By Mwalimu George Ngwane
Loathe him or love him, Muammar Qadhafi is the Chairman of the African Union Commission for the year 2009. Qadhafi must be lucky with the number 9. Oil was discovered in Libya in 1959; he took power as Guide of the Revolution in 1969, convened a historical pan African summit bringing together more than forty Heads of State to Libya where the idea of changing the name of the Organisation of African Unity to an African Union was discussed on 9/9/99 and in 2009 he has become the Chairman of the African Union Commission. One of his first battles together with Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal in the just ended African Union Summit in Addis Ababa was to change the name of the African Union Commission to the African Union Authority and the name of the Commissioners to American-style Secretaries of State. We still need to see what is in a name and in a number.
The post of Chairman of the African Union is an honorary, advisory even decorative role with a one-year mandate conferred on Heads of State on a sub-regional rotational basis.
This time it had to be a leader from the North sub-region of Africa. The post is different from the “Secretary General’s” role now held by Jean Ping which has a four-year mandate during which he oversees the day-to-day running of the continental organisation. It would therefore be with cautious optimism that anyone should expect Qadhafi to revolutionise the pan African organisation and to meet the needs and aspirations of the people.
Qadhafi’s task shall not be easy first because some of his own Libyans are as protective if not xenophobic as some South Africans about their perceived superiority and persecution complex. Second even though Qadhafi and his people are gradually emerging from the pariah state that Western countries had confined them, some African leaders are still paranoid and jittery about the personality, vision and agenda of the man. They accuse him of annexationist and destabilizing tendencies; they accuse him of being anti-neo-liberal and anti-West; they suspect his United States of Africa agenda has an ulterior pan African leadership motive.
Strange enough, more than fifty years ago, these spurious suspicions were generously cast at Kwame Nkrumah and paradoxically it is these same accusations that make Qadhafi controversial among his peers but popular among the masses, which masses would rather have for Head of State a benevolent despot than an autocratic democrat.
Be it as it may, the architecture of the imminent United States of Africa transcends the love-hate sentiments about Qadhafi.
The European Union
No European leader clinically diagnosed the character trait of Robert Schuman, the French Foreign Minister, who on 9 May 1950 proposed that France, the Federal Republic of Germany and any other European country wishing to join them should pool their coal and steel resources. The focus was not on the messenger but on the message. The focus was not on Robert Schuman but on the conviction that “all governments regardless of political complexion now recognise that the era of absolute national sovereignty is gone. Only by joining forces and working towards a destiny henceforth shared can Europe’s old nations continue to enjoy economic and social progress and maintain their influence in the world”.
It is this focus that has led to what was first the European Economic Commission and now the European Union. More than half a century old today, the European Union with a single market, monetary policy, economic and social cohesion, foreign and security policy has a profound effect on the development of Europe and the attitude of its inhabitants.
It is this focus and that of Kwame Nkrumah that have guided Muammar Qadhafi into jolting his African peers to wake up to the challenges and opportunities of a fast-track creation of a United States of Africa.
Qadhafi’s style
To accommodate his peers and detractors within his one-year mandate as Chairman of the African Union, Qadhafi would have to combine diplomacy and activism, advocacy and legislation. His incendiary, condescending and sometimes erratic rhetoric would have to be mellowed down in favour of the mission ahead of him. His glitz and glamour, pomp and pageantry and flamboyance and fanfare with which he carries around his all female body guards (Amazons) and quite recently traditional chiefs to the point of insisting that he be addressed “King of Kings” and who knows “Lord of Lords” should be tempered with modesty.
Accusations of his real or imaginary connections to legitimate or illegitimate rebellions in Africa should not leave him indifferent.
The African Revolution
Whether Qadhafi changes his style or not, Africans would have to focus on what has been for the last 200 years termed “The African Revolution”.
The African Revolution is rooted in the prophecies of early African Christians who on 14 January 1897 resolved “to work towards and pray for the day when African people shall become a United African Christian Nation”.
The African Revolution is rooted in the dreams of the early Diasporan panAfricanists who through the voices of Edward .W. Blyden, Henry Sylvester Williams, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore and W.E.B Dubois and through the pan African conferences (1990- 1945), pledged “to promote the concept of a West African Federation as an indispensable lever for the ultimate achievement of the United States of Africa”.
It is rooted in the memories of Kwame Nkrumah, Um Nyobe, Patrice Lumumba, Gemal Abdul Nasser, Amical Cabral, Bob Marley, Steve Biko, Modibo Keita, Sekou Toure, Cheick Anta Diop, Thomas Sankara and some other unsung heroes who laid down their lives in order “to form a Union of African States”.
It is rooted in the resolutions of the Lagos Plan of Action (1980), African Economic Treaty (1991) and the African Union Treaty (2000) which place emphasis on “the free movement of people, goods and capital through a common African citizenship”.
It is this African Revolution that should gird Qadhafi’s new continental garb in reaching out to Africans in the year 2009.
An Outreach Agenda
While official diplomacy (political will of our leaders) remains the more realistic option for the establishment of the United States of Africa, Track 11 diplomacy (political pressure of the masses) is the more potent weapon needed to jumpstart it.
Qadhafi’s outreach agenda would consist of negotiating with some of the most acerbic opponents of the United States of Africa. These opponents include South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda and Ethiopia. Rather than widening the “gradualists versus radical divide” that has historically been the yeast of Africa’s consensus, Qadhafi should remember that even the European Union was born out of two divides-the functionalist approach which favoured a gradual transfer of sovereignty from national to community level represented by Frenchman Jean Monnet and the federalist approach which believed in the idea that local,regional,national and European authorities should cooperate and complement each other represented by the Italian Altiero Spinelli.
But Qadhafi’s greatest success would depend on how far he reaches out to pan African civil society organisations and youth associations through Libyan Embassies in Africa. A conference of Afro-Arab non-governmental organisations that took place 14 to 16 April 2000 in Libya set a solid foundation on which subsequent conferences of pan African civil society associations, youth movements and organic intellectuals can be built.
At the end of the day the ideal option of concretising the United States of Africa would be through country referendums. This is where the input of the civil society organisations shall be significant and Qadhafi’s outreach agenda imperative.
Given his zeal, charisma, vision and wherewithal, Qadhafi’s new continental garb should not be too heavy to carry nor too light to ignore. If only we get rid of our prejudices and remember that in a draft study submitted to the African Union in May 2006, the African people had taken a commitment that the United States of Africa be formed by the year 2015; Qadhafi or no Qadhafi.
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