Zimbabwe and The African Union

The Saturday, August 11, 2007 edition of the Zambian Post Newspaper carried a story of Reform Party President, Dr. Nevers Mumba, highlighting the need for our regional leaders to get involved actively in the resolution of the Zimbabwean crisis, and in helping to create a nucleus of the continent's integration. These are not partisan issues, but subjects that provide common ground for our different and often divergent views. If we have had divisive subjects, these two afford us an opportunity to meet at a common place of brotherhood and sisterhood.

We can not continue to cast a blind eye at the confusion going on across the Zambezi; we can not always expect the West to intervene in our matters, so that we attain a semblance of peace and stability. I believe Africa is both ready and ripe to take her destiny in her own hands. It is time we said "enough" and started to take responsibility of our own mistakes and misfortunes alike. Only we can fix our problems. Not the West, and certainly not the Chinese. We, not anybody else.

I wish that the subject of Africa's integration were not stalling as much as it has. All we are losing is precious time. In all reality, the time for Africa to unite is now. The time to bury all cynicism is now, all in the hope that we can harness our resources, secure our necessary peace, create one government--or something in the likelihood of the EU format--so that food security, health, mineral resources and the rights thereof, are truly and genuinely African. For far too long, supplanters from the West have looted the continent, with a minimum sense of reinvestment.

One would wish that proponents of the United States of Africa, such as President Gaddhafi of Libya, and, in this instance, Dr. Mumba, would not be met with such ambivalence from most quarters as they do, because, unbeknownst to many dignitaries, this is almost the only way we as a people will rise from the dust of defeat that we have always been so sadly accustomed to. We need to rise up from the abyss of depression, hunger, poverty, artificial divides shamelesly based on dialect and region, and a poor self image. Maybe we can take a leaf from the Chinese in whose steps, lately, I have noticed some bounce, because their country is the "in-thing" now.

There is something about utilizing one's potential and maximizing it that causes one to walk with their head upright. Africa, and Zambia in particular, can also put a bounce in her people's steps if we can tap our resources and be aggressive about our priority list.

To those who believe in effecting change, this is all too feasible not to comprehend, ins't it?