African needs political union but Free Trade Area

            The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) that 44 African countries signed recently in Kigali is welcome. It was termed as being historical. Is it really? Is it supposed to be Africa’s first priority? Arguably, Africa needs to batten down the hatchets and pragmatically take on them instead of gerrymandering or beating around the bush. Despite its good intentions, this moneymaking union won’t reach anywhere or significantly solve Africa’s endemic problems shall Africa remain divided politically. Africa needs a single political entity that can adeptly manage its humongous and wide resources that have never helped it.

The division of Africa is a colonial strategy ex-colonisers envisage to keep exploiting Africa effortlessly and perpetually. Maintaining it is not only a colonial legacy but black colonialism itself. Our people would like to have a single united country of Africa like Canada or the US even tomorrow. To the contrary, African rulers don’t want to hear such a thing. Their demigod presidency, easy and free eating are more important than the future of Africa. If this is a lie, I challenge them to tell Africa why are they able to unite commercially but not politically while political division is the root cause of Africa’s miseries?

To put this into perspective, let’s look at how Africa was divided and partitioned in 1884-85 at the infamous Berlin Conference that endorsed full invasion and thereby colonisation of Africa. Essentially, the Berlin Conference created current objectionable and puny African countries. Practically, such countries are artificial if not colonial creatures which is an exception to the general rule in that almost other the countries in the world were created by the history, needs and will of their citizens.

John Campbell, a senior fellow and Africa expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York concurs noting that African national boundaries are seen as artificial and a colonial imposition. Yes, all nationalities African boast of are the creatures of colonialism. They are but bastardised version of the concept. Africans are Cameroonians, Kenyans, Tanzanians, Ugandans and whatnot not just because they decided to call themselves as thus.  Ironically, many such artificial and fake nations have gone to wars with each other fighting over such colonial and toxic sovereignty.

When Germany, the host of this criminal conference was divided, it became feeble economically as well as politically. Therefore, it saw to it that it was reunited so as to become an economic power house of Europe. Apart from Germany, Europe is now coming closer to the total unification. Other affected countries are the North and South Korea which are now coming closer for the purpose of reunion. Despite being feeble, Yemen once suffered the same scrape. It is only Africa that’s become so blind that it failed to see the dangers its division and partition have caused since colonial times. A fool is the one bitten twice in the same hole. Why has Africa allowed itself to be bitten twice in the same hole? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Can now Africa blame its former white colonisers while it is in bed with black and homegrown ones? Aren’t our rulers the willing agents of colonialism simply because they are geared by their greed and myopia? If commercial unification of Africa is a deal, why is it not political one? Who is fooling whom here?

It is sad to note that our rulers are encouraging us to think as Tanzanians, Ugandans, Kenyans, Cameroonians, South Africans and whatnot so that they can keep their foible presidencies while we actually lose a lot. They verbally say they’re for the reunification while their actions say they are for division and the status quo as enacted by colonial monsters. They preach water and drink wine. To add salt to injury, the same rulers are ruining our countries by blessing and embracing corruption and other vices. Although it may seem as being too bellicose to say that our rulers are acting like colonial monsters to us simply because they’re using our borders to foster their private interests, if our people need to be reunited, why should our rulers refuse them to do so by clinging unto power which belongs to the people?

Seriously speaking, if indeed our rulers have any futuristic and good intention to Africa, they must reunite Africa as soon as possible so as to have a single country as it Africa was before 1884. The AfCFTA and the like are wasting our time as our potentates buy more time to keep on dividing us for their personal and myopic interests. All those clinging to power through such half-backed shenanigans are but mere johns if not stage-door Johnnies and agents of colonialism that have betrayed Africa.

Source: Citizen, Saturday, March 31, 2018.