Gaddafi’s Grand Plan
By Edoardo Totolo for ISN
During his inaugural speech as chairman of the African Union in February 2009, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi proposed the ambitious plan to speed-up the establishment of the United States of Africa: a federation of countries with one government, one currency, one passport and one army. This proposal has reopened the Pan-African debate on whether unity can bring peace and development to the continent, but policy-makers and academics seem to have diverging views on this issue.
On the one side, optimist pan-African leaders argue that the unification of Africa will increase dramatically the continent’s influence on global affairs, and it will reduce the problem of tribal violence around the continent.
This was the argument proposed by Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere - the great fathers of Pan-Africanism in the 1960s - who prophetically argued that “Nationalism outside Pan-Africanism is tribalism.”
They strongly condemned the “Balkanization” (i.e. fragmentation) of Africa and proposed the continental unification. However, whereas Nkrumah wanted the immediate establishment of the United States of Africa, Nyerere advocated for a gradual approach, focusing first on the establishment of strong regional blocs and, eventually, towards a full political and economic union.
On the other hand, a majority of commentators today are less optimistic, and see the United States of Africa as a utopia, an impossible project that failed to start in the 1960s and would certainly not work in the present day, nearly 50 years after African countries achieved independence. Many also point out that today’s main advocate for the United States of Africa, Gaddafi, is not credible for such an ambitious plan, mainly because of his dubious past.
From terrorism to Pan-Africanism
The interest that Gaddafi has grown for African unity closely reflects the history of Libya over the past two decades.
During the 1980s, Gaddafi was accused of having supported major terrorist attacks, such as those at the Rome and Vienna airports in 1985 and in the La Belle Club in West Berlin in 1986. After Ronald Reagan’s pre-emptive strike in April 1986, two Libyan security agents were accused of provoking the explosion of the Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people while the aircraft was flying over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.
In 1993, the UN Security Council imposed an air and arms embargo and a ban on the sale of oil equipment to Libya, which began a period of severe economic hardship for the country.
The situation improved when African leaders offered their support to Gaddafi. In particular, former South African president Nelson Mandela visited Libya twice in one week in 1997, despite US disagreement, in order to find a solution to the UN sanctions, which were eventually lifted in 2003.
According to the Pan-Africanist intellectual external pageTajudeen Abdul Raheem, it was the Lockerbie incident that triggered Gaddafi’s decision to push for stronger political and economic unity in Africa.
In fact, in 1999, he promoted the extra-ordinary session of the Organization of African Unity in the Libyan city of Sirte, which initiated the process of transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU). In the following years, Gaddafi expressed his dream to create the United States of Africa at the AU summits in Togo (2000), Guinea (2007) and Ethiopia (2009).
Gaddafi’s vision
Gaddafi’s proposal was received rather coldly by other African leaders, especially those from Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia, who maintain to be in favor of African unity but are not willing to embrace the fast-track proposed by Gaddafi. The leaders therefore reached an agreement on expanding the mandate of the existing AU Commission, which will be renamed the African Union Authority.
Gaddafi rejects the ‘gradualist’ argument that deepening regional integration is a necessary step before reaching continental unity, and agrees with Nkrumah’s argument that “regionalization is a Balkanization on a larger scale.”
Referring to North Africa, he said: “Imagine when North Africa will become one state from Egypt to Mauritania. This will not happen…Even Algeria and Morocco which are sisterly countries are in a state of war and will never meet. Libya and Egypt will not unite. Impossible!”
This view is shared by influential scholar Issa Shivji, who argues that while logic was on Nyerere’s side (in favor of regionalism), history has vindicated Nkrumah’s argument that regionalization does not work. He reports several failed attempts, such as “Senegambia” (union of Senegal and Gambia), created in 1982 and dissolved in 1989; the Mali Federation, between Mali and Senegal, which lasted less than two years. A longer union was the one created by the Italian Somalia and the British Somaliland, which, however, has been de facto dissolved after the regime of Siad Barre collapsed in 1991.
Gaddafi has also recently confirmed his radical view on democracy in Africa. During the inaugural speech after his election as AU chairman, he argued that multiparty democracy was not an appropriate political system for the continent.
“We don't have any political structures [in Africa], our structures are social. Our parties are tribal parties - that is what has led to bloodshed,” he said. Gaddafi therefore proposed to replicate the dictatorial model used in Libya for the rest of Africa.
Other radical views on democracy are outlined in the so-called Green Book, a highly controversial publication in which Gaddafi states that the “parliament is a misrepresentation of the people,” and that “parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy.”
New and old obstacles
Many obstacles that Gaddafi has to face today are very similar to those that Nkrumah and Nyerere could not solve during the 1960s. In particular, most African leaders are not willing to cede part of their national sovereignty (and the privileges related to it) to a supranational institution. Nyerere’s comment made five decades ago could perfectly fit today:
“Once you multiply national anthems, national flags and national passports, seats at the United Nations, and individuals entitled to 21 gun salutes, not to speak of a host of ministers, prime ministers, and envoys, you would have a whole army of powerful people with vested interests in keeping Africa balkanised.”
Moreover, there is a more general problem that building a Pan-African state – today, as in the past – is envisaged as a purely political, rather than social, enterprise. Whereas there have been talks, meetings and summits designed for political leaders to discuss unification, civil society groups and citizens have never been included.
Pan-Africanism is a very ambitious long-term process, which certainly will not succeed if it remains only a theoretical discussion for sophisticated intellectuals and the political elite, completely detached from the everyday reality of ordinary African citizens.