Articles

Reflections on the Dream Deferred

Mahgoub El-Tigani

Nkrumah's Dream Deferred provides a factual analysis of the current situation of our Mother Continent Africa that, as Kenyan Professor Ali Mazrui noticed in the early 1960s, was a continent crippled by the cult of leadership among other factors. Chief of these factors is what Nkrumah said, "[M]ost of our national frontiers are relics of colonialism, and irrelevant within the context of the African nation." As Gamal wrote, "Africa is free of colonialism, even though the continent has yet to cut loose from the tentacles of neo-colonialism, a phrase coined by Nkrumah to describe the subservient relationship between nominally independent African states and their former European colonial masters who control their rickety economies."

Since Mazrui's brilliant remark to this day, there is "No change of post-colonial status quo," as Gamal lamented.

Furthermore,"Idealism is ridiculed, and ideology rendered irrelevant. Money matters as never before. And moral courage is a fruitless digression which leads away from the straight and narrow path of money-making ventures," as he further remarked. "It began with Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah who fought for and lost the battle to institute his United States of Africa. His peers viewed his motives suspiciously and opted for the gradualist approach to African unity." It is true that Kwame Nkrumah was a major force behind the idea and the establishment of the AOU. William Du Bois, the African American most renowned scholar was an earlier founder of the movement. Earlier Blacks (Fanon) and African American activists, including F. Douglass, also pioneered the Pan-African movement.

President Kwame Nkrumah was strongly opposed to the counter-revolutionary forces that put a false new dress of the same political and economic exploitation context to undermine Africa's independence and striving for libertarian and development. This new dress is what he eloquently called "the forces of neo-colonialism." To face out this new stage of European underdevelopment, to borrow Gilbert Rodney's expression, Nkrumah's statemeent is still relevant: "Three alternatives are open to African states," Nkrumah extrapolated. "First, to unite and to save our continent; secondly, to continue in disunity and to disintegrate; or thirdly, to sell out and capitulate before the forces of imperialism and neo-colonialism. As each year passes, our failure to unite strengthens our enemies and delays the fulfilment of the aspirations of our people." Nkrumah further explained as Gamal cited, "Full economic and social development can only be accomplished within the optimum zone of development, which is the entire African continent, and under the direction of an All-African Union Government pursuing policies of scientific socialism."

I concur with Gamal's analysis that, as Nkrumah evaluated, "there were crucial differences of opinion when it came to questions of methods and procedures." These very same paralysing "crucial differences" persist to this day, and the gap remains to be bridged between the majority gradualists and the minority radicals urging immediate continental unity." That is one reason why, "The traditional tensions between radicals and so- called moderates resurfaced with a vengeance in Lusaka… Some of the continent's leaders attend with the express aim of settling old scores, others to clinch business deals, and the silent majority simply want to be seen and not heard."

Between OAU and the New AU there are critical issues to be discussed. Gamal explained, "The AU charter aims at creating a relatively more powerful executive council for the continent than the OAU. It also provides for a continental parliament, a central bank, court of justice and a single currency and passport. The problem with the AU is, that unlike the European Union (EU) after which the AU was vaguely modelled, no standards have been set as far as the bread and butter issues of employment and unemployment, inflation and monetary standards are concerned."

The European unity developed a momentum that is still going on with increasing accomplishments in or concerns for the human rights movement, disarmament, unified currencies, world peace, and other daily concerns. These are compared to the heart-aching failures of the African unity that is not solely a matter of financial matters as much as it is a genuine cause of States and societies poverty in human rights, civil liberties, public freedoms, and popular decision making.

That is why I disagree with Gamal's statement that, "Indeed, Gaddafi warned that the lack of popular participation in the decision-making process of the OAU in the past was one of the major shortcomings of the old Pan-African body." Colonel Gaddafi is not a different leader from the other non-democratic leaders of the Mother Continent. As the majority continue to be, he personally ruled over a 4-decade single-party single-candidate State party system that is no better in silencing political opponents than any other poorly recorded African human rights violating State. The democracy that Gaddafi claims is not a regular one that should be based on free competition, clear distinction of government branches, independent judiciary, and sovereignty legislature. What Africa needs is what African People need, not what an African leader wants. What Africa most needs is for the mature African popular movement ( political parties plus trades unions free of any State control) to breathe and flourish with freedoms and human rights, not for African leaders to mature and change suits when they would be able to do that.

