Louis Farrakhan rails against President Obama for U.S. intervention in Libya’s civil war: David Goodhue writes for AHN — Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan blasted U.S. President Barack Obama for taking part in an international coalition against Libyan Muammar Qaddafi. The coalition, consisting of France, the United Kingdom and the U.S., began bombing strategic targets in Libya on Saturday. France’s air force is leading the air strikes.
The U.S. and UK have launched hundreds of missiles from naval ships.
Farrakhan, on a Chicago radio show, said he was outraged Obama took part in the attack.
“Why don’t you organize a group of respected Americans and ask for a meeting with Qaddafi, you can’t order him to step down and get out, who the hell do you think you are?”
He made the comments on WVON-AM.
Other international leaders standing by Qaddafi in his battle against rebels are Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chaves, [ And The African Union ]
Visionary and politician, intellectual and activist, Chairman Yahaya Ndu is member of the National Committee of the African Unification Front (AUF), and spearheaded many initiatives aiming at eliminating colonially-imposed tyranny, military dictatorship, cultural alienation, socio-behavioural disintegration, historical denigration, and identity confusion from Africa. Struggling in the first line of the front against fallacious, colonialist historiography, neo-colonialist involvement, policies and practices, Chairman Yahaya Ndu defends the cause of reparations for Africa. His interview bears witness to new theoretical and intellectual trends that emerge in Nigeria, to prevail throughout Africa and thus herald a great future for the entire Black Continent. Today, with the fifth part, I complete the publication of the interview,
23. What would be the main axes of your foreign and All-African policy?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu — My commitment will be manifested in three areas, notably
1. Creating an African Super State out of Nigeria
2. Establishing an African Electoral Commission, and
3. Integrating, harmonizing and synergizing African manpower
With respect to the first, I would initiate the process of turning a new Nigeria into an African Super State able to play the role of a big brother for the rest of the continent.
As regards the most needed African Electoral Commission, I want to state that it is greatly important to conduct pan African elections to the African Union and its organs such as the African parliament. As it is now, the African Union is built on defective foundations that prevent the organization from playing the role all Africans want it to play. The African Union is today a meeting place for people who rig or shoot themselves into power in their respective countries and then come up automatically in the international body to purportedly represent their nations whereas they are indeed totally deprived from the right to do so as they do not have any real mandate coming from free, democratic elections.
Furthermore, I believe that manpower in the continent of Africa needs to be harmonized and synergized for optimum benefit of all the peoples of the continent. This means that, although all peoples of Africa should be encouraged to become self-sufficient nations, efforts have to be deployed to encourage all nations to focus their national development efforts in areas of competitive advantage, which will be more beneficial to them and more profitable to the whole continent.
National planning must be complemented by continental planning; for instance, a country should be selected for the production of an African car, and in this case African professionals with skills and experience in the sector should be invited to join forces and operate in the selected country. This type of continental planning would enable the continent to produce its own motor vehicles, and this development would be far better than the current situation whereby all African nations have been engulfed, importing motor vehicles into the continent.
Similarly, another nation may have already a comparative advantage in the Chemicals — Pharmaceuticals sector; under the proposed arrangement, this country should be selected to become the continental focus in the said sector. Subsequently, African specialists in this field should be encouraged to move and work in the selected country to ensure continental, African self-sufficiency in the Chemicals — Pharmaceuticals sector.
24. How would you help Somalia pacify and gain national unity and rehabilitation?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – Comprised of a former British protectorate and an Italian colony, Somalia was created in 1960 when the two territories merged. Since then, its development has been slow. Relations with neighbors have been soured by territorial misunderstandings.
The University of Peace’s Peace and Conflict Monitor Report a few years back states that the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was better placed to pacify Somalia.
The Report was based on the understanding that for the six-month period June to December 2006 in which the ICU was in control of Mogadishu and much of Central and Southern Somalia, that territory enjoyed peace, order and security; we know very well that this was good and unique, unprecedented ever since the Siad Barre administration had collapsed. In other words, the security situation was getting better in this swathe of land that had only known and lived with over 15 years of statelessness, insecurity, clan feuds, thriving warlordism and lawlessness.
So, the question is why the Ethiopian-backed offence — with tacit support from the United States and a number of Western powers — was undertaken and who finally decided to kick the Islamic Courts Union out of Somalia when the courts merited an opposite response from the international community, having already delivered stability and order to the most of Somalia’s territory?
