Pan-Africanism lives, bedrock of African Union

PAN-AFRICANISM, as President Mnangagwa stated while in Addis Ababa for the 37th Ordinary Session of the African Union, is still very much alive, but these days centred on building the sort of Africa all Africans want and that very much includes implementing the common goals and common culture of Africa.

We sometimes need to think back to 1963 when the Organisation for African Unity was founded, in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, which was easily the oldest independent African state.

Just a decade earlier almost all of Africa was divided between the British, French, Portuguese, Belgian and Spanish Empires and even the nominally independent states were usually grouped with one of these empires or with the peculiar remnant of the Italian empire.

Most Africans had grown up with their territories, classified as colonies, protectorates and trust territories and under the rule of colonial governors.

The late 1950s had seen the start of the dismantling of these empires but there was still a long way to go, especially in southern Africa, and very often the small and poor independent countries were tied economically and often in other areas to the former colonial power.

That first generation of leaders of independent African states were usually the leaders of the movements in their countries that had pressed for independence and the right of Africans to choose their own governments and live in normal countries where they were citizens, not colonial subjects, and recognised three major areas where they needed to act together.

The first was very positive. Despite growing up under different empires, being taught different international languages, and being products of different education systems, they saw, from the very beginning, that they had far more in common with each other than they did with the European country that had taken them over during the age of imperialism.

This they built on in the concept of Pan-Africanism, a critical change in mindset and a change that Africans today see as natural, but which was the revolutionary change then. It could so easily have been different and Africa could so easily have split into new regions that never communicated.

The other two factors were the need for continental liberation.

There was the obvious political one, that a large chunk of Africa in the south was under colonial rule or the rule of settler colonialists, a situation that Algeria had just escaped, and that there were still other territories under the old empires that needed to move forward, although probably without the need for liberation wars. So continental liberation was high on the agenda.

So Pan-Africanism was reinforced by the realisation that until all Africans were free, the continent was not free.

The other factor was the need for economic independence, that having economies controlled by former colonial powers, or businesses headquartered in the former colonial powers, was not going to create a place in the sun for Africans.

Again this was part of the mindset change to Pan-Africanism, that the new and very poor continent had to be built together to take its rightful place in the world. The Pan-Africanist ideal was applied practically very early on, in a way that largely prevented the scourge of interstate war in Africa. Most colonial boundaries took zero account of pre-colonial territories and states and usually were marked by colonialists using rivers or watersheds or mountain ranges or simply lines of longitude and latitude, frequently cutting through communities and sometimes even partitioning villages.

So a critical very early decision was that since most colonial boundaries were absurd they should all remain as the new national boundaries until, in time, they were abolished under the Pan-African ideal.

There have been some appalling wars in Africa since 1963, but these have with one or two exceptions been liberation wars and civil wars. Looking at the rest of the world and its fairly recent bloody history, Africa can consider itself the most fortunate of continents.

The Pan-African ideal continued to live, and was taken over by the new generations that had been born free and were living free. So it became the obvious normal way of thinking. There were practicalities to be considered. The new independent states had to stress their national unity to overcome many inherited problems, both of the weird frontiers and the tactics of divide and rule of so many colonial and settler administrations.

So Africa was to be built by secure nation states coming together, rather than just collapsing into an amorphous mess.

But under the OAU that was recognised, securing the building blocks as well as bringing them closer, with sufficient progress made that after the last settler regime, South Africa, was liberated, the OAU could transform to the African Union in 2002. That transformation was far more than just a name change to reflect an ideal.

On the political front the AU started setting standards, stressing that Africa had to be built from a collection of functioning democracies and that the freedom won at independence had to be a full freedom.

That has seen a lot of changes although there are odd exceptions, with members being suspended if they slip back. But generally the AU and neighbourhood groupings have been realising these ideals.

At the same time there was recognition that economic unity was critical if Africa was to advance in freedom. This started with the regional trading entities and then came the decision to go full out to the African Continental Free Trade Area, definitely a work in progress but one where there is progress every year. Again this would be impossible without the Pan-Africanist vision.

Now we are seeing the need to grow Africa and open doors for Africans, all Africans, and the 37th summit over the weekend pressed this, with its stress on education and skills so Africa, without cutting ties with the rest of the world, could also generate its own solutions and build its own businesses, being an equal not a dependent.

Again a practical application of the need to move forward together, the alternative being to stay in dependent limbo.

The result of the decades of the OAU and AU has been immense progress, but whenever Presidents and other heads of Government meet, the agenda is driven by the need for practical measures that bring us together, and those are built on the solid rock of the vision of Pan-Africanism, a vision that has created the modern Africa and one that steers the continent into a better future.