By Morro Ceesay
The African country is a colonial creature and must die. The African state will be a creation of our own, born of the ashes. When the countries are dead, long Iive the states of the African federation! Until then, in this wilderness, deep within us, we still know the road that leads home. I cry out for it daily so we may take it. And you do too.
Once, I had a conversation with a prominent Gambian in which he confessed opposition to Senegambia. The conversation quickly deteriorated into a sweeping rejection of a continent-wide African federation. His chief concern, he insisted, was the loss of Gambian sovereignty. He was not kidding. “We would become nothing more than a province of Senegal.” As he spoke, the logic seemed to spiral down; his words drifted in and out like echoes in an empty chamber. Perhaps from an empty chamber. Then in what he must have thought the tone of a sage imparting wisdom to a child, he said, “Look at Cameroon, and look at Canada. They do not work.”
Tragic, I thought. Perhaps Cameroon, but what African country would not envy Canada’s stability, prosperity, sober governance, and unity?
In a voice quiet down to a whisper, terrified of the answer that would return, I finally asked, “So you would not support African unification?” He paused, then added with startling certainty, “No way no how, not if I have anything to do with it.” It was political immaturity reductio ad absurdum.
The whole encounter reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of how polities function.
Every political society, including unions, from the Garden of Eden to the present has been imperfect because there is always, in some form, a serpent in the garden. For that reason, no country is or ever can be perfect.
However, this does not and should not blunt the desire for perfection. The enduring task of political and civilise is to pursue improvement within the constitutional order while recognising the permanence of human imperfection – in other words containment of imperfections. A union of African countries will not be perfect nor will it ever be. But by any objective measure, union remains the surest remedy for every misfortune we endure as a people, right down to the common cold. Consequently, a leader’s opposition to African unification is an act of violence not merely against the moral order, but against the social compact itself, the very fabric of society. It is a refusal to recognise what history has long revealed. If society exists to secure communal welfare – social, economic, and political – then entry into a greater community that more effectively guarantees these ends becomes not only a political and moral imperative, but dare I say, a legal one derived – if not explicitly, impliedly – from the very existence of that community.
It is therefore easy to conclude, for you to live and prosper, The Gambia must die. And no, my hate of the country is rational, not emotional. If a country cannot reliably protect its people in all the forms of its constitutional purpose, then its sovereignty is an allegation unproven by evidence. And when that condition persists across generations, the answer is not dissolution, though every citizen may rightly demand it under such circumstances, but integration into a larger community better suited to achieving the terms of the compact. The drive therefore should be towards immediate union, not disintegration and a plunge into a Hobbesian hellscape.
Consider the horrors that might not have been, had we acted. Imagine if there was never a reason fearful enough for delay – not on account of sovereignty, tribe, languages, religion, economic disparity, or fears of domination. We convinced ourselves that these fears counselled “gradualism” and then called it a cure. It is not, because these fears persist in every great nation that is or has ever been. The next time someone invokes gradualism as a reason for delay of union of the continent, ask whether they would insist upon their own gradual escape from a burning house. (Pardon me. I forgot to define ”gradualism”. Gradualism is the slow crawl to African integration, in rejection of Kwame Nkrumah’s radical approach of immediate federation.) Truth is, delay has killed us by the millions and bled us by the trillions. The trappings of sovereignty – flag and all – do not make it real, just as screams of freedom! heard beyond our cage do not make us free.
But there is a way for real sovereignty and freedom if only we heeded Nkrumah’s political commandment: seek first the political kingdom – United States of Africa – and all else shall be added unto you. Without federation, sovereignty of the African country is formally recognised but materially void. In essence a legal fiction.
What sovereignty is there when Elon Musk, a son of Africa can turn off food and water to his brothers and sisters, and become death, the destroyer of their world? What sovereignty is there when Trump can bomb African countries on a whim. If he means to fracture Nigeria, and unleash all the horrors that entails, who could stop him?
I wonder if Obama – a son of Africa – would have been convinced to authorise the destruction of Libya, if he knew the aftermath of that destruction would unleash a hell that swallowed or drowned thousands more than any massacre feared from Ghaddafi? Better yet, would he have been bothered if Africa were united and capable? While this sacrifice of tens of thousands of African lives is but a rounding error in the ledger of the continent’s miseries, assuming you are a person of faith, the compendium of African calamities forces an echo of Christ on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But has He? We are honoured as the firstborn of humanity, the sire of all within. And we were not cast upon a barren shore. We were brought to a land of abundance placed above all others. Why then, should we inherit want in the midst of such plenty? A difficult journey should not shake your faith. It is difficult to believe that providence would lead a people to a promised land, only to command suicide at the border. Rather, I should think, if providence has placed such blessings in our hands, the greater question is whether we have been faithful stewards of it, or whether our divisions have become the very walls that divide our strength and cast us down.
Britain grew larger and grew stronger. America grew larger and grew stronger. Russia grew larger and grew stronger. France grew larger and grew stronger. Yet we are instructed that African countries must not grow but shrink. From a whole to an organ, from an organ to a cell … down and down we devolve into certain extinction. If l am wrong, Africa’s breakaway regions must be paradise! But they are not. Hello South Sudan and Eritrea…all great? No. Do not divide. Instead, cast down the walls and unite all before you! This place is meant to be home for all of us. Federation is not optional, it is existential.