My submission to the AU on Union Government

[RWalker]

Honorable, August and Esteemed Ladies and Gentlemen of the African Union,

First, might I compliment you for having the foresight to solicit the opinion of ordinary Africans on the vital question of African Union. As one of many ordinary Africans adrift in the world today, I am of the opinion that the establishment of a true African Union Government is the only salvation for the global African population.

I am also one of the many in the world who fervently that if Africa does not follow the blue print for Union Government historically associated with that great pioneer of African Freedom and Liberty, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah; and instead, opts to continue down the road advocated by a significant element in the African Union, a road predicated on the assumed benefits of the capitalist model, Africa will remain a mistreated, abused dependent of the dominant economic forces who dominate the contemporary capitalist world.

Individuals such as myself believe that if Africa creates a Union Government in name only, one without real substance, that is one without undiluted economic, political and military dominion over Africa and all her resources, human, social, material and otherwise, the trans-national powers of the world will still call all the shots.

In such an instance, Africa's general development options will be severely limited by the fact that her commerce, economics, finance will be dominated by outside and I must say, largely hostile elements.

Such subordination will by definition adversely impact all of Africa's fiscal decisions and thereby severely limit, if not outright destroy, any possibility of lifting the bulk of the African people out of the extreme poverty and deprivation the population now faces.

The global version of the Hamilton-Jefferson compromise capitalist state cannot therefore be used to usher in the new world Africa envisions for herself. Indeed, if one looks at the actions of the current US administration, for example the Bush administration's National Continuity Policy plan to consolidate every aspect and all forms of government under the direct control of President Bush ,

see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...070509-12.html

we can readily see how much the Hamilton-Jefferson compromise capitalist state is evolving or perhaps degenerating towards a classical corporatist fascist state. Is this the model we want for our Government? I don't think so.

Of course the detractors of Nkrumah's Union Government system contend that a socialist Union Government would be nothing more than a disguised authoritarian regime run by a tiny self-serving elite. But, socialism as advocated by Nkrumah, and indeed any true socialist, is not the purview of an elite. In fact just the opposite. It means a system that is in the hand of the aggregate people as opposed to the limitations on popular power and authority common to our experiences with the various experiments involving this or that form of democratic republics.

Nkrumah consistently described the legacy, and resultant lineage, of traditional African communal structures. Socialism, true scientific socialism in Africa, then is properly understood as the political, ethical and social-economic descendant of its African communalist ancestor.

That is scientific socialism is in fact the institutionalization of the humanist and egalitarian principles animating traditional African society applied to the modern era. This is real socialism. This is what we need.

With all due respect,

Roy Walker
optimistic citizen of Africa