Cross Legs between African Nationalism & Neocolonialism – which way?
The political situation in Africa, – the coups, wars and economic degradation have always been the same though there are slight differences that have to do with traditions, cultures and mainly geographical locations.
The Organization of African Unity (OAU) now known as the African Union (AU), which was founded in 1963 in Addis Ababa the capital of Ethiopia, to act as the voice of the African people on major issues pertaining to the continent, seems to have been compromised as the anti-colonial nature of the OAU founders is not being upheld today by the AU. The organization, to succeed in achieving its goals needs to muster a renewed vigor and willingness to find a solution to the continent’s problems.
Why are Africans so naive to be able to realize the values of their national background, i.e. knowing where they came from and where they are heading for? Military men around Africa, who want the taste of political-power, assume the zenith of the political ladder by coups. Failing to realize that they are incapable and lacking the expertise to govern and in assuming leadership, usually by means of force that ultimately galvanized into destruction of highly needed infrastructures, artifacts that leads to the death of numerous compatriots.
The Malian rebels who overran part of the country in a bid to assume power, irrationally destroyed Timbuktu that hosts a lot of African historic lyric/ script and artifacts relating to early African education/ civilization, dated back for over a hundred years.
What many pundits are contemplating about African coup leaders, especially the military are that they undertake coups organized by political mafia groups or neocolonial exploiters in the diaspora with plans to siphon valuables of all sorts in exchange for guns and ammunition as in the case of Mali, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Sudan, Libya, Liberia, Abidjan to mention a few. The fight against colonialism continues but this time it is a different one, which has to do with manipulating the mentality of African people.
What do Africans benefit? Africans benefit nothing good instead, what they get is mayhem, deaths, political instability, refugee status, starvation, ethnic cleansing, retrogression, arms proliferations that enhance robbery and selective murders, IMF debts with lots more that keeps Africa in a state of permanent limbo as a result of a non-nationalistic approach to the nations and continent as a whole.
African must now realize that the blame game is over and they themselves must take the responsibility for the status-quo the continent has been and is still facing. A united Africa, an initiative hatch decades back by well-meaning Africans like the late Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmad ShekuTuray of Guinea, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania etc. is a fairytale today, lacking the gumption for real and stringent implementations of what the founders stood for due to the AU’s struggles against neo-colonialism and the continent’s increasingly difficult economic situation.
The African Union’s (AU) state of paralysis is evident with recent happenings in Libya resulting to the Murder and ousting of Col. Mohamed Gadhafi, when the AU took a position denouncing any foreign intervention by means of force inside Libya’s territory, the United Nations- especially France and the United States of America rudely ignore the African Union’s position. How united is the United Nations? Look at the conditions of the Libyan people today and you will certainly arrive at surprised findings.
The African Union (AU) is the strongest voice there is for African in the world and with much to offer its people must adhere to the initiatives of its noble founders to be able to wake up from its slumber because an AU victory is a universally acclaimed victory.
By E. Awotelli-Cole
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