25. Where do you stand as regards African conflicts, notably Eritrea vs. Ethiopia, Western Sahara and Uganda vs. Congo?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu — I believe that the African Diaspora should intervene and come up with constructive suggestions able to offer an exit to those conflicts. The acrimonious relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia is both, old and new. Resentful ethnic stereotypes run deep, but more recent political events have added a toxic element of embitterment. Whipped into this unstable mix is the fact that the Horn of Africa is a region at the cross roads of Europe, Asia and Africa, where the ambitions of the world’s greatest powers have colluded with local populations, religions and political formations for the last centuries.
26. What is your position about national liberation fronts and autonomy movements, notably Ogaden, Oromo and Kabylia?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – Let me start by saying that I myself and the African Renaissance Party are irrevocably committed to the convocation of a sovereign national conference of all ethnic nationalities of Nigeria for the direct purpose of the renegotiation of Nigeria in order to offer an amicable coexistence formula to all the peoples of Nigeria.
The lessons taken from the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970, the incessant interethnic unrests that have befallen on our the nation ever since, as well as the ongoing unrests pertaining to the Niger Delta region of our country, to the extent that active military operation is going on there right now, are more than an eloquent testimony to the fact that the component units of any nation should not be bound by force but by unmitigated free will.
I therefore support freedom for the peoples of my country, and I do support freedom for all the peoples of Africa, forall the ethno-religious groups wherever they may happen to be located.
One of greatest obstacles in the path the African Unification is that efforts to unify Africa have hitherto deployed to implement the unification project with the grossly defective ‘blocks’ formed out of the colonially and arbitrary contrived boundaries. These states are subjects of serious and at times bloody contentions throughout the length and breadth of the continent.
Liberation fronts are fighting for the liberation of their various peoples and deserve the support of all right thinking human beings. When all African peoples are liberated, then the objective of African unification can be commenced in earnest.
All liberation movements in Africa should be supported by all and sundry, as it is diversionary, unnecessary, and wicked for governments to seek to control peoples against their own free will. In every instance, a system must be introduced to determine the true feelings of the people; wherever it is established that they wish to be independent, the proper modalities should be worked out to enable and implement the independence process.
However, I must make the point that there is a political solution to internal strife issues, and this unfortunately has not yet been thorough explored in most of the needy African nations. This solution is: True Federalism. This implies running real, functioning and fair, federal governments.
Faced with corruption and stalled development, Africa is seeking a fresh path to good governance; federalism is the Black Continent’s watch word in this search.
The Fifth International Conference on Federalism, the bi-yearly gathering of the forum of federations, and the Global Network on Federalism, which opened in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa on December 13th 2010, has offered African leaders the opportunity to review the benefits that would accrue to the nations that embrace federalism. The theme of this year’s conference was “Equity and Unity in Diversity for Development”.
I want to underscore the fact that it is the first time the conference is being held in Africa since its initiation in 1999 in Mt. Tremblant, Canada.
27. What should Nigeria do to terminate strife in Darfur?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – As we know, open confrontation or warfare erupted in Darfur in early 2003, when two loosely allied rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked military installations. This was followed closely by peace agreement brokered by the US to end the twenty years old civil war in the South of Sudan which allocated government positions and Oil revenue to the rebels in the south.
In recent weeks, Sudanese armed forces and elements of the Janjaweed armed militias have renewed attacks on villages throughout Darfur and the truth is that the Southern Sudan referendum has overshadowed Darfur.
It appears that the African Union must wake up and make a determined and unrelenting move to end the genocide in Darfur in the short term while a permanent solution to ensure the peace and security of Darfuris is arranged in the long term.
Visionary and politician, intellectual and activist, Chairman Yahaya Ndu is member of the National Committee of the African Unification Front (AUF), and spearheaded many initiatives aiming at eliminating colonially-imposed tyranny, military dictatorship, cultural alienation, socio-behavioural disintegration, historical denigration, and identity confusion from Africa. Struggling in the first line of the front against fallacious, colonialist historiography, neo-colonialist involvement, policies and practices, Chairman Yahaya Ndu defends the cause of reparations for Africa. His interview bears witness to new theoretical and intellectual trends that emerge in Nigeria, to prevail throughout Africa and thus herald a great future for the entire Black Continent.
Today, I publish the fourth part of the interview, and in a forthcoming article, I will complete the series.
