Indeed, "Africa Is Rising". Address of the Patron of the TMF, Thabo Mbeki, to celebrate the founding fathers of the OAU: Addis Ababa, July 27, 2013. Address of the Patron of the TMF, Thabo Mbeki, to celebrate the founding fathers of the OAU: Addis Ababa, July 27, 2013. Director of Ceremonies, Distinguished Members of the Haile Selassie I Memorial Association, Ladies and gentlemen: First of all I would like to thank the Haile Selassie I Memorial Association for organising this get together during the year of the Golden Jubilee of the OAU, to celebrate the Founding Fathers of the Organisation, including the late Emperor Haile Selassie I and others. Indeed to read the Roll Call of those who were present at the Inaugural Conference of the OAU in this city 50 years ago is to recall the names of eminent Africans who are now Established in the African mind as the founding architects of Project African Unity. I refer here to such eminent African patriots as Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Modibo Keita of Mali, King Hassan II of Morocco, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of Nigeria, Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. I would like to believe that all of us present here today would agree that these Founding Fathers set themselves and our Continent the six (6) tasks: (i) to achieve the total liberation of Africa from imperialism, colonialism, apartheid and white minority domination, and therefore the independence of all our countries and peoples; to work for the unity of Africa, culminating in a United States of Africa; (iii) to use this unity to entrench our right and practice as Africans to determine our right to self-determination, without foreign interference; (iv) to use this unity so to transform all liberated Africa so that all our countries, together, work towards the realisation of the objective to end poverty and underdevelopment on our Continent, and thus achieve the objective of a better life for the masses of the African people; (v) to position Africa as an important player in the ordering of global affairs, as a respected member of the global community of nations; and therefore to achieve the Renaissance of Africa. I believe that gathered here today to celebrate the Founding Fathers of the OAU, we must ask ourselves the questions: - what progress have we made towards the realisation of the strategic objectives which the OAU Founding Fathers set; - do these remain today our Continental strategic objectives, and if not, what are our new tasks; and, - what must we do in this regard! The great Congolese and African patriot, Patrice Lumumba, did not attend the founding Conference of the OAU because he had been murdered ironically by the very same forces, represented by Mobutu Sese Seko, who attended the OAU Founding Conference to register the presence and participation of the important African country of the now Democratic Republic of Congo. Regrettably and wrongly, but for this historical reason, we do not count Patrice Lumumba as one of the participants in terms of the elaboration and implementation of what I have described as Project African Unity. However, Patrice Lumumba attended the historic All Africa 1958 Conference convened in Accra, Ghana by the late Kwame Nkrumah. At this Conference he made an important statement which remains relevant to this day, when he said: “This historical Conference, which puts us in contact with experienced political figures from all the African countries, reveals one thing to us: despite the boundaries that separate us, despite our ethnic differences, we have the same awareness, the same soul plunged day and night in anguish, the same anxious desire to make this African Continent a free and happy Continent that has rid itself of unrest and of fear and of any sort of colonialist domination. Down with colonialism and tribalism.” Emperor Haile Selassie I expressed the same sentiment when he addressed the Summit Meeting of the then so-called Monrovia Group at a meeting in Nigeria in 1962, ahead of the establishment of the OAU. He said: “We are told that Africa has been split into competing groups and that this is inhibiting cooperation among the African states and severely retarding African progress. One hears of the Casablanca group and the Monrovia group, of the Conakry and Dakar declarations, and we are warned that the views and policies of these so-called groups are so antithetical as to make it impossible for them to work together as partners in an enterprise to which all are mutually devoted. But do such hard-and-fast groupings really exist? And if certain nations sharing similar views have taken measures to coordinate their policies, does this mean that, as between these nations and others, there is no possibility of free and mutual cooperation? …Ethiopia considers herself a member of one group only – the African group. When we Africans have been misled into pigeonholing one another, into attributing rigid and inflexible views to states which were present at the conference but to another, then we shall, without reason or justification, have limited our freedom of action and rendered immeasurably more difficult the task of joining our efforts, in harmony and brotherhood, in the common cause of Africa…No wide and unbridgeable gulf exists as between the various groupings which have been created…We urge that this conference use this as its starting point, that we emphasize and lay stress of similarity and agreement rather than upon whatever disagreements and differences may exist among us.” Not many on our Continent know of the considerable and sustained efforts made by Emperor Haile Selassie I, especially acting through his young Foreign Minister, Ato Ketema Yifru, to help ensure that independent Africa acted in unity to address its challenges. It was indeed possible that independent Africa could have made a false start with regard to the pursuit of Project African Unity, by splitting into the two blocs which Emperor Haile Selassie mentioned. However, and very fortunately, as I am certain you know, Emperor Haile Selassie and Minister Ketema Yifru intervened vigorously, and in a sustained manner, successfully to persuade the two blocs to attend the inclusive all-Africa 1963 Summit Meeting which gave birth to the OAU. During the course of the Summit Meeting, Emperor Haile Selassie put his neck on the block, so to speak, when he insisted that the Summit Meeting could not conclude without forming the OAU and adopting what became the Charter of the OAU. Again as you know, in this regard he said: “This Conference cannot close without adopting a single Charter. We cannot leave here without having created single African organisation possessed of the attributes We have described. If We fail in this, we will have shirked our responsibility to Africa and to the people we lead. If we succeed, then, and only then, will we have justified our presence here.” I have no doubt that the Emperor insisted on these outcomes to avoid the eventuality that once the Summit Meeting concluded, independent Africa could once again break into antagonistic blocs. I would therefore like to suggest that one of Africa’s successes we must own as we celebrate the OAU Founding Fathers is the fact that our Continent did not splinter into competing blocs. Thus have we had the possibility to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the OAU, and therefore, belatedly, the First Decade of the successor African Union. With regard to this important success, given the threat of division our Continent faced in 1963, then Administrative Secretary General of the OAU, Salim Ahmed Salim, said at the penultimate substantive Summit Meeting of the OAU in Lusaka in 2001: “As a student of history, I recall that not many had given the Organization of African Unit much of a chance of surviving the turbulence that went with the efforts to consolidate the gains of the post-independence era of African politics. It was a period during which our aspiration for greater unity and cohesion in Africa was repeatedly threatened, in spite of the strong vision of a united Continent that many of the Founding Fathers of the OAU advocated and defended jealously. They refused to be intimidated by the daunting nature of the challenges that confronted them. “Today, I appeal to you, the successor generation of leaders and champions of our new Pan African quest, once again (to) find that innermost African strength to move our continent to a new level of unity, which irrespective of country, race, creed, ethnicity and religion, can galvanize our people for action.” I must confess that I have cited what Salim Ahmed Salim said twelve (12) years ago because it is equally applicable today relating to the AU, which emphasises the imperative for us to continue to honour the tasks bestowed to us by Emperor Haile Selassie and the other OAU Founding Fathers. Earlier I identified what I believe are six (6) strategic tasks these Founding Fathers set for our Continent. There is absolutely no doubt that the OAU honoured the commitment set by the Founding fathers with regard to the first of these tasks – to help ensure the total liberation of our Continent from colonialism and white minority domination. I am happy to say that not surprisingly, Emperor Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia was not found wanting in this regard. I believe that this could not be otherwise given the fact of the inspiration Ethiopia had given to the African liberation movement, drawn from its millennia of independence as a constituted African State, the historic victory against Italian colonialism at Adwa, and the defeat of the later occupation of Ethiopia, from 1935, by fascist Italy. To confirm this, in his autobiography, No Easy Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela wrote:
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 19:51:11 +0000
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