SANF 15 no 26 – by Phyllis Johnson
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere spoke of lighting a candle on top of Mt Kilimanjaro “which would shine beyond our borders giving hope where there was despair, love where there was hate and dignity where before there was only humiliation.”
He said this before the independence of his own country in 1961. This was his commitment that independent Tanganyika would fully support the liberation of African countries from colonialism and apartheid, and he did that.
He believed that, without the freedom of the continent, his own country would never be free. It is said that he “carried the torch that liberated Africa”.
He started with the unity of his own country, bringing together Tanganyika with Zanzibar into the United Republic of Tanzania.
Mwalimu (which means “teacher” in Swahili) stood tall in southern Africa for his firm principles of development, self-reliance and unity of the African continent.
He was one of the founding fathers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) that achieved its mission of political liberation and was transformed into the African Union to pursue economic development.
When he spoke at the closure of the Liberation Committee in 1994, the continent listened.
“The Founding Fathers of the Organization of African Unity set themselves two objectives,” he said, “the total liberation of Africa from colonialism and racial minority rule, on the one hand, and Africa’s Unity, on the other.
“The importance which they attached to the first objective can be judged from the fact that the establishment of the Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity was decided on at the inaugural meeting of the OAU, held in Addis Ababa in May, 1963.
“The Committee’s task was to help the African liberation movements to achieve that first objective. By the act of winding up this committee we are, in practical terms, celebrating the achievement of that objective.
“For when South Africa was admitted to the OAU membership and later, and appropriately, one of our generation of freedom fighters, President Nelson Mandela, took his seat at the Tunis summit in June, 1994, to represent a non-racial, post-apartheid democratic South Africa, the first objective of the Founding Fathers had been achieved.
“Our continent had been totally liberated from colonialism and racial minority rule….
“No one will ever be able to measure the extent to which the work of this committee contributed to the total liberation of Africa,” Nyerere said.
“But measurement does not matter. What has been important is that this committee served the liberation movements and was always there to serve when called upon to do so.
“It gave essential backing to the African peoples’ struggles against colonialism, against the ‘rider-and-his-horse’ type of racial rule, and against apartheid.
“In military terms, this committee constituted a rear base supporting the frontline fighters. And both directly and through reports to the OAU, the committee was able to rally and channel vitally important support of different kinds from other parts of the world, that is, from non-African opponents of colonialism and racism, of whom there have been very many.
“The members and staff of this committee, working together and with the rest of OAU, have played a part they can be proud of in the total African struggle for human dignity, equality and national independence.
“Although I can speak only on my own behalf, I think I am expressing the views of many when I say: Thank you all!
“I think I am expressing the feelings of all Tanzanians by thanking the Organization of African Unity for the honour it granted to Tanzania by its decision to base the Liberation Committee in Dar es Salaam; and for the singular privilege given to our country to nominate one of its citizens for appointment by the OAU as Executive Secretary of its Liberation Committee.
“Brigadier Hashim Mbita has been the last Executive Secretary and we are very proud of his contribution to the liberation of our continent.
“Not every African nation took an active part in the Liberation Committee. That was to be expected. For this was only a committee of the OAU, even though operating under the mandate and with the support of the all-African body. But we always had a vanguard of African countries which were highly committed to the total liberation of our continent from colonialism and racial minority rule.
“That commitment was based on two convictions: first, that while any part of Africa remained under colonial or racial rule, the freedom of each independent country was incomplete; and secondly, that the humanity and human dignity of every citizen of this continent was disputed and insulted by the existence of colonialism or control by racism elsewhere in Africa.
“It is that commitment and that conviction which has made it possible for us to come together to celebrate the achievement of that objective by winding up the Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity.
“And it is because that first objective has been achieved that I want to use this opportunity to urge Your Excellencies now to give the necessary attention to the second objective of the Founding Fathers.
“The importance of the second objective is obvious from the name of our continental organization. It is the Organization of African Unity.
“Unity is our objective, our purpose, and our instrument of serving Africa effectively. Yet we have not organized ourselves for unity.
“All member states of the OAU – even if just by the fact of membership – recognize that unity is strength. They also that only by constant movement towards unity will our continent be moving towards a position where ultimately Africa will be able to become an equal and effective participant in the world economic, political, and social community.
“The two tasks which the OAU set for itself were inextricably linked. Our ultimate purpose was always the unity of all African nations. The achievement of that purpose clearly required that the whole of Africa be freed first.
“It is through unity in action that Africa is now in a position to celebrate the end of apartheid — which was itself the last bastion of non-African colonial and racist oppression on the continent.
“When African’s unanimity on the liberation struggle seemed to falter, we delayed its achievement. When we spoke with one voice, and acted as one Africa, the liberation of our continent moved forward.
“And when unity among the freedom fighters temporarily failed in one place or another, the struggle for Africa’s total liberation received a setback; it was always one of the tasks of the Liberation Committee to help the Frontline Liberation Parties and armies to work in unity.