16. You make Tourism a great concern and a key dimension of your economic policy. Tourism is identified worldwide as a key tool for westernization and propaganda of North America and Western European culture. How will you maintain a balance between Tourism and cultural Renaissance?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – Yes indeed, we at the African Renaissance Party make Tourism a key dimension of our economic policy and good reasons. We are confident that, though modern tourism has been used by Western powers for westernization and propaganda of North America, we are capable of using tourism to promote our economic interests and to reeducate the world as regards the otherwise ignored African contributions to Human Civilization.
Tourism is the fastest growing industry in the world and the greatest generator of employments. Now, Nigeria has a very serious sociopolitical problem, that of unemployment, and that’s why I believe that we can use tourism to provide our people with millions of jobs, be they short or long term.
Furthermore, cultural and historical tourism attracts more and more people all over the world, and in this field, Africa has a clear comparative advantage as the world is yet to discover the real Africa, as well as the African contribution to World Civilization. Going into this will benefit Nigeria and Africa is various ways.
The problem of maintaining balance between tourism and cultural renaissance will simply not arise because cultural renaissance will be the focus of our tourism development.
17. According to FAO statistics, between 1963 and 1990, Nigeria’s self sufficiency was reduced dramatically practically in oils (207% to 102%) and milk (80% to 69%).What measures do you plan to take in order to boost Nigeria’s agricultural production and ensure the country’s self sufficiency?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – The first thing we need to do is to understand what has historically led to the scenario that you have rightly depicted. When we attempt to do this, we find that, in the 1960s, Nigeria was not only operating a federal system of government but also agriculture was given priority attention in all the zones of the country. Today, the governmental attention has shifted to crude oil exports and the sharing of the revenues ensuing from trade. Secondly, in the 1960s, the people were at the center of all government policies, but now the Nigerian military have engaged in a war in the Niger Delta, mowing down citizens to clear the way for Nigerian Oil exploration by foreign companies. They even go up to declaring boldly that no amount of civilian casualties will deter the said operations.
So honestly, and to my mind, one does need to look far to see the cause of the discrepancy that your question has highlighted.
As to the measures that we plan to take to boost Nigeria’s agricultural production and thus ensure the country’s self sufficiency, we will seek to return the nation to a federal system of government with a strengthened dimension of fiscal federalism, and I believe that the federal administrations will thus be inspired to take agricultural production and socioeconomic development seriously.
Furthermore, we will orient our engineers and technology experts toward large scale mechanized farm production, as we do not believe in importation. By manufacturing agricultural tractors and other mechanized implements locally, we shall become fully self sufficient in agriculture.
In addition, we will provide adequate funding and land for businessmen willing genuinely to invest in agriculture at all levels and go back to the era of farm settlements of the yesteryears.
Finally, let me say that our target is not merely to make Nigeria agriculturally sufficient but Africa’s food basket; agriculture is a major concern for us, and this is the reason we plan on entering into a highly contextualized partnership with diverse African and Black governments worldwide. Our ultimate target is to maximize comparative advantages in all cases.
18. What would be the basic axes of your Health policies?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – The African Renaissance Party is committed to provide Nigerians with self-sufficiency in healthcare, and we do not see why the best medical doctors in the world cannot be African.
We have a very particular interest in preserving, reassessing and reorganizing the sector of traditional medicine; we intend to compel our traditional medical practitioners to put heads together with pharmaceutical firms and experts to ensure more than adequate production of medicine. We are bound to providing hospitals and external centers with the necessary infrastructure and totally modernize the existing facilities. Furthermore, we will do our best to improve security and work conditions in a way to offer incentives to Nigerian Diaspora doctors to either come back or alternatively complement us through telemedicine. However, our focus shall be more on preventive than curative medicine, and we will carry out extensive work for sanitization infrastructure, demonstrating at the same time a particular interest in making healthy nutrition accessible to and valued by all.
19. What would be the basic axes of your Education policies?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu — We intend to promote functional and practical education; we will emphasize on technical education infrastructure. We will benefit from our Biafra experience. We support free but ultra productive education at all levels, drawing from our millennia long African educational tradition. We intend to carry out a proper mental emancipation of the schoolchildren, the pupils and the students because we want the African youth to have faith in their abilities. We will implement an educational system that will instill in all the students’ minds and hearts the concept that all people are born equal irrespective of race, ethnic origin, and ancestry. In other words, we will rid the African peoples of the complex of inferiority. Education throughout the Renascent Africa will make people real and integral Human Beings.
