Unity at What Cost

Chambi Chachage (The Citizen)—In love with unity, we co-founded the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963.

In the spirit of ujamaa, we formed the union in 1964. In our quest for collective self-reliance, we co-established the East African Community in 1967.

One can hardly question our commitment to the Pan-African vision of a United States of Africa. How can one doubt our impressive credentials, which boast a successful liberation of Uganda in 1979? Who can dare denounce us, now that our soldiers have successfully led the African Union (AU) forces in Anjouan to enforce the Comoros federation? We may be too militant in our Pan-Africanism to query our military motives.

But history can hardly let us get away without seriously questioning our consistency.

It could not even allow our foremost champion of African unity, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, rest without rethinking Tanzanian nationalism vis-à-vis the cost of African unity.

In his "Reflections", two years prior to his death, he gave a confession that even came as a surprise to a leading scholar of Pan-Africanism. Concerning his role at the first OAU Summit in 1964, he said: "I was responsible for moving that resolution that Africa must accept the borders which we have inherited from colonialism, accept them as they are." Mwalimu Nyerere moved that resolution because of what he had experienced on the eve and wake of our independence. In 1960, he received a delegation of Maasai elders from Kenya.

Led by an American missionary, the elders came to persuade him to let the section of the Maasai in Kenya become a part of our country as soon as we win independence.

Then in 1962, the first President of Nyasaland, as Malawi was called then, came to him with a big old book with lots of maps to prove that there is no such thing as Mozambique. He even asserted that its "northern part, the Makonde part, is" our part.

All this was happening while Mozambicans were initiating armed struggles for independence.

Finally, during the inauguration of the OAU in Ethiopia, the host country was at war with Somalia over the Ogaden.

The latter wanted "a whole province of Ethiopia," publicly claiming that it is its part. Incidentally, the former was quietly saying that the whole of Somalia is its part.

The three experiences made Mwalimu Nyerere count the cost of fast tracking African unity and move the resolution to accept artificial borders.

He didn’t see why two nations should fight to contain a people within a border. To him the idea of disposing of Mozambique was ridiculous. Pragmatically, he couldn’t make sense of how rejecting colonial borders would instantly stop Somalia from claiming Ogaden, northern Kenya and Djibouti.

Since then, Mwalimu Nyerere rarely wavered in his quest for a gradual approach on African unity as opposed to Mr Kwame Nkrumah’s push for a revolutionary approach.

In 1965 they clashed over Mr Nkrumah’s call to establish a union government of Africa. Ultimately, the OAU embraced Mwalimu Nyerere’s approach that assumed regional federations would step by step metamorphose into a united Africa. The stage was set for coups and secessions.

In his 1969 painstaking defence of our stances on secessions, Mwalimu Nyerere noted that Tanzania was particularly "accused of the most blatantly inconsistency because it opposed Katanga and recognised Biafra."

His analysis revealed superficial similarities advanced by the opponents of Biafra. It also revealed crucial similarities in favour of Biafra. He observed that these areas were rich in natural resources that attracted foreign companies. Respective former colonial powers sided with these companies. However, Belgium sided with seceding Katanga against a united Congo, while Britain sided with a federated Nigeria against a seceding Biafra.

Only great simplicity or even extreme naivety, Mwalimu Nyerere thus asserted, "could lead anyone to accept that Britain is defending the unity of Nigeria or African unity, in general." In as much as Tanzania wanted to see a federated Nigeria as a step towards a united Africa, it was not ready to support a war to keep Biafrans as part of Nigeria even against their will.

In other words, Tanzania couldn’t support Katanga because its leader was a stooge of imperial interests that are essentially opposed to African nationalism and Pan-Africanism. But it supported Biafra because Tanzanians could not afford to see a potential great exemplar of African unity become an African imperial power. Freewill had to prevail.

Arguably, this is the principle we upheld when our soldiers were lauded as liberators by Ugandan masses. One wonders if this is the same principle that was at work when Mwalimu Nyerere sent troops to Zanzibar in the wake of what he referred to as "pollution of the political atmosphere" in 1984.

Is this the principle that propelled our soldiers into Anjouan? Our role in Anjouan is a wake-up call to rethink African unity. Indeed, AU is shedding its OAU cocooning charter of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states.

At last, it is starting to assume the same kind of powers that led the UN to be used to justify the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After Anjouan what’s next? Zimbabwe? How are we checking the military powers of Pan-African statism? What kind of African unity are we building? At what cost? In whose terms?

At a cost similar to that of nearly 30,000 Biafrans who lost their lives because they rejected unity? In terms such as those of Tanzanians who need a referendum on the union instead of a bipartisan Zanzibar accord?

<< Back to main