Africa’s evolving pan-African politics

That John Garang, the founder and leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, SPLM, endorsed that sentiment even as over 3 million Southern Sudanese had died in a civil war against the ruling classes of Northern Sudan, may have caused his death in a plane crash.Garang shared a thread in Kwame Nkrumah’s notion of the […]

That John Garang, the founder and leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, SPLM, endorsed that sentiment even as over 3 million Southern Sudanese had died in a civil war against the ruling classes of Northern Sudan, may have caused his death in a plane crash.
Garang shared a thread in Kwame Nkrumah’s notion of the indivisible unity of Africa as expressed in the dictum that the independence of Africa was not complete until no section of it remains under colonial, neo-colonial or racial domination. That dictum provoked panic in racist Southern Africa, North America and among colonizers in Europe. They quickly moved to direct the majority of African leaders to declare in the Charter of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) that they “pledge themselves to respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence”. This was supported by a pledge of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.
With Somali communi-ties scattered in north-eastern Kenya, the Ogaden part of Ethiopia, and Djibouti’s border, Somalia opposed the Cairo principle of the sacred status of colonial bor-ders. In collaboration with colonial Spain, Morocco secretly planned to annex Western Sahara and joined Somalia in her political profanity. That crack hin-ted at another principle, namely: ‘brotherhood self-determi-nation’ which allowed for undermining the territorial sovereignty of another state to promote the self determination of kith-and-kin. While Morocco’s king wished imperial parentage over Western Sahara, Somali leaders wished a nation-state based on ethnic brotherhood. Nkrumah and the “Casab-lanca Group” –led by Nkru-mah and Gamal Nasser – led the establishment of the OAU Liberation Committee whose mission was to sup-port the ‘brotherhood’ decolonisation of Africa. It was based in Tanzania on the frontline of European-settlers domination across southern Africa. The ultimate moral justification for this mission was achieving the sovereignty of Africanness as a continental nation without challenging Arab displacements of indigenous population across North Africa. Chinwezu continues to argue for a pan-Africanism which challenge this ‘betrayal’.
John Garang received military support from Muse-veni’s Uganda across Sudan’s southern border.  The border is also crossed by the vital waters of River Nile on its long journey to yielding electric power and irrigation agriculture to Sudan and Egypt. Nature’s positive cross-border ‘interference’ was tolerable and may be emulated to export freedom. Sudan’s failure to build a multi=ethnic and multi-religious nation had sent floods of refugees and guns into Uganda. Similar conflict between Tutsi and Hutu groups had occurred across Rwanda’s border with Uganda. The OAU Liberation Committee was supporting liberation wars against undemocratic colonial and racist governments in Mozambique, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. Perhaps in Sudan and Rwanda the principle of brotherhood self-determination also justified the “right to humanitarian intervention” under condi-tions of decimation of seg-ments of their population. The United Nations would, in 2005, borrow a diplomatic principle invented by the OAU’s Liberation Com-mittee.
Museveni and Mwai Kibaki would later use America’s military weapons and diplomatic umbrella to fight Al Shabaab in Somalia. Bashir hits back by giving arms to the Lord Resistance Movement in Central Afri-can Republic. Uganda’s sup-port for Rwanda Patriotic Front resulted in “regime change” in Rwanda in 1994; its support for John Garang led to ‘state decapitation’ by the break-up of Sudan following the independence of the new state of the Republic of South Sudan. A principle of pan-African liberation which chased white racist incumbency out of power had been applied in Rwanda within boundaries inherited from colonial rule. In Southern Sudan colonial boundaries had killed a state.
Media reports have stated that American Special Forces and un-manned drones are operating in Central African Republic. Their Ugandan ally isnot invoking the principle of the “right to humanitarian intervention” to bless getting rid of a regime that allows massive foreign exploitation of its country’s diamonds, gold, uranium, and timber; is anchoring high mortality rates among adults and infants, and spiralling poverty.  Uganda was ordered by the United Nations Security Council to pay 10 billion dollars to the Democratic Republic of Congo for looting that country’s resources. C.A.R does not share bor-ders with Uganda, but shares borders with Darfur and South Sudan. A hostile government in Sudan can supply LRA with arms  and enable it rebuild their capacity by selling  gold, diamonds and uranium ore, timber looted from C.A.R. Realpolitik is in bloom here.
Uranium deposits in Chad and Central African Republic had attracted Muamar Gaddafi into their territories. France and the Americans had chased him out, and continue to be alarmed about who has access to these uranium deposits. It is conceivable that the Americans pushed Museveni to build fire under Bozize’s seat after he was photographed walking on a Chinese red carpet in Beijing. Chinese hands scooping out uranium ore out of CAR cannot possibly be safer for American security interests than Sudan’s ally Iran. It was telling that the American Ambassador left town when a panic-stricken deposed President Bozize was begging for military support against the tide of victories by rebels.
Museveni is proposing out a regional renaissance project which could use-fully re-call Bathelemey Boganda’s vision of a “Latin Central Africa”. Such a political space could include Chad, Cameroun, Congo Brazzaville, Congo DR, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, with Bangui as its capital.