Back to the Future Onyekachi Wambu Pax Africana 3
France has recognised the Libyan rebels, and the UN Security Council (photo below) has ordered foreign “intervention” to save civilians. Once we lose the authority to internally resolve our own conflicts in Africa, opportunities are presented to powerful outside powers, with their own interests and agendas, to intervene.
Four unfolding disputes and conflicts in Africa over the last few
months provide ample evidence for this thesis. In two countries, Egypt and Tunisia, change has happened relatively peacefully, with both countries emerging stronger, with their sovereignty not only intact but strengthened. They still have a long way to go in resolving core issues, but they seem to have worked out a way of operating that means their revolutions will evolve relatively peacefully, driven by their own internal processes. When the conflict first exploded in Tunisia and Egypt between
the ruled and their rulers, it was handled within a national framework. There were no appeals to outside forces – instead a consensus emerged, pretty quickly, about the rules which would hold sway as the conflict was fought out and the internal referee that would police those rules. Although part of the regime, the army in both countries created a space where it could assume some neutrality. And it did so by laying down the most critical ground rule – that the army would not fire on peaceful protestors. The contest, noisy and compelling as it unfolded daily on
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television, was now between the government, its police and security apparatus and the people. The people themselves, though wanting a radical revolution, saw that revolution, not as a severing of the nation, but as a renewal of the existing state, even claiming ownership of central spaces at the heart of the nation, and adopting national symbols such as the flag, as a sign of that renewal. They also defended the idea of an inclusive and plural notion of the state – and the rights of all to contribute to the definition and renewal of the national project. The contest became about two clearly different ideas of the nation – a paternalistic, authoritarian, and corrupt state versus an open, accountable and transparent one. In the end in Tunisia and Egypt, the progressive idea won. Elsewhere, in Libya and Côte D’Ivoire, we have seen the
s France recognises the Libyan rebels, creating the possibil- ity of a fractured country, African sovereignty is in grave danger if we do not resolve our conflicts by ourselves. Over a year ago I wrote a series of articles under
the heading “Pax Africana”, linking the idea of sovereignty to the existence of peace and stability. My argument was simple. Peace is dependent not on the absence of conflict, since there is always conflict. Get two humans together and there will be various degrees of conflict. Peace is instead dependent on the mechanisms and agreements we have in place (whether personal or national) to resolve such conflict. I drew a playground analogy, where small children are left
to play and manage themselves, provided they display the self- discipline and order required. The adult supervisors only get involved when the children are unable to settle the disputes amongst themselves, and a higher authority is needed to impose order on the squabbling mob. Like the children, once we lose the authority to internally resolve our own conflicts in Africa, opportunities are presented to powerful outside powers, with their own interests and agendas, to intervene and chip away at our hard-fought and hard-won sovereignty.
90 | April 2011 New African
opposite of this internally generated conflict resolution process. No national institution has been able to stand above the process and lay down the law that citizens will not be killed as part of the process. And that as much as possible, the conflict will be resolved through peaceful means. The army in both countries is highly partisan, identifying with the government, or elements have split and sided now with the rebels. Also, national identity in both is fragile – Côte d’Ivoire is split from North to South, Libya from West to East. Fellow Africans or “foreigners” as they are called in each country, are being used as scapegoats – attacked as mercenary aliens. In the case of Libya, new flags are being flown as part of the revolt. In lacking the internal mechanism for resolving their conflicts, both nations are reduced to appealing to outsiders to resolve their problems for them – calling, for example, for recognition of specific regimes, or the imposition of financial and other sanctions on their own country, or the imposition of no-fly zones or full ground invasions. We sacrificed many lives winning back our sovereignty and
independence but because of our inability to resolve the conflicts that plague us, we give away large pieces of this hard-fought sovereignty.
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