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The 2010 summit of African heads of state and government opens in Kampala today. It is the latest in many summits by African leaders that go back to the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963 as Kasozi Nasser reviews:-
The drive to make something of Africa can be traced back to the 1920s and the early efforts by such leaders as the Jamaican Marcus Garvey with his demand that Africans and descendants of Africa dispersed worldwide reclaim their roots and return to their mother continent.
“Africa for the Africans!” was the rallying call. Thousands of Africans were enlisted to fight on behalf of the European colonial nations during the Second World War. They fought in trenches and the open battlefield with European soldiers. They witnessed Europeans fear, fight, win, lose, get injured, and die.
Many Africans, used to Whites in a dominant position at home in the colonies, were shocked to discover that these men too were human after all. The African fighters also felt that since they had risked their lives and shed their blood for this essentially European war, then they should be rewarded with self-rule, if not outright independence. Most independence movements in Africa, then, started or at least gained momentum after the end of the Second World War.
Soul-searching
Many African students had also been to Europe and the United States for their university education. The racism they encountered and the aloofness of western society caused them to engage in soul-searching.
In 1912, the African National Congress (ANC) was founded in South Africa. It was the first political party in Africa. The ANC, even in those early years, was already viewing Africa as a whole and not just the situation in South Africa.
Among these vocal students in Africa were Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Namdi Azikiwe, Ahmed Ben Bella, Julius Nyerere and many others who would go on to become either the first prime ministers of their nations or first presidents and foreign ministers.
The racist policies of White-ruled South Africa, the tensions created by the post-War Cold War and the instability brought on by military coup after military coup starting in 1963 helped solidify a sense of African unity.
Many African children born in the 1960s were named after these African leaders and it is not uncommon to meet people in their 50s and 40s today named Patrick Lumumba, Ben Bella, or “Kinyata” in much of Black Africa. That demonstrated the extent to which even the ordinary people embraced the new sense of oneness on the continent.
However, no sooner had the 1960s decade started than it quickly became clear that this was going to be a disastrous beginning for Africa. There were assassinations in Togo and Nigeria of leaders, military coups in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Comoros, Madagascar, Libya, Somalia, Lesotho, Ethiopia and several other states from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Power struggle
Even as recently as 2000s, just when there was hope that there would be no more coups in Africa, coups resumed in Mauritania, Guinea, Niger and the Comoros.
With the arrival of the new millennium in 2000, the visionaries and dreamers around the world and Africa started looking to the future. There was general talk that this coming 21st century should be Africa’s, it should see a revival or “renaissance” of the African people.
Chief among these dreamers was the mercurial and colourful Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi and the then South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Col. Gaddafi started a campaign to reinvigorate the African unity drive, making several trips across the continent and pushed for the name of the OAU to be changed to the African Union, which it became in 2001.
Looking back now, it is hard to see what it was that filled statesmen and the media in Africa and beyond with hope that there was to be an African revival.
In all the efforts toward the achievement of African unity, it was obvious that Africa’s statesmen and bureaucrats were modelling their creations along the lines of the European cooperation moves. The name “African Union” sounded much like the “European Union”.
These Africans who studied in Europe and the United States and fought in British, French and Portuguese units during the war also saw something else; the undeniable advancement, orderliness and prosperity that were western society.
There was never any question that at some stage in the future, Africa’s European colonies had to start moving toward and eventually gain full self-rule. However, a few far-sighted and realistic young and western-educated Africans also knew that the attainment of political self-rule was only the start of a much bigger struggle.
This much bigger struggle was the quiet realisation that it could be possible to win political or “flag” independence but still remain in a state of dependence and subordination to European powers and exploitation, if some form of economic unity and growth were not achieved.
With the formation of the OAU came other regional efforts, among them over the years, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the East African Community (EAC), the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) , the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Kagera Basin Organisation (KBO), the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), and several other bodies.
It was not clear at the time they were founded and it remains unclear to this day what many of these regional groupings of nations stand for.
The longest-running pan-African effort on the continent has been the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament. It was first played in 1957 and has been one of the few consistent all-Africa efforts, apart from the heads of state summits.
