Harare East legislator Tendai Biti has rekindled calls for a one Africa that was started by proponents of the African Union.
The legislator made the call during the debate on the ratification of the Protocol to the Constitutive Act of the Pan-African Parliament.
Zimbabwe is currently leading the Pan-African Parliament through Senator Fortune Charumbira.
Below is full text of what Biti said in the National Assembly:
HON. BITI: Thank you Hon. Speaker Sir. I rise to support the ratification of this important protocol. Mr. Speaker Sir, when the Organization of African Unity was set up in 1962 under the leadership and mentorship of the late and great Kwame Nkrumah, the big debate that was in the Chamber was whether we needed separate individual African states or we needed a unified Africa. I remember Hon. Speaker, when I was in Government, spending some hours with the late President R.G Mugabe; he was in Ghana at the time and he was invited as a guest to listen to the conflicting debates amongst luminaries. There was one luminary, there was one camp led by President Nkrumah and another led by the late and great President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere who argued that we should remain as separate countries and another which said that we needed to form one continent.
My respectful submission is that we cannot continue perpetuating the vestiges of the Berlin Conference of 1884 and remain little splintered countries despite our huge population of over a billion to give actualization to the dream of Pan Africanism. We need to break the artificial boundaries that were created in Berlin by Otto von Bismarck and others in 1884, that will then give power to the Pan African Parliament. At the present moment, it is a talk show because it does not have any policy or legislative power making authority. It does not make anything that is binding on the nation and State. The simple and good reason is that African elites and African leaders have refused to let go of their national authority. I submit that we should move for regional total African integration – destruction of those borders, nation, and states in Africa as we know it today.
This agenda is urgent for three reasons, one of them is the implosion of conflict on the African continent, as I am talking to you right now, the biggest war is raging in Northern Ethiopia where the Ethiopian Government is at war with the citizens of Tigray and thousands of people are being displaced across the region. Only last week, more than 24 people, Ethiopian citizens were found dead in Zambia, previously it was in Malawi because of the offshoot of the civil war that is raging in Ethiopia.
There is a conflict in the horn of Africa; Eritrea is unstable, Somalia and Mogadishu is caught up with terrorism. There is conflict in Somaliland which is trying to become an independent State. There is vicious conflict in Southern Sudan, sometimes the peace holds and other times the peace does not hold. There is a conflict in Sudan itself which has moved from military dictatorship under Bashir to a people’s revolution. Back to the military – again, there are coups on the African continent. We have seen a coup in Benin, in Mali, in Burkina Faso, there is civil disturbance in Cote d’Ivoire, there is a conflict in Cameroon where English speaking citizens and French speaking citizens are against the leadership of President Paul Biya who is the second longest serving President in Africa after the President of Equatorial Guinea who just won an election by 93% a few months ago.
There is a conflict in Central Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, particularly in Eastern DRC. Eastern DRC illustrates my point on these artificial boundaries. Eastern DRC, they speak the same language between those that are found in Rwanda, so Rwanda the city is called Goma and in the DRC, it is called Gisenyi but it is one city which is separated by a river. So the conflict is taking place amongst people who speak the same language.
If you go to Rwanda, there is underlying conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis, they are people who speak the same language. If you go to Burundi, there is an underlying conflict between people who speak the same language; Kenya, Rwanda, the Hutus and the Tutsis. If you go to the Central Africa Republic, there is nothing republican about the Central African Republic; it is a State permanently in conflict since the days of Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. If you go to Togo, same conflict; if you come into our region, there is conflict in the Democratic Republic of Mozambique arising out of terrorism in Northern Mozambique.
So, the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa is battling under the scourge of war, civil war or coup, which means we must empower the continental bodies, the African Union and the African Parliament but this can only be done if we discard our little national flags and national anthems which were imposed by Bismarck and others in Berlin in 1884.
The second reason is economics. We have a population of more than a billion and by 2045, this population will double but we are not reaping the economies of scale that come out of the huge population. We have the same population as China but China is reaping the economies of scale that comes out of a huge population; scientists call it the demographic dividend because we are not integrated.
So I submit that the idea of the African Continental Free Trade Area which was signed by African Heads of State in March of 2021 must be actualised so that it becomes a full bodied customs union. We remove trade barriers, we remove passports, borders but that also must apply to the political bodies. We need regional integration so that we can harvest the demographic dividend, the huge population of a billion people. Zimbabwe has got an effective market of less than two million; there are less than 500 000 people with actual domestic aggregate demand that can support an economy. If we were to integrate as SADC alone, Zimbabwe will suddenly have a market of 300 000. If we were to integrate on the African Continent, that is a market of a billion people. Think of what benefit our farmers, miners, manufacturers will derive; 65% of our economies are informal and I am referring to the recent World Bank note produced in September of 2022.
That informal sector, I want to give an example of Glenview. If you go to Glenview, you will find the latest couch being made under the tree. Can you imagine if those people had a market in Mozambique, Burundi, Kisangani, Zaire, Mogadishu and Zanzibar – it would transform this e economy. So the issue of establishing one free Africa should be seen as the ultimate developmental and transformation agenda. The esteemed Minister of Energy and Power Development Hon. Soda is struggling because Zimbabwe has got an installed capacity of energy of 2000MW but at any given time, less than 600MW are being produced. In DRC on the Congo River, there is Inga Gorge which is capable of producing 40000MW of energy enough to light the whole of Africa and export to southern Europe to Spain and Portugal which were knocked out of the World Cup.
It pains me that the World Bank and others have not provided finance to Inga because they know the liberation effect that Inga will have on the ordinary wanachi on the African continent. We have lost 40 decades of independence pretending to run countries when we are running little tin pot countries. I would rather own 10% of an elephant than 100% of a rat. Our small countries are little rats, let us come and form this giant called Africa. It pains me that if I want to go to Tunisia, I have to go to Charles de Gore Airport first and then come down. There is no direct flight from here to Mali, from here to Dakar Senegal, from here to Togo because of the old colonial infrastructure. Even here in sub-Saharan Africa, it will cost me US$800 to go to Cape Town but I can buy a ticket to London for US$400 because of the colonial vestiges. Look at all my learned friends, they are putting on neck ties and they cannot put on an African dress like me because colonisation is in the mindset. I am sorry Mr. Speaker Sir, including yourself – [Laughter]. The only exception is Hon T. Mliswa. We ought to have our own dress and language so that we can be pontificating in isiZulu or kiSwahili. We are not able to do that.
Yes, we support this motion but it must raise deeper issues about our omissions as a generation that has failed to unite Africa and bring Africa together. I thank you very much.