“Looking back, one can see a number of reasons why the OAU did not set up a unity committee at the same time as it established the Liberation Committee.
“Perhaps most important of all was a fear jeopardizing the fragile unity which the very fact of forming the OAU represented!
“For the establishment of the OAU itself constituted a joining together in one organization of the members of two erstwhile African organizations – the so-called Monrovia and Casablanca Groups – each of which had tended to be rather suspicious and wary of the purposes and intentions of the other. …
“Yet we cannot deny that there are other threats; we cannot pretend that we are working deliberately to strengthen the organization’s unity. On the contrary, we are careless about the unity of the OAU.
“There have even been questions about its usefulness now that Africa is liberated from foreign or racist rule. Certainly, very few (if any) of our countries give questions of African unity, or the future of the OAU itself, priority in the foreign or trade policy strategies.
“Many of us do not even give any priority to paying our annual subscriptions to the OAU – although that rarely stops us from complaining about all the things its leaders and its secretariat should do but do not!
“Almost all members of the OAU are poor and weak politically and economically; most are grappling with an unbearable external debt, and many have become hostage to the ideologies of the IMF and the World Bank.
“When we are involved in international negotiations and our representatives in Geneva or New York have worked out a common African or Group of 77 position, we instruct our ambassadors to abandon that position if the ambassador of one of the ‘donor’ countries comes to our government leaders at home to urge that we should do so.
“When we are under pressure from an external source, or in any other political trouble which we cannot solve internally, we do not go the OAU for help; we do not even consult the OAU before applying elsewhere. …
“Time and again, many of our countries act as individual mendicant nations, not each as a part of one Africa. So each one of us, and Africa as a whole, stays a weak and marginalized part of the world. Yet that is not surprising: the OAU has no strategy for unity.
“As far as unity is concerned, the OAU is still more of an aspiration than a fact. We united our liberation, and Africa is now liberated.
“On other issues of common concern, we do not unite. We leave matters to the chance of having a good secretary-general of the OAU and an active chairman who is committed to unity.
“Under those circumstances, the OAU does manage to do considerable good work for Africa – more through diplomacy and the exploitation of Africa’s potential for the future than because of Africa’s current unity.
“We are wasting time, and we are wasting the abilities of our peoples. We are wasting the potential of our united strength. Unity is never easy to achieve, but we must no longer be content with the very low degree we have attained, and with which so much was achieved in support of Africa’s liberation.
“The OAU Founding Fathers set up the Liberation Committee. I am urging that the current generation of our leaders and peoples should begin the movement towards African Unity by setting up a Unity Committee of the Organization of the African Unity.
“The task of that committee would be to plan for unity, to work out the steps needed to move towards unity, and to campaign for unity.
I am of the past. In my generation we did some things and we failed to do others. One of the things we failed to do was deliberately to work for unity: we made mistakes of assuming unity! Knowing its importance, we talked about unity. But then for the most part we determined national and even OAU policies as if the need to act in unity and to build unity was irrelevant.
“I am urging that this generation of African leaders should correct the failures of my generation. Establish a unity committee of the OAU and give it full backing in action. Match the talk for unity with unity. Plan for it and work for it with the same relentless determination as the liberation vanguard worked for the liberation of our continent from alien and racist oppression.
“Setting up a unity committee will not immediately create unity. But it ca be a beginning of the deliberate movement towards unity. Its success will take time and will depend upon its work in reinvigorating the demand for unity and the call for unity: success will depend upon its practical work in campaigning for unity, and planning the steps towards African unity.
“Such a unity committee of the OAU will not start from nothing; we have regional organizations; we have functional organizations. Most of all, we have the foundation to build on – the OAU itself, and its achievements so far. How else can we make Africa really Africa, and not only a collection of sovereign states whose leaders meet every year to pass resolutions, and often to ignore them.
“We need unity. Without unity there is no future for our continent. We know it. Every days’ news demonstrates Africa’s problems, and the manner in which the outside world can ignore Africa or interfere in Africa at its will.
“We need unity for security and stability. We need to make real that total political liberation of Africa which we are now celebrating. We need it to reduce our dependence on external powers. We need unity to be able to take our rightful place in the governance of the world – in order to be listened to, and to be respected, not pitied or disregarded because we are weak and divided.
“We need unity to be able to contribute towards the increased wellbeing of the humanity we are part of. Lack of unity within many African nations and lack of unity among African countries has made Africa the Sick Continent of the World.
“You have a sacred duty to change that situation. Let all of us in our different capacities begin to work, and work together, in a coherent manner, for the unity of Africa, the peace of Africa, and the self-respect of Africa.
“The work will be neither easy nor quickly finished. But it can be done. It must be done. It is your duty to do it. Work, plan, campaign, and act for African Unity.”
Born in Butiama on 13 April 1922, in what was then German East Africa, Mwalimu died on 14 October 1999. He taught us that “Knowledge is Power”. sardc.net
