The Birth Pangs Of The African Union (1)

SO it is 55 years already since the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now the African Union (AU) was formed? How time flies!

I vividly remember that to us in Ghana, the conference that was held in Addis Ababa in May 1963 to give birth to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was as exciting as an international football match.

Lined up on one side of the 'pitch' was a group of African states known as the 'Monrovia Group'. Most of its members were drawn from an earlier group called the 'Brazzaville Group' (formed in 1960 by mainly French-speaking countries that had gained their independence that year. Initially, that group was known as the 'Afro-Malagasy Union' or 'UAM').

The countries in this 'Brazzaville Group were Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d'lvoire, Dahomey (now Benin), Gabon, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, the Central African Republic, Senegal and Chad. Later, the Group was expanded – at a conference held in Monrovia in May 1961 – to include Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo, Tunisia and Congo (Kinshasa).

In 'journalistic shorthand', these countries were usually described as 'conservative' or 'pro-western'. But this was largely a misnomer because so-called 'pro-Western' Tunisia was then giving enormous assistance to the Algerians in their guerrilla war for independence against France! And whereas Dr Kwame Nkrumah, leader of “radical” Ghana refused to see Nelson Mandela when Mandela secretly visited Ghana in 1962, Nigeria's Sardauna of Sokoto, the conservative leader of “conservative Nigeria”, gave Mandela 10,000 pounds sterling when Mandela went to Nigeria – a fortune in those days.

On the other side of the imaginary 'football pitch' were the 'CasablancaGroup'. This Group also emerged in 1961 and comprised seven countries: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Mali, and Morocco. They were regarded as 'radical' or at the very least, adherents of 'positive neutrality' or 'non-alignment'. But this description, again, begged many questions that characterised the complex nature of African politics.

For instance, both Morocco and Libya were at the time ruled by feudal monarchies. How could they be described as 'radical', then? Indeed, Morocco was a close ally of France, and to some extent, the US (the Voice of America had installed a powerful radio transmitter in Tangier to broadcast American propaganda to Africa and the Middle East!) Yet, because Morocco belonged to the CasablancaGroup (indeed, the Group took its name from the Moroccan city where it was born) Morocco was somehow linked with 'anti-Western' sentiment in Africa!

Libya, for its part, was practically an American 'business enclave' in North Africa. So the 'omniscience' of Western journalists who engaged in labelling African countries, for convenience, had to be called into question.

Undoubtedly, the most vociferous advocates of African unity at the time was Ghana's President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah. He made countless speeches about African unity and published an excellent and most informative book entitled Africa MustUnite. Nkrumah possessed a sharp analytical mind and he realised clearly that there were too many contradictions in the groupings that existed in Africa, including the Casablanca Group, to which his own country, Ghana, belonged. But he was, however, tremendously disheartened by the existence of the two Groups, which only served to publicly advertise the divided nature of Africa and undermined “Africa's voice” at international forums, such as the United Nations.

President Sekou Toure of Guinea (a member of the Casablanca Group) was also unhappy with the political division prevalent in Africa, and, despite being close to Nkrumah (Ghana and Guinea had formed a “union” in 1958) Toure linked up with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (whose anti-imperialist background had earned him the respect of most other African leaders) to try and organise a conference of the foreign ministers of the two Groups, preparatory to a prospective summit of their heads state.

Unfortunately, When Dr Nkrumah heard of this, he was irritated that his former ally, Sekou Toure, seemed to be trying to steal Nkrumah's thunder as the unacknowledged 'father of African unity.' Wasn't it Nkrumah who had saved Guinea from collapse (with a 10-million-pound loan when Guinea declared itself independent after voting 'Non' in the referendum organised by France in 1958) and the French left Guinea precipitately, leaving the country penniless?

Hadn't the union formed by Ghana and Guinea served as a practical example of 'African unity' and which had seemed so desirable that Mali had also acceded to it and turned the entity into the 'Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union'? Hadn't Nkrumah shown unselfish leadership by also also giving Mali a £5m loan? And now Sekou Toure was 'organising 'African unity' behind Nkrumah's back?

Nkrumah immediately set his own secret diplomatic moves in motion to try and get the Monrovia and Casablanca Groups to merge and form a single continental organisation. He dispatched one of his most trusted aides, Kwesi Armah (better known as Ghana's High Commissioner in London), to Liberia to see President William Tubman, who was widely respected as one of the 'old wise men' of Africa. Tubman had won this respect, despite his country's extremely close ties to America. (Nkrumah had a high regard for Tubman personally: Liberia was the first country in Africa that Nkrumah visited officially, shortly after Ghana became independent in 1957. )

Tubman had, in fact, played a prominent role, behind the scenes, in helping Nkrumah to organise the 'Conference of Independent African States' in Accra in April 1958 – the first Conference of its kind ever to be held in Africa. It was attended by Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. So Nkrumah's message was warmly received by Tubman, who set out to convince his fellow members of the Monrovia Group that the pressing issues facing the world and Africa - disarmament, the Cold War, non-alignment, economic co-operation with each other and with other nations, and, above all, how to safeguard the independence recently won by African and Asian nations - could best be addressed in unison.

After all, Tubman recognised, there was the Organisation of American States (OAS) which united North and South America; the Middle East had its Arab League; the Western Powers were bound together in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO); while the Soviet Bloc had its Warsaw Pact. Why should Africa not emulate them by forming an organisation that spoke with one voice?

To his great credit, Tubman was able to persuade Emperor Haile Selassie, his old friend from the days when there were only two independent African States in the comity of nations) to work with him and they got the Foreign Ministers of both Groups to meet at Sanniquellein Liberia, to express an interest, through a Declarationnamed after Sanniquelle, in coming together to form a common continental organisation.l

But even as Dr Kwame Nkrumah was trying to sort out the diplomatic challenges in which he was embroiled on the continent of Africa, a new development occurred closer to home that was disastrous in the message it conveyed to the rest of Africa about Nkrumah's alleged ambitions. On 13 January 1963, one of Nkrumah's bêtes noires in Africa, the fiercely independent-minded President of neighbouring Togo, Mr Sylvanus Olympio, was assassinated in a military coup, and his Government overthrown.

(To be Continued)