More plans
The All-Africa Games - a festival of sports mapped after the Olympic and Commonwealth Games - is also staged. In recent years, there have been other major African events spreading into the entertainment fields, notably the Big Brother Africa reality television show, the M-Net Face of Africa modelling competition, the Zain Africa quiz challenge and the Kora African music awards.
vp Bukenya
The 2010 summit of African heads of state and government opens in Kampala today. It is the latest in many summits by African leaders that go back to the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963 as Kasozi Nasser reviews:-
The drive to make something of Africa can be traced back to the 1920s and the early efforts by such leaders as the Jamaican Marcus Garvey with his demand that Africans and descendants of Africa dispersed worldwide reclaim their roots and return to their mother continent.
“Africa for the Africans!” was the rallying call. Thousands of Africans were enlisted to fight on behalf of the European colonial nations during the Second World War. They fought in trenches and the open battlefield with European soldiers. They witnessed Europeans fear, fight, win, lose, get injured, and die.
Many Africans, used to Whites in a dominant position at home in the colonies, were shocked to discover that these men too were human after all. The African fighters also felt that since they had risked their lives and shed their blood for this essentially European war, then they should be rewarded with self-rule, if not outright independence. Most independence movements in Africa, then, started or at least gained momentum after the end of the Second World War.
Soul-searching
Many African students had also been to Europe and the United States for their university education. The racism they encountered and the aloofness of western society caused them to engage in soul-searching.
In 1912, the African National Congress (ANC) was founded in South Africa. It was the first political party in Africa. The ANC, even in those early years, was already viewing Africa as a whole and not just the situation in South Africa.
Among these vocal students in Africa were Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Namdi Azikiwe, Ahmed Ben Bella, Julius Nyerere and many others who would go on to become either the first prime ministers of their nations or first presidents and foreign ministers.
The racist policies of White-ruled South Africa, the tensions created by the post-War Cold War and the instability brought on by military coup after military coup starting in 1963 helped solidify a sense of African unity.
Many African children born in the 1960s were named after these African leaders and it is not uncommon to meet people in their 50s and 40s today named Patrick Lumumba, Ben Bella, or “Kinyata” in much of Black Africa. That demonstrated the extent to which even the ordinary people embraced the new sense of oneness on the continent.
However, no sooner had the 1960s decade started than it quickly became clear that this was going to be a disastrous beginning for Africa. There were assassinations in Togo and Nigeria of leaders, military coups in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Comoros, Madagascar, Libya, Somalia, Lesotho, Ethiopia and several other states from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Power struggle
Even as recently as 2000s, just when there was hope that there would be no more coups in Africa, coups resumed in Mauritania, Guinea, Niger and the Comoros.
With the arrival of the new millennium in 2000, the visionaries and dreamers around the world and Africa started looking to the future. There was general talk that this coming 21st century should be Africa’s, it should see a revival or “renaissance” of the African people.
Chief among these dreamers was the mercurial and colourful Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi and the then South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Col. Gaddafi started a campaign to reinvigorate the African unity drive, making several trips across the continent and pushed for the name of the OAU to be changed to the African Union, which it became in 2001.
Looking back now, it is hard to see what it was that filled statesmen and the media in Africa and beyond with hope that there was to be an African revival.
In all the efforts toward the achievement of African unity, it was obvious that Africa’s statesmen and bureaucrats were modelling their creations along the lines of the European cooperation moves. The name “African Union” sounded much like the “European Union”.
These Africans who studied in Europe and the United States and fought in British, French and Portuguese units during the war also saw something else; the undeniable advancement, orderliness and prosperity that were western society.
There was never any question that at some stage in the future, Africa’s European colonies had to start moving toward and eventually gain full self-rule. However, a few far-sighted and realistic young and western-educated Africans also knew that the attainment of political self-rule was only the start of a much bigger struggle.
This much bigger struggle was the quiet realisation that it could be possible to win political or “flag” independence but still remain in a state of dependence and subordination to European powers and exploitation, if some form of economic unity and growth were not achieved.
With the formation of the OAU came other regional efforts, among them over the years, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the East African Community (EAC), the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) , the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Kagera Basin Organisation (KBO), the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), and several other bodies.
It was not clear at the time they were founded and it remains unclear to this day what many of these regional groupings of nations stand for.
The longest-running pan-African effort on the continent has been the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament. It was first played in 1957 and has been one of the few consistent all-Africa efforts, apart from the heads of state summits.
More plans
The All-Africa Games - a festival of sports mapped after the Olympic and Commonwealth Games - is also staged. In recent years, there have been other major African events spreading into the entertainment fields, notably the Big Brother Africa reality television show, the M-Net Face of Africa modelling competition, the Zain Africa quiz challenge and the Kora African music awards.
vp Bukenya