On the other side, it is factual that "The OAU teeters on the verge of financial bankruptcy. There is no sign that the AU will fare any better. The paralysing impoverishment of a host of nations south of the Sahara, the proliferation of wars and in several instances the actual disintegration of states," in the words of Gamal. We have to question at this point, why is it that the richest continent on earth - as far as potential wealth is concerned - lingering behind, bankrupt, paralyzed with debt, trade deficit, unable to feed its noble Peoples? The main reasons lie in the cult of leadership, the non-democracy economic and financial policies, and the suppression of the main producer forces, the small farmers and city working groups. It is with a quick glance that the huge discrepancies between state manager salaries/privileges and the impoverished working forces meager payments would indicate the waste of African wealth and State economies. The debt is coming from arms sales for African killer wars, corrupted contracts, and security funds to sustain African leaders ruling palaces. Indeed, the guilt of under-developing Africa and African Peoples is perhaps much greater with regard to these factors than colonialism had done and the neo-colonialism is doing. African journalists and other intellectuals must challenge Gaddafi and the other African leaders who have not yet disseminated democracy and human rights inside their own nations before they could look forward to establish a substitute of the Du Bois-Nkrumah Pan African Movement that in the 1960s stressed the idea of liberal popular decision making of strictly anti-colonial State policies in the first place.

"Sub-Saharan African countries are generally extremely grateful in public for Libyan generosity. In private, however, they complain bitterly about the capricious nature of Libyan magnanimity," Gamal wrote. 'Nonetheless, "[Gaddafi] unabashedly makes no bones about his conditional handouts. It is an open secret that he footed the bills of several African delegations in both Lome and Lusaka. Half a dozen small and impoverished African states permitted themselves to be persuaded to vote in favour of Gaddafi's fast-track agenda precisely because they were paid by the Libyans to do so. Libyan officials were conspicuously present at cash-desks in Lusaka's hotels and curio shops frequented by several African delegates. Libyan largesse was a key factor in speeding up the process of ratifying the AU. Only the isolationist Indian-Ocean island of Madagascar, whose cultural identity and racial composition is as much Asian as African, and oil- rich Equatorial Guinea which can do without Libyan petro-dollars have not ratified the African Union treaty. The Libyan leader obviously has no qualms about such arm twisting tactics."

I am deeply disheartened by the condescending attitude of the Libyan leader concerning the African poor nations. We have seen several unacceptable attitudes of the sort in the 1980s when Gaddafi expelled hundreds of thousands of the African workers from Libya and when he also asked the Sudanese Government to pay a few millions that Sudan received as a loan from Libya. That was when the Sudanese people decided to pay the loan as "Mal Al-Karama" [the National Pride Fund]. It is pretty alarming that Gaddafi and his Libyan zealots behave as a mini selected nation of Africa towards the largest populations of the Continent. This attitude is damaging. It would motivate most African nations to seek better non-condescending funding from the Great Seven, rather than the Gaddafi humiliating revolution.

"Still, it would be incorrect to infer that Gaddafi calls all the shots. Gaddafi wanted his friend Louis Farrakhan, the African American leader of the Nation of Islam to take the podium, but the Libyan leader's special request was flatly turned down by his host the Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, a devout Christian who officially designated Zambia the first Christian nation in Africa," Gamal Nkrumah wrote. This again is a temporary bomb politics of Gaddafi and is a very uncomfortable way to tackle the African Muslim non-Muslim relations. That Arab Muslim nations (including Egypt and Libya) are major funding States of the AOU or AU should never mean that the receiving nations have to abandon non-Muslim or African religions to adopt Muslim agenda. The Sudanese are still having a scourge civil war in Sudan because a Maniac ruler, Omer Bashir, and his state managers are ruthlessly politicizing civil war with a most backward "religion" agenda. That is why the most recent Egyptian-Libyan Paper to help resolve the crisis of Bashir tyranny lost momentum, despite the relatively advanced shared agenda it carried as it accommodated the well-thought National Democratic Alliance concerns. Unless the right to self determination is honored by African leaders, Africa will not move an inch out of the swamp of enforced unity on African Peoples by State managers. This obstinate cult of African leadership, as Professor Ali Mazrui emphasized in the early 1960s, is still haunting Africa. African leaders are advised, they better take seriously what African intellectuals say.

The concluding remarks of Dr. Gamal K. Nkrumah are revealing: "For better or for worse, the AU has now replaced the OAU. Lome treaty setting up the AU has been in force since 26 May 2001. However, none of the institutions envisioned have materialised. There is still a long way to go before a credible African parliament is convened, a single African currency circulated, an African passport issued and an African army created. The continent is obliged to speed up the implementation of the Abuja Treaty of 1991 that stipulated the establishment of an African Economic Community by 2025. At best the AU promises to pick up the pieces from a tired OAU. But the effectiveness of the new Pan-African organisation hinges on the political will of the continent's leaders, African public opinion and the masses at large. At worst, the AU is a harbinger of a feeble future for a conflict-ridden continent."