Charity begins at home, and Africans need to take the first bold steps to deal with problems affecting them instead of depending on the west. Former South African President, Thabo Mbeki’s message was met with a resounding applause at the 6th edition of Africities in Dakar, Senegal.
Whilst it is no secret that conflicts are a bane of African development, the responsibility of conflict resolution should be left to Africans. Mkebi appears relentless when it comes to the Western interventions on the African continent.
“The Ivorian and Libyan crises confirmed a dangerous tendency with western countries who believe that they can intervene in every conflict on the continent,” Mbeki thundered with a clenched fist.
According to him, this behavior reveals an “illegal relationship between Africa and its former colonial masters!”, and Africa had become too dependent on the West”.
But what are the solutions that would allow Africans to better manage the string of conflicts plaguing the continent?
Thabo Mbeki, suggests that encouraging unity between African states is key, and that the African Union (AU) needs to provide the needed support. “We must stand united to protect our interests” he says.
His words come as the organization continues to suffer from its inability to reach a unanimous decision in its handling of the Libyan conflict.
Nonetheless, Mbeki argues that the competence of the AU must be strengthened. “Our country must pass on part of their sovereignty to the African Union to ensure peace and security”.
*Source The African Economist
“Our country must pass on part of their sovereignty to the African Union to ensure peace and security”.
This I agree with in part. However the African Union, which is not even a real Confederation is ill equiped to manage any parcel of sovereignty the African States will hand over to its body. As has been said by Nkrumah, Diop and Kodjo only a FEDERAL UNION can provide Africans with a State with a Positive Sovereignty and a real mean to address their security, economic and diplomatic problems. President Mbeck, Gracialla Machel and Alpha Oumar Konare should take it upon themselves to head an African Federalist Movment which can lead to the bith of the United African States.
The relationship between Africa and her ex-colonial masters is more than illegal. It is quite disheartening that more than fifty years after our cosmetic independence from them, our leaders can still afford to be running behind them.
No wonder then that those leaders who feel that they have a right to give their people the best are simply tagged as dictators, chastised and pelted with pebbles. That is why the likes of Robert Mugabe, Pascal Lissouba (former president of the Congo), Yayah Jammeh of the Ganbia and Paul Kagame are seen as a pain in the ass of these colonialists because of their steadfast stance against such nonsense.
I visited Kigali and the level of organisation, cleanliness and warmth is beyond all imagination. From the Kigali international airport, it took me less than five minutes to go through all formalities and be issued a visa by young, smart but very professional and smiling police officers.
What stroke me most was the fact that I could use my credit card from the airport and hotels to settle bills. Do you read me? And to think that, this is a country with a very painful recent past (the 1994 genocide). Streets are paved and impeccably clean, and I mean clean!
It is to be noted that so far, they have the most organise bike sector I have seen with all bikers and riders putting on helmets making it very colourful. Roads are well tarred and I drove from Kigali to Butare, a distance of about 150km without a single pothole, a very strange phenomenon to me when it come to Africa.
Also, Rwanda has a very young workforce with about 55% of the workforce entirely made up of youths of between the ages of 27-36years. In fact, ask me a very organise state in Africa in so many aspects and I will show you Rwanda. What is more, the government identifies an area of need and simply selects people and train them to occupy these positions. Any surprise that Kagame is referred to as a dictator for saying no to France and her machinations?
African leaders must learn to pull the colonial rugs from their feet and stand up right to be counted. It takes just the will to turn things around and I am sure with what I see, there is hope at the end of the tunnel and not long from now, we will get there.