*NewAfrican* JANUARY 2000

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      REFLECTIONS

       COVER STORY

       Africa must unite

       At long last the 21st century is here! And as Africans taking our
first steps into a new millennium that promises so much, it is important to
remind ourselves of why we are where we are, and what we can, and should, do
in the exciting years ahead. Our understanding of what happened in the past
will inform our present and guide our future.

        In May 1963, at the founding of the OAU, Africa was not ready to
come together in a strong union of African states on the lines of the United
States of America and/or the European Union. We have all seen the benefits
that the two unions have brought the Americans and the Europeans. It is not
too late for Africa to learn from (or work on) the mistakes as we settle
into the 21st century.

      It is in this context, and as we celebrate the dawn of the new
millennium with this "special millennium issue" that New African has gone
back to the African union idea of Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), the first
president of Ghana. The second half of the 20th century has seen nations
coming together for strength. Europe has its union, America has its united
states, the ASEAN countries are talking (as we go to press) about creating
an Asian Common Market. Japan and South Korea are leading the charge.

      Even in Africa, the eight French speaking countries in West Africa
have launched their own common market, leaving in the lurch the other
countries in the 16-nation Ecowas group. The East Africans - Kenya, Tanzania
and Uganda - have also announced their common market. All well and good. But
as we settle into the new millennium, it is time Africa began to talk,
seriously, about a continental common market on the lines of the European
Union - something more solid and all encompassing. The benefits of such a
union are so obvious to list here.

      There are competing arguments that African countries should start by
sorting their domestic affairs first - stop the wars, fix the economies,
fight corruption etc - before even thinking about a continental union. But
all these concerns could be catered for under the long-term goal of a
continental common market. We must set the goal first, and then work towards
its achievement - which includes working on all the ills currently drawing
Africa back - the wars, the collapsing economies, the corruption etc.

      In this context, Nkrumah's speech (perhaps his greatest speech ever),
given on the eve of the founding of the OAU, is still relevant today. We are
reproducing it here (courtesy of Panaf Books*) with the words of the late
African-American professor and writer, Dr John Henrik Clarke, ringing in our
ears: "If we have to change tomorrow, we are going to have to look back in
order to look forward. We will have to look back with some courage, warm our
hands on the revolutionary fires of those who came before us and understand
that we have within ourselves, nationally and internationally, the ability
to regain what we have lost and to build a new humanity for ourselves."

      Running alongside the speech, we also offer you a historical glimpse
(in photos) of the great, the good and the bad of Africa in the last 50
years. Because of space constraints, our selection is not exhaustive;
however, we hope the photos and the speeches will help focus our minds on
the big issues ahead of Africa in the new millennium.

      To round it off we offer you, the thoughts and insight of another
founding father, Julius Nyerere, who recently passed away.

      New African wishes all our readers a happy and prosperous "New
Millennium".





      *"I am happy to be here in Addis Ababa on this most historic occasion.
I bring with me the hopes and fraternal greetings of the government and
people of Ghana. Our objective is African union now. There is no time to
waste. We must unite now or perish. I am confident that by our concerted
effort and determination, we shall lay here the foundations for a
continental Union of African States.*

*      A whole continent has imposed a mandate upon us to lay the foundation
of our union at this conference. It is our responsibility to execute this
mandate by creating here and now, the formula upon which the requisite
superstructure may be erected.*

*      On this continent it has not taken us long to discover that the
struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national
independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved
struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to
construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing
and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.*

*      From the start we have been threatened with frustration where rapid
change is imperative and with instability where sustained effort and ordered
rule are indispensable.*

*      No sporadic act nor pious resolution can resolve our present
problems. Nothing will be of avail, except the united act of a united
Africa.*

*      We have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into
that condition which has made Latin-America the unwilling and distressed
prey of imperialism after one-and-a-half centuries of political
independence.*

* *

*      As a continent we have emerged into independence in a different age,
with imperialism grown stronger, more ruthless and experienced, and more
dangerous in its international associations. Our economic advancement
demands the end of colonialist and neo-colonialist domination in Africa.*

*      But just as we understood that the shaping of our national destinies
required of each of us our political independence and bent all our strength
to this attainment, so we must recognise that our economic independence
resides in our African union and requires the same concentration upon the
political achievement.*

*      The unity of our continent, no less than our separate independence,
will be delayed if, indeed, we do not lose it, by hobnobbing with
colonialism.*

*      African unity is, above all, a political kingdom which can only be
gained by political means. The social and economic development of Africa
will come only within the political kingdom, not the other way round.*

