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From
the minute that slave traders turned African people against one another unity
literally became a matter of life and death in
Africa
. The importance of unity for the
very survival of
Africa
was later underscored by the continent’s battles against imperial conquests
and colonisation. In fact, even
those brigands who overran
Africa
understood that their brigandage was sustainable only to the extent that
African unity continued to be compromised and undermined.
Africa
’s appreciation for unity, then, was
forged on the anvil of experience. Historical
experience conspired to make unity a sine qua non for generations of African
people.
With the advent of freedom and independence in
Africa
the terrain of struggle changed from the military to the social, and from the
political to the economic. With
political emancipation came challenges of development, both infrastructural and
economic, and what may be termed the second struggle for freedom, that being
freedom from poverty and underdevelopment.
Through the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa’s
development (NEPAD) – which are a culmination of decades of African struggles
for continental unity to co-ordinate and consolidate continental development –
Africa
can proudly say it has achieved unity at the macro level of its existence as a
land mass and a landmark in the world.
When the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLGA) was founded
on 18 May 2005 in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, African unity was finally
realised at the micro level of the farms, villages, towns and cities of the
continent. The UCLGA is a caravan
housing African local government councillors, mayors, associations and other
interested parties in a collaborative effort to mobilise intellectual and
material resources and co-ordinate their deployment to provide local communities
everywhere on the continent with basic services, economic development and a
decent quality of life delivered by local governments whose existence as a
separate but complementary sphere of government is constitutionally and
legislatively protected and funded.
In founding the UCLGA we have made an emphatic statement that we consider
African destiny, at all levels, to be inextricably bound to the unity whose
importance the since-deceased Anwar el-Sadat, third President of Egypt, captured
in the following words:
There can be hope only for a society that
acts as one big family, and not as many separate ones.
The story of the
founding of the UCLGA is the story of unity.
It is a story of unity forged amidst challenges of geographic and
linguistic differences. It is a
story of the triumph of collective identity over parochial egos.
It is a reassertion of the historical oneness of the continent.
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