20. Where does African Renaissance party stand with respect to the former colonial powers and the demanded reparations for Africa? What do you expect in this regard?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu — First of all, in 2003, the African Renaissance Party tried all within its powers to convene a World Summit on Reparations for Africa which was scheduled to take place at Kinston, Jamaica. The event could not take place as planned and the party had to settle with sponsoring an African Reparations Bill at the National Assembly of Nigeria.
The Bill was used to direct Nigeria and Africa to refocus on the unfinished business of forcing the Western colonial nations to pay reparations for social dislocations, forcible enslavement, looting of treasures and artifacts, destruction and desecration of cities, empires, and civilizations — or to put it in two words for centuries of rapacious economic exploitation of Black African people.
The truth is that the poverty inhibiting Black and African economies is traceable to the atrocities occurred to them during the processes of colonization and imperialism. In acknowledgement of the fact that if no extra and considerable funds are injected into these economies, such countries shall remain impoverished and beggarly for the foreseeable future, the reparations demanded offer a minimal expression of regret for the tremendous damages caused. It is therefore imperative that a practical and pragmatic initiative be put in place to address the historically bestowed legacy of structural impoverishment.
Second, to be honest with you, we expect diverse responses to the demand for reparations, oscillating from apologies to financial recompense, return of artifacts, subsidies for reconstruction works, and redress of colonial historiography, which means a complete and unbiased re-writing of African History.
21. What are Nigeria’s best partners worldwide, and how do you view China, India, and Brazil in the global scene?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu — Our best partners are the Blacks of Brazil, India, and China. The truth is that all sensible governments are primarily concerned with the promotion and protection of their interests and the welfare of their citizens. Consequently, their relationship with other nations is determined by the evaluation of equitable, beneficial interaction. This is true for China. This is true for India, and also for Brazil. None of them is altruistic, and therefore Nigeria and the rest of Africa must bear this in mind at all times.
I am personally skeptical about the term ‘development partner’; actually, I have not seen it work anywhere at all. All the developed and industrialized nations deployed their own efforts to strengthen their economies. Consequently, all nations seeking development must first look inwards, toward their own institutions and citizens, and then outwards, e.g. to any other nations. This is not to say that governments or peoples of diverse nations cannot collaborate; I would like merely to warn that all participants in any such collaboration must be clear eyed at all times.
As far as India is concerned, I would like to add the following: India is gearing up to serve the powerful UN Security Council as a non-permanent member, after a gap of 19 years, with a fresh outlook on several international issues, especially Human Rights. India will return to the Security Council on January 1, 2011 for a 2-year period along with South Africa, Columbia, Germany, and Portugal.
With respect to Brazil, I want also to add a few words. I happened to read a statement recently made by Ambassador Antonio Patriota, the man chosen to succeed Foreign Affairs Minister of Brazil, Celso Amorim, in the administration of newly elected President Dilma Rousseff, in which he said that Brazil, India and South Africa have become “unavoidable partners” in the global decision making process, and I said to myself:
“Indeed the world makes way to the nations that know where they are going”; I subsequently lamented the place of Nigeria in the whole scheme.
22. How do you view China’s increased presence in the African continent?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – It is common knowledge that, as global demands for energy continue to rise, the major players, like the United States, the European Union (EU), and Japan, are facing a new competition in the race to secure long-term energy supplies: China. As its economy booms, China is intent on getting the resources needed to sustain its rapid growth. Beijing is taking its quest to lock down sources of Oil and other necessary raw materials across the globe. As part of this effort, China has turned to Africa, an Oil producing source whose risks and challenges have often caused it to be overlooked economically.
The Africans must control their own destinies, and their leaders must ensure that the poor and hungry will also enjoy the advantages that can flow from the exploitation of the natural resources that their countries have been endowed with.
Wikileaks leaked US cables demonstrating that several African governments like dealing with China. But they shouldn’t forget that China’s interest in Africa is driven by foreign policy and economic objectives.
China has been investing in Africa for decades, but the quantity and commitment of China’s investment has risen in proportion with its newfound economic strength.
