BY FITSUM GETACHEW
Whenever people think of Africa, most probably, they first think of the vast continent with extreme heat. They imagine it as a land which is full of wild animal such as lions, giraffes, elephants, gorillas and others which are not available in Europe and the US. For centuries, westerners have had lots of contacts with Africa due to their adventurous nature and have visited all of its borders across the oceans, and beginning with the first travellers and then settlers, the contacts intensified and multiplied. At the same time, missionaries made their way in several parts of Africa teaching the Bible and baptizing thousands where they could.
Many people also have the image of Africa as one full of undiscovered vast jungles such as the Congo Basin, mighty rivers such as the Nile, vast tropical plains, arid and hot, such as the Sahel and hence a whole lot of land that has yet to be discovered and studied very well. But Africa is also known for the variety of peoples with different cultural traits, beliefs, languages and looking at how they dress and how they adorn themselves, there could be made assumptions about their level of civilization as it were. The dwellings they have built and live in have their own characteristics and the climatic conditions of the places where they live. Besides they tell us what sort of standard of living they are in.
The image of Africa hundreds of years ago and the one we now have has of course changed across the years. Once the entire continent was colonized with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia and was dominated by the Europeans who let them have little say in their affairs. Africa was entirely at the mercy of those colonizers who occupied their land and began to administer them by their own laws. The locals were subjected to the alien colonizers’ directives. Every part of Africa was practically put under the influence of the colonial powers be it economically, culturally and politically.
Africans began to raise their heads only after the pan African movement began. It then intensified with the news of the victory of Adwa of an African nation against a European country that took place in 1896. With the end of the World War II the pace of decolonization acquired a new momentum and liberation movements multiplied. Africans began to demand their rights to be free from alien dominion in their own land. But they had to fight hard for years in order to achieve total liberation from the colonizers. In the early sixties more than in any other epoch scores of African countries managed to gain their independence. The wind of change began to blow across the entire continent.
Movements for African integration then began once there were the conditions for Africans to make their voices heard across the world realizing that the small nations could not have enough means to survive on their own in a competitive world. Hence, leaders such as the Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah, the Algerian Ahmed Ben Bella, the Egyptian Gamal abdul Nasser, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, the Liberian William Tubman, the Senegalese Leopold Sedar Senghor, the Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta and other leaders of independent African countries began to prepare for an African integration, an attempt to unite all African nations under one continental organization.
These African leaders realized that the independent tiny states of Africa had little chance of being powerful actors in the international scene and looking at what Europeans have achieved and other regional organizations mainly for economic purposes, African leaders began to ponder ways of reaching such an objective. They said if they do not unite, they would not survive or cope with the competition in the world. Hence the independent states of Africa began to make preparations for a blueprint of unity. Two groups of nations were first founded, the so called Monrovia Group and the Casablanca Group. These two groups had to merge and become one so that the continent could now have a single representative body in the international arena and be able to advance the causes of the continent presenting them with one voice.
Several and protracted negotiations had to be held and an agreement drafted before finally all then 33 independent countries were invited to come to Addis Ababa to sign the Charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on May 25th, 1963 exactly sixty years ago. By then it was considered a major personal diplomatic and political success for the much locally criticized old regime headed by Emperor Haile Selassie who was facing the protests of the students movements and had even survived an attempted coup d’état by his own royal bodyguards a few years earlier. The tact, prestige and farsightedness of the emperor was however lauded by many as it managed to bring together the two groups into one and succeeded to found the OAU.
At the founding ceremony leaders of liberation movements were welcome to attend including the then clandestine leader of the African National Congress of South Africa Nelson Mandela in struggle against the racist system of Apartheid. Leaders of African nations with white minority rule were also in attendance at the ceremony. The Charter of the OAU defined what kind of organization it was to be, what objectives it was to follow and achieve, and how to accommodate the demands of member states. The first objective of the OAU was to free all non-independent African states from colonizers and depose governments that have racist white minority rulers such as Rhodesia and S. Africa. Fighting Apartheid was a priority for the OAU and it pledged to help all liberation movements and parties to attain independence and secure it as soon as possible.
