President Hage Geingob has said Africa must maintain unity of purpose and move forward with a sense of urgency towards the uplifment of its citizens.
“We should harness our rich cultural diversity towards reaching our common objective of economic emancipation and social development,” said Geingob in his Africa Day message on Monday.
The African continent marked the 57th anniversary of the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which in 2002 transited and transformed into the African Union (AU).
This year’s celebration took place amid the continent’s advancing efforts to combat the spread of Covid-19, which has claimed thousands of lives around the world. Geingob says through collective vision and unity of purpose, Africans will usher in the ‘new Africa’, an Africa where more than 1.2 billion sons and daughters of the soil can live in peace, unity and harmony. “An Africa where we can move freely as brothers and sisters. An Africa where we can all pursue the dream of prosperity. This is our Africa – the Africa we want,” he added.
Furthermore, Geingob said as Pan-Africanists, the people of Namibia are ardent supporters of the AU and the vision of the ‘Africa we want’.
“We shall continue to support the AU reforms and the accomplishment of a peaceful and prosperous Africa. We owe much of the spirit of Pan Africanism within which we celebrate 57 years of African unity to our founding fathers, the extraordinary personalities, who I refer to as the first wave of African leaders,” Geingob said.
These leaders, he said ushered their countries into independence following victories against the forces of colonial occupation. He said their successes and Pan-Africanist vision also played an instrumental role in molding the minds of younger cohorts within the settler colonies of southern Africa, from where a later group of first wave leaders emerged, such as, Agostinho Neto of Angola, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane of Mozambique, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. Geingob says the second wave of African leadership surfaced during the height of the Cold War, when geopolitics divided the world into the East and West confrontation. This, according to him was an era characterised by what western scholars referred to as “Big Men”, dictatorships, military coups and one-party states that embroiled the continent in bloodshed.
“This was followed by a transition, where new leaders emerged, who I refer to as the ‘third wave of African leadership’,” he said, adding that the focus in the third wave is to instill strong democratic principles and to strengthen processes, systems and institutions in order to deliver shared economic prosperity.
“A cardinal principle in the third wave of leadership is inclusivity. Nothing can be achieved in the absence of inclusive governance. I always say that exclusivity spells conflict and inclusivity spells harmony in countries,” he said.
– ktjitemisa@nepc.com.na