Visionary and politician, intellectual and activist, Chairman Yahaya Ndu is member of the National Committee of the African Unification Front (AUF), and spearheaded many initiatives aiming at eliminating colonially-imposed tyranny, military dictatorship, cultural alienation, socio-behavioural disintegration, historical denigration, and identity confusion from Africa. Struggling in the first line of the front against fallacious, colonialist historiography, neo-colonialist involvement, policies and practices, Chairman Yahaya Ndu defends the cause of reparations for Africa. His interview bears witness to new theoretical and intellectual trends that emerge in Nigeria, to prevail throughout Africa and thus herald a great future for the entire Black Continent. In this part of his interview, Chairman Yahaya Ndu makes a striking contrast between today’s undeserved socioeconomic situation and prevailing political conditions, and his vision for an African Super-state; he thus demonstrates that he fully combines the proximity of a popular leader and the upstage of a farseeing statesman.
Today, I publish the third part of the interview, and in two forthcoming articles, I will complete the series.
9. Tyranny, unrepresentative regimes imposed on subjugated nations, starvation, widespread lethal diseases, lack of medical infrastructure, minimal access to 12-year education, intellectual drainage, dependence on the west European colonial power, technological divide, a great number of impoverished populations, and tribal wars; although the aforementioned scourges are almost omnipresent in Africa, why do you focus so much on the cultural Renaissance of Africa.?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? Like I said previously, most of the problems confronting Africans are traceable to inappropriate governance systems. The Western World led by the United States has been forcing electocracy down the throat of Africans, claiming that it is “democracy”, while in fact the United State does not experience and has never experienced true democracy.
If there is one thing that Africa has an abundance of; that thing is natural resources. The problems of Africa are manmade, and when we reintroduce genuinely African cultural concepts and methods like the mass participatory system of governance that assures the greatest assemblage and synergizing of intellectual capital, we come to notice that 90% of Africa’s problems disappear, and the continent lives in peace and prosperity.
Serious troubles for Africa, like starvation, do not have any natural place in Africa as proper governance alone is able to fully demonstrate that Africa is poised to be the world’s food basket.
10. What role does religion play today in the Nigerian Society and politics?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? Religion to be honest in today’s Nigeria has failed to live up to its promise in every facet of society. Religiosity has in no way translated to Godliness, sense of Justice, Equity or Fairness. Take for instance the National Assembly of the country where an average member who is either a Christian or a Muslim earns 15 million Naira per month, when the government admits publicly that it has difficulty to pay minimum wages of 18,000 Naira to the workers.
The main function of religion in modern Nigeria, as far as I can see, is political mobilization.
Because of the imposition of Christianity, Islam and other foreign religions on indigenous Africans, they have mostly abandoned their ancestral ways, their folk-lore, their philosophies, their healing traditions and so on and so forth.
11. What are Nigeria’s most grave economic problems today?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? Let me start by saying that in my view, all the grave economic problems in Nigeria are self-imposed. It is as if Nigeria is a nation perpetually at war with the truth – in all ramifications. Nigeria is a nation that the almighty God blessed with all imaginable resources, yet the leaders (nay, rulers) insist on running the country poorly and inanely.
To start with, in the first republic, when the country was run as a federation, there was prosperity in the land, and there was full employment. There was security of life and property. But today, everything has turned upside down, and the average Nigerian university graduate is faced with serious unemployment.
In today’s Nigeria, the major economic problems are the unemployment, the neo-colonial exchange rate, the lack of industrialization, the lack of national planning, the lack of power and infrastructure, and the widespread corruption. Among them, the unemployment is the most urgent and the most crucial one; in today’s Nigeria, it is so high that graduates of universities if females take to prostitution and the males take to all sorts of odd jobs to survive.
12. How functional and representative is the existing political system in Nigeria?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? The existing political system in Nigeria is most unrepresentative. Elections have generally been bad and below standards due mainly to government’s refusal to allow the electorate to have a say in the decision making system. From all indications, the prime motive of the overwhelming majority of people in authority in Nigeria is to amass wealth. The executive is in competition with the legislators as to who would loot more. A report currently making waves in the nation, issued by the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, states that 25% of the nation’s revenue is consumed by the National Assembly.
There is no structure or legislation to enforce the legislative arm of government to enter into consultation with the electorate. In fact, all the members of the National Assembly reside in Abuja, the nation’s capital, and they make no attempts whatsoever to consult with people in their constituencies during their tenure, and in accordance with their functions.