Another major issue of the OAU was how to settle the disputed borders of all African states now that they are independent and would like to rectify what the colonial masters may have mistaken. The potential for conflicts and animosities was so high that the organization immediately established and put it in black and white that all colony inherited borders should remain unchanged and hence adopted the stance of status quo. Priority was to be accorded to economic consolidation and face poverty issues such as construction of infrastructure, expand educational establishments and re-acquire national pride de-colonizing the mind set of millions before getting into border disputes and territorial claims. Otherwise the OAU said there could potentially be countless cases of border issues because the demarcation effected by the colonial masters was arbitrary. At times even families were forced to live in separate or different states. Hence with the principle of non-revision of any borders potential animosities were prevented.
Another major principle enshrined in the Charter of the OAU was the sovereignty of each and every nation and hence noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations by any one. Internal affairs remained in the exclusive domain of that particular nation without any external interference. The OAU would intervene only if there was request by the contending parties and discussions or negotiations would be tabled. Liberation struggles were to be assisted with all the means available until all African nations were independent. It was stated that if there is just one African nation that is still under the colonial yoke, then it is tantamount to say that the entire continent could not be considered free.
However along the decades, not everything went as planned because the OAU has had lots of problems to be able to live up to its ambitions. What it did succeed to do was liberate the entire continent from colonization using all its means and influence and talking with one voice. Colonizers admitted they could not persist with their colonial intents. At least Africans had one body where to meet and talk about their issues twice yearly by fixing the urgent agenda of the day. The OAU chose its headquarters to be Addis Ababa and every year when there is a summit a new chairperson would be elected in the person of the leader of the country where the summit is held beside of course the permanent Chairperson of the African Union Commission that is elected every four years that can be renewed once. Currently it is the Chadian Moussa Faki who assumed office in 2017 and has been reelected. By rotation several heads of government managed to be chairing the organization as states are considered on an equal basis.
The OAU now turned AU has come a long way in sixty years even if critics say it has not moved as quickly as many would have liked to. Its inactions or inability to intervene and act to reduce or stop certain African conflicts either before they get started in the first place, or get worse once they have started, or even prevent them from happening in the first place by doing some diplomatic works using its good offices are criticized. There have been many crises of all sorts on the continent during the past sixty years and in several occasions there was little the body could have done. Many say, in a way the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of a country may have prevented it from playing a more proactive and vigorous role as it would have wanted. In many cases it has limited itself to statements or declarations, sort of condemning the violent acts or the infringements committed by certain states on other states, but for many, this has not been enough. That is why many have characterized it as a ‘toothless tiger’.
The AU may not have achieved all the objectives for which it has been founded but with the reforms it continues to draft and implement, there are many new objectives in the pipeline such as for instance achieving the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA, which is expected to integrate the economy of the continent’s 1.3 billion people becoming the largest free trade area in the world. But Africa is also afflicted by several issues such as security, democracy and inflation as well as health issues that mainly in other continents have been dealt with successfully. The African Union has had the daunting task of trying to face all these issues with insufficient financial and other resources and this has not helped to improve its image as an efficient body that takes care of the problems of the continent as many would like to. It thus has to resort to asking for aid from the rich countries and in a way Africa has not been able to extricate itself from dependence on other nations.
Africa has not been able to exploit its rich natural resources taking an active part in the world market as many of the prices are determined by the rich nations with little say by Africans who are actually the owners of the resources. It has also been subjected to all sorts of competitions by the major powers and this must be taken in a positive way and exploited to gain more say in the affairs of the continent while the big powers continue to battle for influence on the continent. Here the AU’s role must be emphasized because a single stand on how the continent thinks would be more advantageous than acting on a bilateral level.
The AU also needs to find the right formula to prevent undemocratic moves that have unfortunately been the trade mark of several African states involving coup d’états and military take overs. The alleged violations of human rights reported in so many countries must also be a fixed agenda of the AU which must be a body that does not approve of any totalitarian or tyrannical moves that some leaders adopt while still being members of the AU. They should be sanctioned by all nations so that such moves are not tolerated at all. In any case the AU still remains the hope of millions of Africans who still have faith in it as a voice for their ambitions. They hope it will be a voice at the international arena such as the UN Security Council where most of African issues are discussed and decided without a real say of Africans. This cannot continue for long because the world cannot ignore 1.3 billion people of the earth.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD TUESDAY 23 MAY 2023
