On a Real African Union

This afternoon I was following along on Twitter the @_AfricanUnion 's Pledging Conference. I couldn't help but pity the situation that the Union is in, the fact that the Union, or at least the desire for one, has not made African peoples any more prosperous. I'm sure it has done good in some ways, but I still see more or less than same crises, wars, famines, refugee camps and exploitation, day in, day out. So it got me thinking about African Union, a real one, and why there isn't one now.

Like the African Union, the United Nations was an attempt at all or nothing; a union of everyone, despite any conditions on what form of government or freedom from government a people might have. It was better to get all the nations together, it was thought, than it was to unite the democratic nations of the world, as a nucleus to a real world union. What this caused was such a diffusion of law that the nations (and the UN is of the nations, by the nations, and for the nations) got all sorts of maneuverability, veto powers and strategic power brokering, that it made nationalism (the very thing that creates the wars that the UN was trying to prevent) the primary driving force behind participation in the UN. When China and the Soviet Union, to give a good example, boycotted the UN, the western democracies had free hands to go in and launch a counter-offensive against the North Koreans (and through them China and the Soviets). Had they stayed for a vote (and history shows they learned this lesson QUICK), they would have said, no way, we don't want the UN interfering in the war between North and South Korea. Another example is the recent abstaining votes of China and Russia, which led the security council to vote for support of the rebels in Libya. There was no strategic value for these two veto power nations in Libya, a Mediterranean nation. But get closer to their borders, that is to say, Syria, and suddenly they are vetoing anything and everything. They, as nations, make money on arms deals to Syria, so that it is in their best interest to continue using veto powers in the UN again war against Syria.

But that is the price the UN paid for being so all-inclusive.

In this Libyan connection, Qaddafi himself wanted to eventually become President of the African Union. The African Union Constitution was written in Lybia. He was a strong proponent of the idea. This is not to slight the Union. He knew their was power in union, and he wanted it for himself. Though his intentions were less than noble, he wasn't the first to promote union. During my second course in African History, I wrote a short piece on the Fante Confederation. This short-lived union of tribal states in 1868 was to unite roads, armies, taxing and the voting system. These few essentials made it one of the first proto-federal unions of the African continent. It failed when the British (who mostly saw the union as a dangerous political entity, probably because of a former group of colonies that did the same) annexed the territory with the promise of defending the Fante from their enemies.

Simply put, there is strength in unity. So here I have argued for the weakness of all-inclusiveness, yet also state strength in unity. These need some reconciling, because it is here that a real African Union can happen. 

I'll simplify the issue. How can the democratic nations of Africa enter into real union with dictators who wish, ultimately, to maintain their own power over a nation? A union would, in such a case, as it is with China or the U.S. in the UN, use the Union mechanism for the ends of that one nation. That is because the UN is built, not on the people, but on the nation states.

The problem is a fundamental one. Suppose we set aside the African continent for a moment. Could the wild west of Arizona have united with the fledgling United States Government without first tackling its internal problems? Arizona, and especially the ghost town of Jerome, were famously the standard for wild western shootouts and gun-slinging. Arizona was the last territory to be admitted into the Union, I have heard, because of the wild lawlessness. In a real union however, the member states must be up to a certain standard of civility, freedom and self-governance. Unions take place for everyone's sake. That is, the union deals with union problems. This is why California does not have an embassy in France! It is part of a union that takes care of such things. That is why Chicago, a city as populous as Sweden, doesn't need to worry about having a military! It has, not a nation, but a nation of nations, concerned with military, postal, citizenship, monetary, and certain legal matters. Dictators, ruling over their dictatorships, or gun-slingers in wild Arizona for that matter, being largely self-interested, will only use such union mechanisms to further their own ends. And this is not the real union that California has by letting somebody else worry about embassies, that Chicago has by letting somebody else worry about armies.


Let's look at it in another way than civility and stability. The American Civil War was never a war between the North and the South. It was in the sense that people from the north fought people from the south. But it was a war between the South and the entire UNION of North and South. Again, this is self-determination, and the individual state placing itself before that of the whole, and in reality, placing itself before its own citizen.

If Africa wants a union, let it bring together the more stable democracies of the continent. Just a few. Let these four or five  or six stable nations write up on a couple pieces of paper a document that binds them to pool together their respective militaries, their currencies, their citizenship, their postal services into ONE, that promotes absolute free trade between them. And let this combined nation (and I mean, let this UNION do it, not the member states at the outset) write up a document concerning the rights of individuals. Having a singular and united court system, this collective bill of rights would not be the wishful thinking of the UN, but genuine law, enforceable. Fifty sovereign nations means 50 sovereign forms of law, which is lawlessness.

What better incentive for the populace of other African nations to overthrow their dictators, institute laws, checks and balances, and eliminate corruption, than the possibility and opportunity to join this union? That was the incentive that caused the Balkan states to join the EU, weak as it currently is. Individually, these states could never hope to defeat the Soviets, or the Russians, in a war (of bullets or of rubles). Collectively, however, Russia is no longer a threat, though it attempts with oil pipelines every now and then to throw around some muscle.

What a Union of African States would mean is that the citizens of this new union would now vote in their own state elections, as before, but instead of nations (as nations and for nations) manipulating an African Union for their own best but separate interests, this same collective citizenry would also vote in elections concerning the total body. The states would no longer need to concern themselves with currency, military, citizenship. Refugees from neighboring and warring nations, while they would pose practical issues on the ground for individual states, would be a federal level issue as far as solutions. The whole collective would solve such problems, and reduce the instability that such neighborhood conflicts cause.

These separate state economies would become increasingly stable, and without a military budget, could reinforce internal police and court systems, creating more order and freedom for the citizen. 

Objective B of Article 3 of the African Union Constitution states that the Union will work to "defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of its Member States." This, and this alone, is why the Union fails. Tribalism prevented nationalism, until the tribes united to overthrow colonial powers. Nationalism prevents the Union I'm talking about, and will continue to do so until the people grow tired of the constant threat of continuous breakdown, war, economic ruin, and personal interests over collective interests.

So the solution is this: start a NUCLEUS union. Let other nations join, so fast as they show themselves democratic and stable enough to do so.

The United States (all 13 of them) resolved this issue in 1787, and 37 other states joined them. The Australians, the Dutch, the British, all united their various territories. Union works. The EU is still quite skeptical of giving its citizens the right to vote on who is in and who is out of parliament. At this point, the nations decide. I would consider it a world of irony if the citizens of some former colonies in Africa beat them to the punch on the matter.