*      Is it not unity alone that can weld us into an effective force,
capable of creating our own progress and making our valuable contribution to
world peace?*

*      Which independent African state, which of you here, will claim that
its financial structure and banking institutions are fully harnessed to its
national development?*

*      Which will claim that its material resources and human energies are
available for its own national aspirations? Which will disclaim a
substantial measure of disappointment and disillusionment in its
agricultural and urban development?*

*      In independent Africa, we are already re-experiencing the instability
and frustration which existed under colonial rule. We are fast learning that
political independence is not enough to rid us of the consequences of
colonial rule.*

*      The movement of the masses of the people of Africa for freedom from
that kind of rule was not only a revolt against the conditions which it
imposed. Our people supported us in our fight for independence because they
believed that African governments could cure the ills of the past in a way
which could never be accomplished under colonial rule.*

*      If, therefore, now that we are independent we allow the same
conditions to exist that existed in colonial days, all the resentment which
overthrew colonialism will be mobilised against us.*

*      The resources are there. It is for us to marshal them in the active
service of our people. Unless we do this by our concerted efforts, within
the framework of our combined planning, we shall not progress at the tempo
demanded by today's events and the mood of our people. The symptoms of our
troubles will grow, and the troubles themselves become chronic. It will then
be too late even for pan-African unity to secure for us stability and
tranquillity in our labours for a continent of social justice and material
well-being.*

*      Our continent certainly exceeds all the others in potential
hydro-electric power, which some experts assess as 42% of the world's total.
What need is there for us to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water for
the industrialised areas of the world?*

*      It is said, of course, that we have no capital, no industrial skill,
no communications and no internal markets, and that we cannot even agree
among ourselves how best to utilise our resources for our own social needs.
Yet all stock exchanges in the world are pre-occupied with Africa's gold,
diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ore.*

*      Our capital flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of
Western economy. Fifty-two per cent of the gold in Fort Knox at this moment,
where the USA stores its bullion, is believed to have originated from our
shores.*

*      Africa provides more than 60% of the world's gold. A great deal of
the uranium for nuclear power, of copper for electronics, of titanium for
supersonic projectiles, of iron and steel for heavy industries, of other
minerals and raw materials for lighter industries - the basic economic might
of the foreign powers - come from our continent.*

*      Experts have estimated that the Congo Basin alone can produce enough
food crops to satisfy the requirements of nearly half the population of the
whole world and here we sit talking about regionalism, talking about
gradualism, talking about step by step. Are you afraid to tackle the bull by
the horn?*

*      For centuries, Africa has been the milch cow of the Western world.
Was it not our continent that helped the Western world to build up its
accumulated wealth?*

*      We have the resources. It was colonialism in the first place that
prevented us from accumulating the effective capital; but we ourselves have
failed to make full use of our power in independence to mobilise our
resources for the most effective take-off into thorough-going economic and
social development.*

*      We have been too busy nursing our separate states to understand fully
the basic need of our union, rooted in common purpose, common planning and
common endeavour. A union that ignores these fundamental necessities will be
but a sham. It is only by uniting our productive capacity and the resultant
production that we can amass capital. And once we start, the momentum will
increase. With capital controlled by our own banks, harnessed to our own
true industrial and agricultural development, we shall make our advance.*

* *

*      We shall accumulate machinery and establish steel works, iron
foundries and factories; we shall link the various states of our continent
with communications by land, sea and air. We shall cable from one place to
another, phone from one place to the other and astound the world with our
hydro-electric power; we shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested
areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites and
disease.=20*

*      It is within the possibility of science and technology to make even
the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural
and industrial developments. We shall harness the radio, television, giant
printing presses to lift our people from the dark recesses of illiteracy.*

*      A decade ago, these would have been visionary words, the fantasies of
an idle dreamer. But this is the age in which science has transcended the
limits of the material world, and technology has invaded the silences of
nature.*

*      Time and space have been reduced to unimportant abstractions. Giant
machines make roads, clear forests, dig dams, lay out aerodromes; monster
trucks and planes distribute goods; huge laboratories manufacture drugs;
complicated geological surveys are made; mighty power stations are built;
colossal factories erected - all at an incredible speed. The world is no
longer moving through bush paths or on camels and donkeys.*

*      We cannot afford to pace our needs, our development, our security, to
the gait of camels and donkeys. We cannot afford not to cut down the
overgrown bush of outmoded attitudes that obstruct our path to the modern
open road of the widest and earliest achievement of economic independence
and the raising up of the lives of our people to the highest level.*

