What is "African unity"? (originally published 6/27/08)

Below, is a version of a "Letter to the Editor" that I sent to the Philadelphia Inquirer the other day. Rather than print the just mentioned missive and encourage dialogue, like so many of the government- and corporate-controlled media outlets, they seem to have decided to do otherwise.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Dear Editor:

While I'm sure that Trudy Rubin's piece, "Worldview: African unity can stop tyrant", posted June 25, 2008, regarding the need for "African unity" in order to rid the continent of tyrants like Robert Mugabe, is well-intended, what she did not point out in her article is: "African unity" was the mantra that overthrew European colonial rule, two generations ago. The result gave us a succession of "liberators" like Robert Mugabe and others who meant well, but became tyrants, because, before long, after independence, petty tribalisms and so forth - like "religious" squabbles, set in, and were, in fact, instigated by agents of the former colonial rulers.

Additionally, unemployment, which was already rampant under colonialism, became even worse, because the formerly colonized "leaders" had no understanding of running industry. After all, while European rulers and others have and still do take raw materials from the African continent, they send the aforementioned materials overseas to places like Asia and Latin America where they are refined into consumable products. Besides, when they left, the vindictive colonizers took everything that they "owned" with them (in many cases, they even took the light bulbs from the administrative offices that they had been forced to abandon). That meant that farming on a rather unsophisticated scale and petty merchandising would reign. People have to eat and sustain themselves. Hence, when it came/comes to government collection and expenditures, along with other matters, corruption necessarily followed/follows.

Therefore, the call for "African Unity", as it were, must first address the fact that, before the Europeans came there, Africans had a different direction. Moreover, to speak of "African unity" outside of that context may be well-meaning, however, it is shallow and useless. In other words, we've already been there. In fact, it is the continuous exploitative behaviors of Europeans and their offshoots in the Americas, by their maintaining the underdevelopment of Africa and other lands, that lend to the creation of Mugabe and his ilk, whether on the continent of Africa or here in the Diaspora - and the rest of the world.

G. Djata Bumpus