EDITORIAL | Africa needs unity, not subversion of democracy

The very idea of pan-Africanism is rooted in the global movement that seeks to build solidarity between Africans on the mother continent and in the diaspora. 

The founders of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) were intentional about the inclusion of “unity” in the body’s name. Ditto its successor, the African Union (AU). Africans have always known that disunity is at the heart of the continent’s pillage and plunder by colonialists and dictators.

Yet to say the Pan-African Parliament has been a scene of anything but solidarity among Africans is to state the plain but hurtful truth. The disgraceful degeneration communicates a paucity of thought and leadership that must worry us all.

To be clear, we take umbrage not merely at MPs becoming childish,for we know too well as South Africans how our legislators can create a kindergarten out of what are supposed to be the hallowed halls of power in Cape Town. We also know that the world is awash with many tales of violence unleashed by decorated statespeople whose behaviour is incongruous with society’s expectations. 

In the European Parliament, for example, a session descended into chaos, with some throwing objects while ejecting a protestant who interrupted Pope John Paul II’s address, calling him antichrist. In Taiwan they have, as a consequence of its regularity, given it a name: legislator brawling. Elsewhere, shoes and chairs are thrown at opponents. MPs behaving like unruly children is, sadly, too common a feature of politics. Legislators around the world are not the wells of wisdom and embodiment of good character we yearn for them to be. 

In the end, though, we must all register our disquiet against MPs collapsing sessions simply because they do not agree on whether the system of rotational leadership should be implemented. SA and other nations want leadership to rotate among the continent’s power blocs. Others argue that this is a subversion of democracy. We agree with the latter. 

To say that the Pan-African Parliament has been a scene of anything but solidarity among Africans is to state the plain but hurtful truth.

Imagine, for a second, that the solutions we want to impose on the continental body were imposed in our country. Imagine white, Indian, coloured, Chinese, women and the youth demanding that SA’s number one citizen be decided on the basis of rotation between races and genders. Quite apart from the apoplexy it would unleash, would such an arrangement be considered democratic? What happens to majority rule and government of the people by the people? This rotational system eschews the noble principles of “the people shall govern” for rule by the will of gentlemen. 

If black people in the US, for example, could wait 300 years to gain majority rule through Barack Obama’s election, why won’t Africans in the PAP accept majority rule? We should not subvert democracy simply because it is inconvenient. And gifting a reign to some without the requisite majority votes is sophisticated election rigging rather than democracy. We can’t fight apartheid, colonialism and other undemocratic conduct only to turn our back on democracy when it doesn’t suit us. 

To use EFF leader Julius Malema’s words, we are all Africans. We should be working towards one agenda. What difference does it make if the chairperson of the PAP is from the east or west? Does it improve poor Africans’ chances to getting life-saving vaccines in time? Does it stave off hunger? This quote by former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere seems most apt: “There is no time to waste. We must either unite now or perish.”

The degeneration at the PAP must concern us because Africans are today afflicted by many challenges. The continent deserves democrats who will be less focused on their chance to lead and more on how to improve the quality of life of Africa’s people.

At a time when the continent’s population faces certain death from a global health pandemic, when struggling economies are unable to create jobs or environments in which Africa’s imaginative youth could start firms, the last thing African MPs should be doing is behaving like kids spoilt for choice. 

“It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity. Divided we are weak, united Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world,” counselled late Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. What we have seen coming out of the PAP in Midrand, Gauteng, reminds us how weak we are, how poor we remain and how far off from being a force for good we are because of the disunity Nkrumah warned us about in 1963.