As regards their functionality, it is nil. Citizens have to make their own arrangements for almost everything in Nigeria. A man who wants to build a house for instance must plan to dig his own well or sink a borehole or make other private arrangement for water; neighborhoods make their own arrangements for security, and people have to provide their generators for power.
13. What are Nigeria’s major political forces, and what solutions are they able to administer to the country’s most crucial issues?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? In Nigeria, political processes hinge upon one or more among the following, exclusive factors: the military and the People’s Democratic Party, the ethnic groups, the other political parties, the traditional rulers, and the
religious leaders.
14. What new are your program’s basic axes of economic policy?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? A Black African super-state! What is happening today in Haiti has demonstrated that the Black People are too weak in our world, and even incapable of coming to the help of their kid and kin. It is therefore imperative that a Black African super-state be established to offer an exit from the present situation.
Furthermore, it is necessary to bear in mind that the Renascent African state and continent cannot create a new social order without an economic foundation. No longer must wealth be concentrated in the hands of the few. No longer must the profit motive guide and control the aims in life of the African. No longer must the wage earners be told a dignity that does not seem to exist in labor.
15. In your party’s manifesto, you declare your intention to offer Nigeria’s legal system a Human face. What are the existing problems and the measures you will adopt if elected?
Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? Thank you very much for this question. Indeed, the legal system as presently operated in Nigeria is not only inhuman, but is also decidedly wicked, partial, criminal, and utterly reprehensible.
The Law in Nigeria today is used by the government and its functionaries to oppress the poor and the political opposition, and to protect the rich and their cohorts.
Take the case of Major Hamza Mustapha, the Chief Security Officer of the late General Sani Abacha, former Head of State. Major Hamza Mustapha has been in detention now for 12 years under the pretext of trial for attempted murder. Now, if this does not fly in the face of Justice anywhere in the world, I do not know what would. This is certainly inhuman, barbaric and callous.
A banker has been found guilty of misappropriating 191 billion Naira in a Law Court in Nigeria, and was subsequently jailed for six months, whereas many petty thefts of a few thousands of Naira attract as punishment seven years imprisonment in some cases.
A police officer in Abia State invited a woman to the police station where he drugged and raped her to death, and there is no evidence to suggest that he has even been prosecuted for that.
In August 2009, I, Chief Winston, and Messrs. Agbo and Danjuma Mohammed instituted a case in the Abuja High Court to get the National Assembly of Nigeria to make public how much money the legislators were collecting from the public coffers, but more than one year after instituting this matter, there is yet no head way in it. This is the Nigerian legal system for you.
Ghana’s first President and Pan Africanist Kwame Nkrumah: Africa’s artificial borders, in Nkrumah’s vision, stood in the way of continental unity. The arbitrary carving up of the continent at a meeting in Berlin, in which European colonial powers established borders within it, dividing African peoples into entities bearing hyphenated identities — British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, Ethiopian-held Somaliland, Kenyan Somaliland and French Somaliland — and creating never-ending conflicts. Had Europe not interfered with the history of Africa and had Africa pursued its natural course, then, probably, Africa would have developed in the same way as other continents.
Some 38 years after his death, Ghanaians have finally decided to honour the memory of their first President, Kwame Nkrumah with a national holiday on September 21 this year, which incidentally would have marked the 100th anniversary of his birthday. The day has been declared a public holiday and aptly named Founder’s Day.
A larger than life figure, Nkrumah is credited with leading Ghana to independence from the British and championing a United States of Africa besides being a founder president of the Organisation of African Unity, now African Union.
The Africa Nkrumah envisaged is far from being a reality as the experience of writer Nuruddin Farah shows.
Below we run, in his own words, an account of his frustration with Africa’s artificial borders which, in Nkrumah’s vision, stood in the way of continental unity. Nuruddin Farah writes:
“In 2007, I telephoned the Consulate of Botswana in Cape Town on a Wednesday to inquire about a weekend visa to Gaborone as I meant to attend the wedding of a close friend’s daughter there. In reply to his question about my status and place of residence, I said that I was a permanent resident of South Africa and that I held three African passports and named these and the governments, which issued them.
He asked why I had not applied for a visa earlier, and I responded that I had just got back from a book promotion tour that had taken me to the USA, Canada, and Europe. He said I would have to wait for four to six weeks to get a visa issued on any of the three passports I held.
