Ghaddafi’s dream: Altruistic or simply egocentric?
By Babatunde Fagbayibo
Say what you will, Muammar Ghaddafi clearly knows what he wants. He has never hidden his wish for a United States of Africa, and to attain this goal, he has deployed substantial financial and human resources. While this dream remains a desirable one, Ghaddafi’s modus operandi and underlying intentions continue to befuddle skeptics and admirers (of this ideology) alike.
A case in point is the Libyan-financed meeting of Kings, and Chiefs across Africa held on the 28 and 29 of August 2008. Lending credence to the famous dictum of ‘he who pays the piper dictates the tune’, the so-called ‘forum of kings, sultans, princes, sheikh and chiefs of Africa’ not only endorsed Ghaddafi’s obsession with the ‘United States of Africa’, they also bestowed on him the title of ‘King of the African Kings’! This act of self-glorification and what some might call naked narcissism, easily leads to the oft-held conclusion that Ghaddafi has the intention of becoming the (monarchical?) head of the envisaged continental government. Considering Ghaddafi’s style of governing his people, one needs no telepathic ability to guess Ghaddafi’s conceptualization of a continental government. At a press conference, shortly after he was elected as the ceremonial chairperson of the African Union, the recently anointed ‘king of the African Kings’ launched into a tirade about how multi-party democracy is antithetical to Africa’s development. In his imperial wisdom, the ‘sit-tight syndrome’, an ideology that has kept him in power for almost 40 years, remains the elixir to addressing Africa’s woes.
Listening to Ghaddafi’s long-winding pontification on the need for continental integration can be likened to being subjected to a dose of mental torture simply because it lacks the intellectual and empirical basis. Unlike Kwame Nkrumah, Ghaddafi’s thesis on African integration is an exercise grounded in faulty assumptions and shaky ideological premise. Both Nkrumah and Ghaddafi, however, share similar traits: autocratic tendencies and the personalization of the integration debate. Parallels have been drawn between Nkrumah’s attempt at railroading his colleagues into endorsing his vision of a united Africa in the 1960s and Ghaddafi’s latter day quest of force-feeding his ideology of a leviathan African Union on anyone that cares to listen. Building on a culture of suppression and hero-worshipping at the national level, observers easily concluded that both individuals, Nkrumah and Ghaddafi, turned their attention to capturing (or conquering) the continental sphere. Others even suggested that Ghaddafi’s inability to create a pan-Arab federal union ‘conveniently’ informed his decision to champion the call for a United States of Africa.
While Nkrumah basked in the euphoria of having being called the Osagyefo (the conqueror), the recently bestowed appellation: ‘King of the African kings’ signal Ghaddafi’s keen interest to actualize his life-long (?) dream of a continental president. His constant denunciation of democracy as an essential ingredient of African integration simply suggests the rationalization of his autocratic rule and in turn, his eligibility for the position of the president of an envisaged continental government.
Ghaddafi’s do-or-die, all-or-nothing ambition to launch a United States of Africa should continuously serve as a cautious example of how not to pursue a sensitive project such as continental integration. The task of uniting a continent mired in conflicts, low levels of economic development and good governance deficit should not and cannot be reduced to egoistical contestations among African leaders or an elitist topic of discussion in the academic circle. Ordinary Africans must be given the opportunity to voice their opinions on this issue. In addition, it should go beyond the obsession with semantics, a hollow measure which only serves to entrench old practices. An example is the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) into the present African Union. One only hopes that the recently announced plan to change the AU Commission into an AU Authority would deviate from such tokenism.
The continued inability to extricate the process of African integration from the web of hypocrisy, emotions and fictions remain a major concern. For example, the idea that all 53 African nations can, irrespective of visible differences, proceed with integration is, at the very best, delusional. The constant referral to an amorphous concept of pan-Africanism as the most important basis of integration defies logic. What is the essence of anchoring unity on pan-Africanism when some African leaders continue to subject their citizens to heinous injustices? Of what benefit is a so-called pan-Africanist ideology which is tangential to the socio-economic and political upliftment of the citizenry?
Thus, any serious discussion on African integration should be based on stark realities, with the main aim of adopting fundamental approaches. These should include, but not limited to, the adoption and strict implementation of shared norms, effective sanctions on errant member states, and the organizational supremacy and autonomy of the AU institutions. African integration cannot be conjured through fiats or decrees, but by concerted efforts at identifying shared principles based on the ethos of democratic governance, human freedom and traditional African values. These measures would not only help setting definable standards and goals for integration but also ensure that African integration is no longer the plaything of bored autocrats.
Babatunde Fagbayibo writes from South Africa
