UPRIGHT THINKING by Madaraka Nyerere
In 2015, I met Samia Nkrumah, former chair of the Convention People’s Party and daughter of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s founding president. It was the late Ahmed Rajab, the veteran journalist and political commentator, who pulled me out of my seat at a conference in Accra and introduced me to her. He later took credit for introducing “Nyerere to Nkrumah” in an article he wrote for a Tanzanian newspaper.
I recently met Samia again, and we reminisced on the past, specifically on that famous Addis Ababa debate during the inaugural conference of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. The wind of independence was sweeping across the continent, and at the top of OAU’s agenda was the question: What was the logical path to continental unification?
Kwame Nkrumah led what was known as the Casablanca bloc of countries advocating for immediate unification as each country achieved independence. The Monrovia group comprised Tanganyika, under Mwalimu Nyerere’s leadership, and other African countries, urging a gradual process of unification by forming regional groupings and eventually moving towards continental unification.
In our recent meeting, Samia recounted that it was Nkrumah who spoke first. He said: “We have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into that condition which had made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one-and-a-half centuries of political independence. We must therefore not leave this place until we have set up effective machinery for achieving African Unity.”
Mwalimu was the last delegate to speak. He said: “We are therefore left with only one method of bringing about African unity. That method is the method of free agreement.” Despite opposing the Casablanca group, he was willing to compromise, saying, “It shall not be recorded in history that it was but for the stubbornness and non-cooperation of Tanganyika” that unity was eluded.
The conference hall fell silent, with some delegates cautious to show open support. Then a single individual in the hall began to clap, triggering wider applause from most of the delegates. It was Nkrumah who led the applause, Samia recounted.
That debate continues and remains unresolved. What is undisputed and remains relevant is a United States of Africa. The recent escalation of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would unlikely have occurred under a single African government. Both Nkrumah and Mwalimu reiterated the importance of economic independence and political cooperation to consolidate Africa’s collective power and minimize internal conflicts.
The recent decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to cut off aid administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development is a reminder that Africa must unite, as Nkrumah urged more than 60 years ago.
When we parted, I suggested to Samia that it was time to shelve the debate: Nkrumah was right, I said. I believe she agreed.
