‘CONFUSION ON AFRICA’S FLAGS BLOOM’
Pan Africanism may be good for the youths, argues Okello Oculi
It must be bitter times for Mahmat, the Chair of the African Union Commission. His home country Chad is wrestling with hosting a big share of refugees that trudge painfully across Sudan’s border. They flee blood-letting by military generals who jointly shed blood of Sudanese civilians who pounded streets of the country’s towns in demanding the right to build democratic and prosperous governance for themselves and their history.
Governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates alledgesly encouraged the two generals to carry out a military coup to prevent the seed of Sudan’s struggle for democracy infecting their own populations. Russia, Egypt and the United States also inject their national interests into Sudan’s convulsing body politic.
Sudan rented troops to fight for Saudi Arabia in Yemen. General Nimeiry bled peoples of South Sudan for over two decades. El- Mahdi gave General Omar Bashir the excuse to discredit a legacy of family dynasties monopoly of politics in a multi-national country.
A common denominator in these regimes was a ritual of slaughtering peoples in Southern Sudan and Darfur. It is a legacy of slaughter with impunity within which the current warring generals had their visions nurtured.
It is little wonder that these wielders of guns and armaments they do not manufacture seem vaccinated against women screaming during mass rapes by the their troops; bodies they have torn with bullets are heaped into mass graves; 17 million frightened and malnourished people trudging to find security and sleep across the country’s borders, and buildings for health and educational services are crushed by bombs, canons and bullets.
Even the spectre of Gaddafi’s Libya, lying prostrate and in ruins, appears to them like a work of art to be outmatched.
Chairman Mahatma and his team of Commissioners appear helpless as presidents of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Egypt, Eritrea compete with foreign diplomats to shout into booms of guns, bombs and scream of children tortured by hunger and panic in faces of their mothers. Africa’s civil society activists have offered little hope.
Mahamat has rebuked civilian who have celebrated military coups in Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger which toppled corrupt kidnapers of democratic mandates; tossing into History’s dust leaders who schemed in darkness of their hearts to ignore the welfare of their people.
The loud silence of other African leaders broadcast despair in desecrated hearts across their Sahel until angry young soldiers struck to yield a political renaissance.
Mahamat cried out to leaders at a meeting in Nairobi that the spirit of pan-Africanism is on the decline. He measures it with Member States of the African Union not paying their dues to his office. He offered a mathematic of 93 per cent of resolutions decided by leaders not being implemented. He did not mention leaders committing ‘power suicide’ by bowing down to be pushed out of power by other leaders under rules of the African Union’s ‘’PEER REVIEW MECHANISM’’.
It was reported that Kenya’s Police used live bullets against demonstrating youths and had, by 20th of July, 2024, killed 51 of them. In traditional African communal ethics, neighbours would rush out to stop the infanticide. It is not clear whose ethical code is guiding Chairman Mahamat and his team. African Union Commission’s silence poisons the growth among Africa’s youths of civic pan-Africanism as a powerful political consciousness.
The angry youth on Kenya’s streets were fuelled by lack of jobs. A video on U-Tube lists a pandemic of corrupt activities by the country’s politicians and civil servants, including; Governors of Counties pinching budgets of buy flats in Nairobi and renting them out; Members of Parliament owning vast farms, private aircraft and luxury cars. Walter Rodney had included perfumes; and would have included women’s wigs imported from India and Brazil on a list.
In the face of inflation; families not affording food, long years of choosing luxury consumption instead of investing in the production of agricultural and industrial goods, it is little wonder that Kenya’s youth resorted to violence as a tool for communication.
Mahatma may fear giving directives to governments; and lacks power to punish failures. He could borrow from Dr. Diallo Telli (the first elected Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity), addressed university students on campuses.. In 1988, Ide Oumarou promised coming to witness simulations of OAU sessions (‘’MOCK OAU SUMMIT’’) by students of Ahmadu University. In 2013, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was thrilled to support Simulations of African Union Assembly by members of PAN-AFRICA CLUB at Anglican Girls Grammar School, in Abuja. Dr. Amina Salihu, at MacArthur Foundation, has published a tribute to ‘’MOCK OAU SUMMITS’’.
Taking Pan-Africanism to today’s youth will save it from wilting under the intellectual and political laziness of African governments that fear their own youths.
Prof Oculi writes from Abuja
