Africa shall have its day

The meeting in Addis Abba, Ethiopia was no mean achievement for a people newly emergent from colonialism, with strings of self-doubt and disunity being pulled by colonialists perching all around, like vultures waiting for carcases.

Even in those days, many parts of Africa were still under the blood soaked talons of European colonialism. Apartheid was waxing strong, and young liberation fighters, like Nelson Mandela, were receiving military training in countries like Algeria. That was a unique country that just a few years before had been courageous enough to reject French Assimilation. For this, Algeria was almost drowned in rivers of blood; about two million Algerians were killed in the liberation war for independence from France.

Also in attendance at that meeting was Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, whose country, like Algeria, had fought a quite bloody anti-colonial war against attempts by Britain to turn it into a White Settlement like Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South-West Africa (Namibia) and Apartheid South Africa.

Absent at the meeting was the tall, elegant, uncompromising pan Africanist, Patrice Lumumba who had on June 30, 1960, led the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, to independence from blood- thirsty Belgium.

As part of attempts to subject Africa to perpetual servitude, the secret services of Belgium, Britain and the United States had with the assistance of the United Nations (Yes, the same UN!) detained and later executed Lumumba by a firing squad commanded by Belgian soldiers in a forest on January 17, 1961.

However, many African giants attended, including Egyptian President Abdel Gamal Nasser and Guinean President, Sekou Toure, a man of letters and courage who had been the only leader whose country voted against the French Assimilation Policy in West African countries. Leading the charge of African unity was the prophet, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana who was such a great leader that many Africans including Nigerians in Europe and the United States claimed to be "from Nkrumah's country".

Nkrumah was so intellectually sound that he responded to the debate on African unity with a book: Africa Must Unite(1963). His proposal was the creation of a United States of Africa with a common economy, military, capital and leadership. He had convened the first Conference of Independent African States in April, 1958. It had only eight countries in attendance: Ethiopia, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Liberia and host, Ghana. Most of Africa was still under colonialism. Seven months later, Ghana and Guinea met to form the nucleus of a Union of African States.

Presidents Modibo Keita of Mali, Sekou Toure of Guinea and Nkrumah in April, 1961 met to merge their countries into a single Union of African States, UAS, with harmonised domestic and foreign policies, economy and defence. Nkrumah championed the convening of an All Africa Conference in Casablanca, Morocco from January 3-7, 1961. But only Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Libya attended. Given the city they met, this became known as the Casablanca Group.

At this meeting, Nkrumah warned: "I can see no security for African states unless African leaders, like ourselves, have realised beyond all doubt that salvation for Africa lies in unity... for in unity lies strength, and as I see it, African states must unite or sell themselves out to imperialist and colonialist exploiters for a mess of pottage, or disintegrate individually. ‘’