'If we want to survive, we must unite'.

Dr Hassy H. B. Kitine, a retired Tanzanian parliamentarian, government minister, and pan-Africanist extraordinaire, worked closely with the country's founding father, the late President Julius Nyerere, and rose to become the director general of the Tanzanian intelligence and security services (1976-1980). A man of many parts, Dr Kitine was an outstanding military officer and commandant of the Tanzania Military Academy, as well as a university lecturer in Tanzania and Canada. Now a business consultant, he is the chairman of the board of Micro Provident Ltd, a transnational company dealing in small loans for the poor. Dr Kitine spoke to Baffour Ankomah in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, on the importance of speeding up the African unity project. Here are excerpts:

Baffour: As African leaders meet in Accra in early July to discuss the African union project, what are your major concerns about our continent?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Dr Kitine: It is difficult to say clearly what are my major concerns because we have so many problems as a continent. However, my number one hope is that Africa will one day become one country with a union government. As Dr Kwame Nkrumah said, Africa must unite, form one government and evolve from there. I hope that Nkrumah's dream can be realised sooner than later. I know it is going to be very, very difficult. It is, in fact, a tall order! To turn this continent into one country with one defence force, one foreign policy, one natural resources policy, etc, is going to be very difficult. But we have no choice. There should be one government called the Government of the United States of Africa with one president. And then, we can have prime ministers or whatever we choose to call them, ruling the individual component states which will be accountable to the centre.

Baffour: Do you think we will ever get what you've just described?

Kitine: We have no choice. It will be difficult as I have just said. It will take a long time, but we have no choice. If we want to survive in this cruel world, we have no choice but to form one government and one country. It can take 50 years, 100 years, maybe 200 years, it doesn't matter. One day we should have one government and one country. We can call it the United States of Africa or simply Africa. It is the only way to make Africa strong and survive as a people.

It took over 200 years for the United States of America to become what it is today--from 1776 until now--and even then they still have problems. They are still strengthening their country. They are the strongest in the world today because 50 states became one country. No wonder they now have the largest economy in the world, they have the same foreign policy, the same defence policy, and the same other policies. That is the only way for Africa to realise its dreams and become strong. I do, however, accept that it is an extremely difficult thing to do, principally because we will be fought against.

Baffour: By whom?

Kitine: By interests outside Africa. African unity will affect the interests of other countries outside Africa, but we have no choice. That's why they fought against Nkrumah and got him removed. But if we want to fight for the interests of our people, we must have one country and one government. This must be the dream of every African leader: That at some stage, 20 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years, 200 years, 300 years, it doesn't matter--we will have one country and one government for the whole continent. That will be Africa's highest achievement and glory.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Baffour: "It is a tall order," you say. So what are some of the difficulties you envisage on the way?

Kitine: First, we will never be left alone to form a viable union. We will be fought against, and I think you know what I mean. We will be fought against by the West because Africa is the richest continent in the world in terms of natural resources. And these resources are forever being exploited by the ex-colonial masters whose economies have grown fat and strong feeding on our resources. This has been the way by which they have developed. And they are used to it. A poor country like Belgium is rich today because historically it has exploited the natural resources of one of the richest countries in the world, DRCongo.

This process has been repeated by all the former colonial masters in their former African colonies. Today, we have the American giant doing the same thing even though it had no colonies in Africa. So it is going to be very, very difficult for Africa to unite without being fought against. They fear that if we unite, we can better control our resources. They can no longer get it cheap. So we will be fought against. They did it in 1963, they fought against Nkrumah's unity project then, and we should have no illusions that they won't do it again now.

The other difficulty will be the low level of development in Africa. We are rich in natural resources but we have low or no technology to exploit them to make a qualitative difference in the lives of our people--what economists call "major factors of production". We must have technology, inputs, management, and democracy as defined by the West, because this world is a Western world.

Baffour: Can you expatiate? Why can't we have democracy the African way? After all, we are the originators of democracy; our ancestors were the first to practise democracy in Ancient Egypt. At the time the Europeans were living in caves! Today European history says the Greeks went to Ancient Egypt, they saw the democracy our ancestors practised, they liked it so much that they borrowed it and took it back to Greece. They practised it at city level, and from there it spread to other parts of Europe. During the colonial era, the Europeans exported "their" democracy back to Africa, wrapped in nice wrappers, and they called it "Westminster type" or "American type". We know this history very well. So why can't we--the originators of democracy--have "African democracy" in Africa? Why must it be democracy as defined by the West?

