SOURCE TITLE: Arthur Mutambara | We Should NOT Embrace a Closer African Union
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLefmjcy-qQ
In this debate, Arthur Mutambara, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe argues against embracing a closer African Union. Specifically, he argues that a closer African Union is not the right vehicle to empower African states in a postcolonial world. His reasoning is that rather than embrace a closer African Union, the new political mission should be forming the United States of Africa proposed by leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, who we have studied in this course.
Important in his argument is the concept of abolishing national sovereignty in favour of continental sovereignty. This means one defacto leader with a wide-reaching political mechanism of ministries, courts etc, behind them. In order to achieve this goal, many African leaders would have to give up on their power and sovereignty in order to increase the power of the united federation. Naturally, he believes that many if not most African leaders would rather lead the impoverished than hop onto the dream of a united Africa.
He then makes the interesting argument that larger federations like the USA and China are the historical conclusion of years of violence. In the USA specifically, he points out that more Americans died in the civil war, to maintain the federation than in World War 2. The result of this fighting was the establishment of states with one executive and a larger body of representatives representing each state/constituency.
The immediate implication of Mutambara’s perspective on this debate is that the United States of Africa will be a better political coalition than the African Union. Unlike the European Union, the African Union has little to no ability to negotiate with other non-African states when it comes to economic and social policy due to its inability to overcome national sovereignty. A subtler and more interesting question he raises is whether a United States of Africa would be the amalgamation of conflict and coercion of different African States in a matter similar to the USA. I believe that such a realist view is what was lacking in Nkurumah and other Pan-African Africanisation projects. They proposed African Unity as a voluntary endeavour as opposed to one involving coercion. We would benefit strongly from deliberating on the pros and cons of coercion as opposed to voluntary coalition building.