United States of Africa remains a dream GETTING African states out of the regional shells into one continental body remains a dream as the African Union (AU) treaty does not make provision for the United States of Africa leadership, Phanuel Kaapama, a political expert at the University of Namibia said in an interview with Xinhua. The United States of Africa is a proposed concept for a federation of over 50 sovereign states of Africa proposed by former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. “For it to come into existence, there should be a treaty and the constitution should be amended. And it would say what should be done with the one that currently exists,” said Kaapama. According to Kaapama, although the idea of establishing the United States of Africa was there in the very beginning, in reality it can only go as far an African Union. For now, the political expert said that for the current African leaders, unity has a symbolic meaning rather than a substantive meaning. “That’s why, even after the idea of the United States of Africa was put on the table by Gaddafi, other African leaders commended the idea but a lot of African leaders at the time were not prepared to trade their leadership positions and the sovereign autonomy of their countries in the exchange for regional African unity,” he said. Kaapama also said that before Africa and its people can think of broader Africa continental unity, “we should be able to convince ourselves that even within those small entities called individual states; we are struggling to maintain unity.” Hence, the Africans should first resolve ethnic and internal conflicts. “When we talk about the African Union, we have seen the partitioning of different parts of Africa. We had one Sudan, now we have Sudan and South Sudan. That’s not moving in the direction of unity but more in the direction fragmentation. The struggle between Morocco and Western Sahara is continuing,” said Kaapama. “In most other African countries you don’t see violent conflicts but the ethnic tensions are visible. While in Namibia for example, there are people who wanted to dismember Caprivi. We are also engaging in simple exercises such as delimitation commissions; trying to draw up regional borders within our own country. At the end of the day, what the analysts and many people are telling us is that in the end, it becomes a tribal or ethnic question,” he said. While it is a long road ahead for Africa to become a single state, Kaapama said there may be hope left as the African Union has made significant progress since its establishment. According to Kaapama, the AU has been able to make significant progress towards the assistance of various countries that were colonised at the time it was established, to gain their independence. “If you look at the very first Organization of African Unity [OAU] conference, there were less than 20 states. After the AU was established to replace the OAU, there were more than 50 member states,” he said. In the meantime, he said that a shift in generational leadership is needed to turn Africa into one continental shell, with the youth the major role and influential players. However, according to the political expert, the youth is currently not represented in the direct decision-making body of the AU, because the AU is being met by the summit of head of states and government. “If you look among those who go to the summit, there is barely any youth. So the influence of the youth will not be inside the boardrooms and conference hall where the decisions are made. Their role at this juncture is rather informal,” said Kaapama. “It could take place outside, by debating the discourse through their respective youth organizations and writing, especially the youth in the academia and media,” he said. – Nampa-Xinhua - See more at: namibian.na/indexx.php?id=2489&page_type=story_detail&category_id=1#sthash.aECjQaxg.dpuf
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 09:37:47 +0000
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