*      Even for other continents lacking the resources of Africa, this is
the age that sees the end of human want. For us it is a simple matter of
grasping with certainty our heritage by using the political might of unity.
All we need to do is to develop with our united strength the enormous
resources of our continent.*

*      What use to the farmer is education and mechanisation, what use is
even capital for development; unless we can ensure for him a fair price and
a ready market? What has the peasant, worker and farmer gained from
political independence, unless we can ensure for him a fair return for his
labour and a higher standard of living?*

*      Unless we can establish great industrial complexes in Africa, what
have the urban worker, and those peasants on overcrowded land gained from
political independence? If they are to remain unemployed or in unskilled
occupation, what will avail them the better facilities for education,
technical training, energy and ambition which independence enables us to
provide?*

* **      There is hardly any African state without a frontier problem with
its adjacent neighbours. It would be futile for me to enumerate them because
they are already so familiar to us all. But let me suggest that this fatal
relic of colonialism will drive us to war against one another as our
unplanned and uncoordinated industrial development expands, just as happened
in Europe.*

*      Unless we succeed in arresting the danger through mutual
understanding on fundamental issues and through African unity, which will
render existing boundaries obsolete and superfluous, we shall have fought in
vain for independence.*

*      Only African unity can heal this festering sore of boundary disputes
between our various states. The remedy for these ills is ready in our hands.
It stares us in the face at every customs barrier, it shouts to us from
every African heart. By creating a true political union of all the
independent states of Africa, with executive powers for political direction,
we can tackle hopefully every emergency and every complexity.*

*      This is because we have emerged in the age of science and technology
in which poverty, ignorance and disease are no longer the masters, but the
retreating foes of mankind.*

*      Above all, we have emerged at a time when a continental land mass
like Africa with its population approaching 300 million are necessary to the
economic capitalisation and profitability of modern productive methods and
techniques.*

*      Not one of us working singly and individually can successfully attain
the fullest development.*

*      Certainly, in the circumstances, it will not be possible to give
adequate assistance to sister states trying, against the most difficult
conditions, to improve their economic and social structures. Only a united
Africa functioning under a union government can forcefully mobilise the
material and moral resources of our separate countries and apply them
efficiently and energetically to bring a rapid change in the conditions of
our people.*

*      Unite we must. 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. We need a
common defence system with African high command to ensure the stability and
security of Africa.*

*      We have been charged with this sacred task by our own people, and we
cannot betray their trust by failing them. We will be mocking the hopes of
our people if we show the slightest hesitation or delay in tackling
realistically this question of African unity.*

* **      We need unified economic planning for Africa. Until the economic
power of Africa is in our hands, the masses can have no real concern and no
real interest for safeguarding our security, for ensuring the stability of
our regimes, and for bending their strength to the fulfilment of our ends.*

*      With our united resources, energies and talents we have the means, as
soon as we show the will, to transform the economic structures of our
individual states from poverty to that of wealth, from inequality to the
satisfaction of popular needs. Only on a continental basis shall we be able
to plan the proper utilisation of all our resources for the full development
of our continent.*

*      How else will we retain our own capital for our development? How else
will we establish an internal market for our own industries? By belonging to
different economic zones, how will we break down the currency and trading
barriers between African states, and how will the economically stronger
amongst us be able to assist the weaker and less developed states?*

*      It is important to remember that independent financing and
independent development cannot take place without an independent currency. A
currency system that is backed by the resources of a foreign state is ipso
facto subject to the trade and financial arrangements of that foreign
country.*

*      Because we have so many customs and currency barriers as a result of
being subject to the different currency systems of foreign powers, this has
served to widen the gap between us in Africa. How, for example, can related
communities and families trade with, and support one another successfully,
if they find themselves divided by national boundaries and currency
restrictions?*

*      The only alternative open to them in these circumstances is to use
smuggled currency and enrich national and international racketeers and
crooks who prey upon our financial and economic difficulties.*

*      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. 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.
To facilitate this arrangement, Ghana would change to a decimal system.*

*      When we find that the arrangement of a fixed common parity is working
successfully, there would seem to be no reason for not instituting one
common currency and a single bank of issue.*

* **      With a common currency from one common bank of issue, we should be
able to stand erect on our own feet because such an arrangement would be
fully backed by the combined national products of the states composing the
union. After all, the purchasing power of money depends on productivity and
the productive exploitation of the natural, human and physical resources of
the nation.*