Kitine: We can't have "African democracy" in Africa any more than we can have any other way of life that we were used to as Africans. It is unfortunate that the Western world, after colonising us--this continent was fully colonised except Ethiopia--Western culture and values were exported to the continent and we took them without questioning. So we now live the life of the Western world. Therefore to talk about "African democracy" and "African this and that" may be a bit unrealistic at this stage, because we have been so much drugged by Western ways that it will be difficult to try and revive our traditional democracy as practised by our ancestors. Our best option now is to continue introducing Western democracy but applying it with the prevailing conditions in Africa.

Baffour: Isn't it tantamount to running something on a superstructure that we don't have? There are certain factors that make Western democracy tick--a literate society, a strong judiciary, self-sufficient political parties, a strong media, and such like. We don't have that superstructure in Africa, and yet, as you say, we have to run the same democratic system as the West. Isn't it like buying an airplane when you don't have an airport to land it at?

Kitine: Yes, that is true.

Baffour: And you say we have no choice but continue practising Western democracy on a superstructure we don't have?

Kitine: We have no choice at this stage because all our values are now based on a definition of development enunciated by the Western world. It is the truth, and we cannot run away from it. We have schools and education systems dependent on French culture, British culture, Belgian culture, Portuguese culture, American culture, and so on. Even the lingua franca at the African Union, the means of communication of the African Union right now are English, French, Portuguese, Arabic. The only indigenous African language among the five is Swahili.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Even then there was a lot of infighting during the meeting that adopted Swahili as one of the five AU official languages. A lot of African countries argued against the inclusion of Swahili, a truly African language spoken in several East and Central African countries, a language that originated in Africa! It shows how deeply we have been influenced and affected by our colonial histories, which is unfortunate as far as I am concerned.

Baffour: So we are lost. Are we lost?

Kitine: Not really. If we give up, yes; but we haven't given up yet. That's why I say we have no choice but to form one strong country via an African union government.

Baffour: But from what you have described, we have given up. We can't even adopt Swahili as an official AU language without fighting among ourselves.

Kitine: No, I am not saying we've given up.

Baffour: So then, why don't we have more Swahili, Hausa, and other major African languages spoken in the councils of the African Union?

Kitine: Because we have not tried seriously in the past. We have not tried to identify ourselves as a continent. We have not been cognisant of the fact that we have no future except being ourselves. As Nkrumah said, each country's independence is nothing unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa. We are saying the same thing today- that this continent is useless unless it unites. We are repeating what Nkrumah said in 1957. That man was great! He predicted 50 years ago--in March 1957--something that will take us another 200 years or so to realise.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Without forming an African union government and one country, this continent will continue to have a meaningless existence. If we want to survive and become a strong people, we have to unite. We must fight and win unity. It will not be a war via the barrel of the gun, but a war of the minds. We have to put our minds together and realise what is best for our people. We must achieve it for ourselves, for our children, for their children's children and for their children's children.

Baffour: There are some Africans who, drawing lessons from history, say that all the great nations of the modern era--Russia, China, USA, even "little" Britain, fought a civil war to unite. They say looking at the huge size of Africa, we cannot unite without going through a war of unity. They say unity through dialogue is nigh impossible, especially when our countries are now used to their national anthems, flags and 21-gun salute.

Kitine: To me, these are small matters. National anthems, national flags and the rest are small matters. Europe has united or is uniting without fighting a war of unity. I am saying that we have to start with major policy issues, such as one foreign policy and one defence policy for the entire continent. There must be one African command, one monetary policy and one central bank. We must have one currency for the entire continent, and one natural resources policy.

For example, the oil available on the continent should be organised in such a way that, if you have oil in Nigeria, some of the revenues realised from it will be used by the Nigerians, but some of it will come to the centre, the African union government. The revenues realised from the various natural resources will be utilised by the central government by sharing it proportionally to the other countries which do not have oil. By this way, the Union Government will have enough resources to improve the quality of life for all Africans.

The Union Government will have to make sure that the component states of the union are connected with first class modern highways, railways, and airlines. It may not happen in my lifetime or your lifetime, but we have no choice but to do it.

Baffour: We are now weaker as a continent than when the West fought against Nkrumah. So how are we going to achieve this unity, from this weak position?

Kitine: Yes, Africa has become weaker, and the outside forces have become stronger, but as long as we have an objective, and we defiantly strive for it, we can achieve it.

Baffour: Can we ever be defiant? Would we be allowed to be defiant?

Kitine: Every human being has an inherent capacity to be defiant.

Baffour: You mean defiance by our current crop of leaders?

Kitine: We are not talking about the current crop of leaders, who would be gone in no time. We are talking about the Africa of the future, not about the John Kufuors, the Kikwetes and Mbekis. All these leaders would be gone by the time we get the Africa we are talking about. A new crop of leaders will come after them and they too would go. And more new crops of leaders will come and go. But a time will come when the tide will be so strong that there will be a stampede for the attainment of a union government in Africa, and nobody would be able to stop it, I can assure you. You and I would not be there, but that time will come.