Last Tuesday was Africa Day. Unfortunately this will be news to many Africans, including leading newspapers, politicians, political parties, media establishments and even many governments across this continent that passed through that day without any sense of its historical significance.
It was May 25 1963 that the Organisation for African Unity was formed. In recognition of that historical date May 25 became Africa Day across Africa and in the Diaspora. A time was when the day used to be remembered and celebrated as Africa Liberation Day in solidarity with the struggles for the liberation of African countries (mostly in Southern Africa) that were still under settler colonialism and apartheid.
With the liberation of South Africa there seemed to be a feeling of 'victory at last'. It appears there are no great battles to unite our efforts and build solidarity both on the continent and in the Diaspora. The whole of Africa may now be under African rule but the agenda of liberating our peoples from poverty, ignorance and underdevelopment is as real today as it was in the 1960s and even more urgent.
The official decline in the status of Africa Day in many African countries dates back to the 70s/ 80s when many of them became fortresses to all manner of despotic regimes that did not even represent the people of that country let alone Africa. There were also a number of countries, aided and deluded by the opportunistic politics of the cold war who thought they could 'make it on their own' without their neighbours as long as they remained loyal servants of the West or the East. A few also tried to maintain Non alignment without credibility because in practice they were aligned to one power or the other but also courted the rival power as and when necessary. So Non Alignment became political and ideological promiscuity deployed by leaders to shore up their regimes.
It all seems so long ago now that being pro-this or pro that foreign power, was the biggest issue for our leaders while being pro-Africa was regarded with ideological suspicion.
For instance the Western powers and their ideological surrogates among our founding fathers regarded Nkrumah, because of his Pan Africanist commitment, as an ambitious 'communist' who wanted to be president of Africa! Lumumba was a 'dangerous communist' who had to be eliminated even though his own people popularly elected him. So was Nasser, in Egypt and Ahmed Ben Bella in Algeria. Even Pan Africanists like Oginga Odinga who did not become President were also targeted . I have just been rereading William Atwood's ‘The Reds and the Blacks in Africa’ and anyone who wants to know how the cold war heated up and burnt Africa should get that book.
The good thing today is that after several decades of trying to be like other people and dancing to their tunes, regardless of ideological leaning, the collective experience is that we can only be ourselves and we need each other to counter the threat of marginalization, rapacious globalisation and the consolidation of whatever little gains may have been accomplished in a number of countries. No one country can be a sustainable miracle if its neighbours are in hell.
This is what has motivated renewed enthusiasm in regional and continental integration in the past few years. The best expression of this is the African Union, which was inaugurated in 2002 in Durban, South Africa; consequent to the transformation of the old OAU, which began, with the extra ordinary Summit called in Sirte, Libya, in 1999.
The new Union, in spite of sniggers and jeers from internal and external Afro pessimists, has continued to make steady progress. The AU Commission is now in place and has worked at break neck speed since the assumption of office of the Chairman, former Malian President, Alpha Konare and his fellow commissioners last year. In March, the Pan African Parliament was inaugurated with 5 representatives each from all the 53 member states of the AU and the indefatigable Beatrice Mongela from Tanzania elected its speaker.
Last Tuesday, the Peace and Security Council was formally inaugurated.
The CSOs, NGOs, Pan Africanist groups and Diaspora organisations have been active in the process and final protocol of the Economic and Social Council of the AU through which all kinds of non governmental, civil society, professional and any interested groups across Africa and the African Diaspora can have institutional engagement with the African Union.
The African Union provides a new opportunity for re-engaging with the wider Pan Africanist agenda of uniting Africans. But why do so many of our peoples remain indifferent?
A lot has to do with the distrust and suspicion about any initiative that comes from African leaders. There are just too many painful scars on our physical bodies and body politic inflicted by trusting our leaders that people now generally want to err on the side of caution.
This credibility deficit means that African leaders have to show that they are really committed and they mean it this time. One thing they can all do to convince our peoples that they are serious is to remove all the bureaucratic anti -people rules and procedures that govern intra-African movement of peoples. It is simply ridiculous that most Africans find it difficult to enter another African country with their African passports.
And shamelessly it is easier if you are American or European to visit, work, and settle in African countries than it is for Africans!
If May 25 no longer has any historical resonance what about July 9 2002 which was the date of the formal inauguration of the AU? What better way to bring it to the popular consciousness of All Africans especially our young people in schools, colleges and universities and popular forces in general by officially declaring the day as, African Union Day in all our countries?
At present there are less than a dozen African countries that continue to honour Africa Day.
The leaders of Africa need to re-engage Africans directly and practically by freeing us to be free to move and settle, without let or hindrance, from Cape Town to Cairo and also grant the same freedom to our peoples in the Diaspora who choose to exercise the right. Otherwise Africa day or African Union will not have any meaning for our peoples. It will just be another day, in the plantation, as we wait for 'Uhuru'.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.
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