*      While we are assuring our stability by a common defence system, and
our economy is being orientated beyond foreign control by a common currency,
monetary zone and central bank of issue, we can investigate the resources of
our continent.*

*      We can begin to ascertain whether in reality we are the richest, and
not, as we have been taught to believe, the poorest among the continents.*

*      We can determine whether we possess the largest potential in
hydro-electric power, and whether we can harness it and other sources of
energy to our industries. We can proceed to plan our industrialisation on a
continental scale, and to build up a common market for nearly 300 million
people.*

*      Common continental planning for the industrial and agricultural
development of Africa is a vital necessity.*

*      So many blessings flow from our unity; so many disasters must follow
on our continued disunity. The hour of history which has brought us to this
assembly is a revolutionary hour. It is the hour of decision.*

*      The masses of the people of Africa are crying for unity. The people
of Africa call for the breaking down of the boundaries that keep them apart.
They demand an end to the border disputes between sister African states -
disputes that arise out of the artificial barriers raised by colonialism. It
was colonialism' s purpose that divided us. It was colonialism' s purpose
that left us with our border irredentism, that rejected our ethnic and
cultural fusion.*

*      Our people call for unity so that they may not lose their patrimony
in the perpetual service of neo-colonialism. In their fervent push for
unity, they understand that only its realisation will give full meaning to
their freedom and our African independence.*

*      It is this popular determination that must move us on to a union of
independent African states. In delay lies danger to our well-being, to our
very existence as free states.*

*      It has been suggested that our approach to unity should be gradual,
that it should go piece-meal. This point of view conceives of Africa as a
static entity with "frozen" problems which can be eliminated one by one and
when all have been cleared then we can come together and say: "Now all is
well, let us now unite".*

* **      This view takes no account of the impact of external pressures.
Nor does it take cognisance of the danger that delay can deepen our
isolations and exclusiveness; that it can enlarge our differences and set us
drifting further and further apart into the net of neo-colonialism, so that
our union will become nothing but a fading hope, and the great design of
Africa's full redemption will be lost, perhaps, forever.*

*      The view is also expressed that our difficulties can be resolved
simply by a greater collaboration through co-operative association in our
inter-territorial relationships. This way of looking at our problems denies
a proper conception of their inter-relationship and mutuality. It denies
faith in a future for African advancement in African independence. It
betrays a sense of solution only in continued reliance upon external sources
through bilateral agreements for economic and other forms of aid.*

*      The fact is that although we have been co-operating and associating
with one another in various fields of common endeavour even before colonial
times, this has not given us the continental identity and the political and
economic force which would help us to deal effectively with the complicated
problems confronting us in Africa today.*

*      As far as foreign aid is concerned, a United Africa should be in a
more favourable position to attract assistance from foreign sources. There
is the far more compelling advantage which this arrangement offers, in that
aid will come from anywhere to a United Africa because our bargaining power
would become infinitely greater. We shall no longer be dependent upon aid
from restricted sources. We shall have the world to choose from.*

*      What are we looking for in Africa? Are we looking for Charters,
conceived in the light of the United Nations example? A type of United
Nations Organisation whose decisions are framed on the basis of resolutions
that in our experience have sometimes been ignored by member states? Where
groupings are formed and pressures develop in accordance with the interest
of the groups concerned?*

*      Or is it intended that Africa should be turned into a loose
organisation of states on the model of the Organisation of American States,
in which the weaker states within it can be at the mercy of the stronger or
more powerful ones politically or economically and all at the mercy of some
powerful outside nation or group of nations? Is this the kind of association
we want for ourselves in the United Africa we all speak of with such feeling
and emotion?*

*      We all want a united Africa, united not only in our concept of what
unity connotes, but united in our common desire to move forward together in
dealing with all the problems that can best be solved only on a continental
basis.*

*      We meet here today not as Ghanaians, Guineans, Egyptians, Algerians,
Moroccans, Malians, Liberians, Congolese or Nigerians, but as Africans.
Africans united in our resolve to remain here until we have agreed on the
basic principles of a new compact of unity among ourselves which guarantees
for us and our future a new arrangement of continental government.*

*      If we succeed in establishing a new set of principles as the basis of
a new charter of stature for the establishment of a continental unity of
Africa, and the creation of social and political progress for our people,
then in my view, this conference should mark the end of our various
groupings and regional blocs.*

*      But if we fail and let this grand and historic opportunity slip by,
then we shall give way to greater dissension and division among us for which
the people of Africa will never forgive us. And the popular and progressive
forces and movements within Africa will condemn us. I am sure therefore that
we shall not fail them.*

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