The Sunday Mail
Ambassador Mwampanga Mwana Nanga
On Friday, the African continent commemorates Africa Day, with the continent grappling with issues of deeper integration, economic development and peace. At a recent extraordinary session of the Africa Union Summit, 44 countries signed the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA), marking a major milestone towards integration and free movement of goods and services. Our Senior Reporter, Lincoln Towindo, spoke to the Dean of African diplomats, Ambassador Mwampanga Mwana Nanga, on continental integration and unity. This is what Ambassador Mwampanga Mwana Nanga had to say.
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African unity is very important; it is the theme of the founding fathers.
At the last AU summit in Kigali, our leaders agreed to create a free trade area covering the entire continent and this project has put us on the right course towards unity.
Having said that, the problem that we see today is that this project is more of an elitist project; it’s only the politicians and those who govern who are making a lot of noise about the project.
Our challenge is to make it a people’s project, because the African people can only make it if they are together.
This is so because the colonial project was one of dividing in order to rule and that is why the founding fathers agreed that we needed a united Africa.
Now, the speed at which we are trying to reach that goal is too slow because the people have not made it their project.
So, you as media and we as leaders in one way or another need to canvass this project and make it one for the people; that is when it will pick up speed.
It is only when we are united that Africa will take its rightful place in the world.
Africa is the richest continent in the world, but it is one that is the least explored in terms of natural resources.
This is a continent that is divided by the Equator right in the middle, so we get all the sunshine and all the energy comes from the sun and the future is towards clean energy, which is solar energy.
There is no place on the African continent which, like northern Europe or Canada, sometimes get only six months of sunshine; we get sunshine literally all year round.
Our population is also very young and we have plenty of natural resources. If we are united, no country can stand ahead of us — not the United States, not China.
Africa is the future but the youth have to stop going out of the continent and selling themselves as slaves of the 21st century; they should put the energy in building the continent.
I would love to see a Zimbabwean tobacco farmer who grows his tobacco somewhere in the rural areas saying he needs more land and goes to the DRC and gets more land.
He goes there and gets three or four times the piece of land that he has, grows the tobacco and become rich.
It is what we need as our objective.
There is a very big leader — Che Guevara. He was a medical doctor in Argentina and after finishing school, he went up North with a friend in what was known as the motor cycle diaries.
On their way, they met Fidel Castro in Mexico and they went to liberate Cuba.
This is what the youths should dream of and not be constrained because of borders that were imposed by colonialists.
We need this continent as the 54 states of Africa like the 51 states of America.
We will elect our local leaders, our Presidents, become our governors and we will have one President for Africa and that is when the voice of Africa will drown the voice of all the other continents.
Nobody will talk when the President of Africa is talking, like today when (Mr Donald) Trump is talking.
But what is making America great is that they print the dollar and everybody wants the dollar.
Imagine if China, Africa, the Middle East and Europe all say they don’t want to use the dollar, that very day the US economy will collapse.
We need each other.
The greatness of Africa is in our unity.
We have to have this continent as one continent.
When we do that nothing can stop Africa from being the best in the world.
In the short term, we need to have the youth make this project their project, and that is where you in the media need to go into the high schools, go into the universities.
I will not mind myself to go to talk to students at the University of Zimbabwe and tell them that make the project of African unity yours.
There is a young man who is President of France (Emmanuel Macron); during the (French) election campaign, the right was saying the problems of France come from Europe and the left was also saying the same and that France needed to get out of Europe.
Macron came and said France would not make it alone unless they remained in Europe and he won the election.
The youth should take this message and go with it everywhere and the media should stop bad-mouthing the continent and (they must) say what is good of our continent.
I remember a time when Zimbabweans going to South Africa needed a visa until the two countries negotiated freedom of movement.
Today, if you want to go to South Africa, you just go to Beitbridge and cross and come back.
It should be the same within the 54 states of Africa. Nobody should be constrained by what is around him.
The day when we do that our divisions between Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone; between Swahili-speaking people or those who speak Shona or Ndebele will just disappear.
I ask young Zimbabweans, if a young Zimbabwean from Matabeleland meets a young Zimbabwean from Mashonaland, let’s say in West Africa, would the Shona-Ndebele division matter?
We should make those ethnic divisions a thing of the past.
In fact, we should go back and empower our linguists to go and see what is common between our languages, because most of these are Bantu languages.
Take for example the 12 000 Zimbabwean soldiers deployed in the DRC.
When they went there, they did not learn French.
If they were deployed in the Swahili-speaking areas, they quickly learnt Swahili; if they were deployed in the Lingala-speaking areas, they learnt that very quickly; all the main languages in the DRC are all Bantu languages and for any Zimbabwean there, it’s much easier to pick that than try to learn French.
This means we have more in common as Africans that what divides us.
We have a lack of selfless leaders on the continent and they take the bait given to them by our former colonisers.
They come with millions in the form of aid or investments.
The truth of the matter in Africa is that we have what is called a resource curse.
Our diamonds, gold, copper, oil, platinum have become a curse because our leaders do not understand that wealth should be used to empower our people to develop our countries.
