It's time to realize African unity

May 25, 2016

President Museveni’s speech reinforced my dream especially the need for political ideology African Unity.

By Patrick Katagata

At 01:45 AM in the morning of April 4, 2016, I was awakened by a sharp reverberating, blowing masculine voice in a dream, speaking three times: "Africa must unite", before it gently dissipated!

It didn't make sense until last Thursday when I saw the well attended Swearing-in Ceremony of President Museveni by more than ten African Heads of State, led by H.E Idriss Déby, the Chadian President and African Union's Chairperson.

President Museveni's speech reinforced my dream especially the need for political ideology African Unity.

After the aforementioned dream, I kept wondering whose voice that was! Was it God's? I couldn't sleep. I reflected especially on the hate and divisive politics in the 2016 campaigns preached with impunity by some politicians, the political confusion that culminated in the heinous 2007 post electoral violence in Kenya as was the case in Zimbabwe and very recently in Burundi.

I thought about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the recent tribal clashes in South Sudan, and how when UPDF set in to assist as a gesture of good neighborliness and solidarity, Western powers and some selfish Ugandan politicians called for its withdrawal! I thought about the Western influenced Arab Spring insurrections that toppled and killed people like Col. Muammar Gaddafi in the most dehumanizing manner, leaving the once magnificent Libya in utter ruins! My heart was deeply afflicted! I realized that Africa's real Unity is both necessary and extremely urgent!

I've read fascinating works about Africa from historians, journalists, and leaders-cum-philosophers but four books, some of which span from as far back as the 1960s, particularly stood out for me: Africa must Unite (1963) by Kwame Nkrumah and The Wretched of The Earth (1961) by Frantz Fanon, their consciousness and calls for African Unity are still! The other two: The State of Africa; A History of the Continent since Independence (2005) by Martin Meredith; and Africa: Altered States Ordinary Miracles (2008) by Richard Dowden also offer great analyses of not only the fatal errors and divisive strategies of Colonialism but also point out the predatory and myopic mentalities of most of Africa's post independence leaders / puppets that perpetuated neocolonialism. They also explore Africa's untapped insurmountable opportunities!

Without forgetting the ravages of Slave trade, these books expose the cruel harm the Scramble and Partition of Africa did to her people's unity and solidarity. Sadly, religion also soon set in demonizing great African artisan works etc.

Africa was divided along religious, tribal / ethnic and political lines which undermined the enormous natural and human potential of this great continent. But the greatest setback Frantz Fanon points out was how the minds of Africans were too blinded to realize their own and Continent's greatness.

They were alienated to perceive anything indigenous as inferior to what's foreign, including bleaching their Melanin-rich complexion and adorn their heads with manufactured long silk hair to look like Whites! Fanon first castigated such mentalities in his book: Black Skins, White Masks, originally published in French as: "Peau Noire, Masques Blancs" in 1952.

Africans' alienation about their own greatness today manifests in the nostalgic insistence on colonial mentalities and systems; whereas if Africa united and strategically harnessed her enormous local potential, she'd still effectively proffer robust solutions without relying on conditional foreign interventions. Don't we know the dividends that come with the 50 States of America being united into one nation? How about the 26 Schengen countries of the European Union? Don't we know that before the 1844 partition, Africa wasn't 54 countries but one block nation?

Can we delete the colonial mental borders and unite?

The writer is a founding member of the African Potential Forum

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