I was tempted to stress my disappointment by asking why his consulate was giving me a hard time about a weekend visa, while the British, the French, the US, the Swiss and Canadian embassies would not hesitate to issue me with five-to-ten-year duration visas within a few hours and while I waited. However, I thought better of it, maybe because I doubted he was the kind of reader that might enjoy my writings.
I got in touch with my friend whose daughter was getting married and a professor friend of mine who was expecting me to give a lecture at the University of Botswana to let them know that I was cancelling my trip. The professor suggested that his department apply on my behalf and recruit someone higher up in the government to intervene. That way, the consulate would issue the visa and I would attend the wedding and later in the week speak to the students and staff of the English Department. I said that the idea of going that route did not appeal to my sense of self-honour, and insisted that I would cancel my visit.
Six months or so later, I was a guest of the Federal President of Germany together with several African Heads of State among them the President of Botswana. On the second day, during coffee break, the President of Botswana asked if I had ever been to his country, given that I lived so close to it, in South Africa.
I replied that I had not; he wondered why not. I related to him what happened when I applied for a visa several months earlier whereupon he called his assistant, a lady, whom he instructed to take down my details and to make sure that I received a visa and a letter of invitation. He wanted me to promise that I would call on him once I got to Gaborone.
I declined to offer my details to the assistant. After all, my intentions were lofty, not personal, and I wanted him to see the absurdity of his government’s visa policies and to consider changing them, as it affected other Africans. In effect, I was pointing to him the set of circumstances that had led to my needing his facilitation, when Europeans, Americans, and many other nationalities from outside Africa could enter Botswana without requiring visas.
Given the opportunity, I might have referred to the to the arbitrary carving up of the continent at a meeting in Berlin, in which European colonial powers established borders within it, dividing our peoples into entities bearing hyphenated identities — British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, Ethiopian-held Somaliland, Kenyan Somaliland and French Somaliland — and creating never-ending conflicts.
Perhaps implicit in my refusal to accept the President’s offer was this unspoken assertion: that the borders in Africa are stakes driven through our peoples’ hearts. In the Horn of Africa alone, border disputes have caused so much havoc, accounting for several all-out wars as well as the continued war of attrition between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
When I think back on my encounters over the years with sundry consular and immigration officials from various African countries, I cannot help wondering what might have become of Africa if Europeans had not imposed on our continent the maps we have today.
It follows, too, that Africa would occupy a more honourable place in the world if millions of our able-bodied men and women had not been removed to other continents as slaves, and if the savageries of Euro-greed in the insatiable shape of, to give an infamous example, King Leopold of Belgium had not been visited on the Congo. It has always been my contention that had Europe not interfered with our history and had we pursued its natural course, then we too would have developed in the same way as other continents.
Colonial subjugation and the mapping of the continent did contribute to the deceleration of our organic development as people. The mapping of Africa at the turn of the nineteenth century tethers us to a history littered with impediments.
The borders are but one of the numerous obstacle courses standing in the way of our economic and social well-being.
Indeed, the ephemeral nature of borders inspires me with guarded cynicism; their impermanence animates a caginess of the kind that produces optimism within me.
Those of us who have known the two sides of Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, for instance, will remember two of the most absurd borders between the two German entities – the one, a line of yellow buoys the height of a human above the water to mark the border in the sea between the then GDR and West Germany. The other was a road bridge at Domitz, built halfway across the River Elbe and, because uncompleted, left suspended in midair. With the fall of The Wall and the reunification of the two Germanys, the borders no longer existing point to their status of impermanence.
Sadly, this is not so in Africa. Because in 1963, our continent’s Heads of State endorsed the borders bequeathed to us by the colonial powers at the inaugural meeting of the Organization of African Unity, one felt profound sorrow at the decision, wrongfully catapulting us into everlasting political and economical disaffection, something the recent formations of regional groupings, dividing the continent into four main trading blocs, will not be able to eradicate as long we continue to endorse the border regime established in 1884 at the Berlin summit.
Borders are an anathema, which we must discard if we wish our continent to develop culturally, scientifically and economically as a single unit — and organically at that.”
About The Author: Africa Insight is an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network Project. Additional reporting by Francis Kokutse in Accra.
Some 38 years after his death, Ghanaians have finally decided to honour the memory of their first President, Kwame Nkrumah with a national holiday on September 21 this year, which incidentally would have marked the 100th anniversary of his birthday. The day has been declared a public holiday and aptly named Founder’s Day. 
