The PANAFRICAN Review
most urgent call in defence of the human rights of Africans ought to be the affirmation of the African way of life as valid in equal measure as those of other societies . But for a number of reasons , the assault on Africa ’ s dignity has been normalised .
For one thing , there ’ s no one in charge of protecting African dignity . In as much as there ’ s a need for a critical mass of Africans for this purpose , there ’ s similarly a need for a critical mass of African leaders to nurture this pursuit . At no single time in post-colonial African history has there been more than a handful of African leaders with this clarity of purpose . This is the tragedy of Africa ! Confronted with the reality of different levels of identity – ethnic , national , regional , continental – only few of them have been capable of transcending the first level . Yet , this is the call to leadership . We fondly remember names like Nkrumah , Nyerere , Sankara and Lumumba because they demonstrated the wherewithal to transcend a parochial imagination of ethnicity , statism , and regionalism , towards an African identity . This class of exceptional African leaders can be contrasted with others – who are too many to name – whose consciousness , imagination , and horizons of the possible couldn ’ t transcend their immediate physical environment .
They could not give their people what they lacked , and it follows that they could not be expected to nurture a transcendent consciousness within their people . The tragedy is that this second category has been the norm in terms of the quality of African leadership we have had . In-between the first category and the second are those , still too few to constitute a movement , who could attempt to raise their own consciousness to the level of the state . In other words , the higher the ladder of political organisation – ethnicity , state , region , continent – the more one is unlikely to encounter leaderships with the requisite consciousness .
Frustration
Yet , the problems that arise from Africa ’ s fragmented states cannot – without compounding them – be confronted with a fragmented mindset . In other words , it must have been frustrating for Nkrumah , Nyerere , Sankara , and Kenneth Kaunda to have a real meeting of minds with the likes of Kayibanda , Habyarimana , Micombero , Kamuzu Banda , and the like , who were presidents in title but “ feudal lords ” in practice . The latter group , consumed by ethnicity , found themselves in positions that require higher-level consciousness , to which , unsurprisingly , they could not live up to .
Not much has changed . I could sense this frustration in President Kagame ’ s interview with Pam Sittoni in 2019 , the Executive Editor of Nation Media Group . At the time , Kagame was Chair of the African Union . Sitoni asked him about the initiatives the AU was pursuing and the challenges therein . “ You wonder why people cannot move faster and say that in pursuit of those benefits , why don ’ t we do what we are supposed to do ?” Kagame asked , before pointing to the need to be practical and take things “ step by step .” Kagame was selected by his colleagues to oversee the AU reform process . However , it didn ’ t take long before they started backbiting him and sabotaging the very initiatives they had asked him to lead , accusing him of not consulting them and exporting “ his authoritarianism ” to the rest of Africa . During the day , these presidents were pan-Africanists who are eager to transform the African Union and turn it into an institution that reflected the aspirations of Africans ; but in the dark , they are ready to sabotage .
In January 2019 , as Kagame ’ s term was coming to a close and the elections in the DRC threatened to turn violent with signs of a looming civil war , the AU Chair held a crisis meeting . A decision was reached that an AU delegation , led by Kagame and Moussa Faki Mahamat , the Chairperson of the AU Commission , would travel to Kinshasa to try to cool things off . They requested that the Constitutional Court halts its ruling so that it does not preempt their efforts . As soon as the court ruling was issued , the same AU colleagues who had sent the Kagame-led delegation based on an agreed position , one by one , began to send messages of congratulations , effectively sabotaging their own resolutions that they had crafted only days earlier . By doing so , they had allowed the urge to embarrass – petyness that should not belong amongst those occupying the highest offices in the land of upright men and women – to outweigh that of principle .
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