and the generation to come in the next
50 years, will have to mobilise to ensure the vision of Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice
Lumumba, George Padmore and Robert Sobukwe is realised.
*
Ama Biney (Dr) is Acting Editor of Pambazuka News.
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