In Many Ways, This Will be the First African State is Here

[Jacaylbaro]

At its inception, the founding fathers of the OAU agreed that while the colonial borders they inherited from Europeans were unjust, they were better off respecting them; re-mapping the continent would mean centuries-long wars.

 

As if fate were laughing at the founding fathers, this agreement was first breached just a few hundred kilometres from the very plenary rooms of the OAU halls where it was signed — Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia in 1993.

 

Now, just to the west of the same capital, another state is about to be born; to the southeast, Somaliland is almost a state apart.

 

It is an inescapable fix. The Berlin Conference’s ruler-straight lines humiliated Africa by deciding an entire people’s fate.

 

But Africa came to realise that it was better off accepting those boundaries.

 

While separatist sentiments burn around the continent, common sense dictates that it is better to remain Nigerian than become Biafran.

 

Southern Sudan returns to the table the fraught question of who is an African.

 

While the black populations now widely identified as African (although at inception the term referred to the brown, northern inhabitants) will feel a sense of justice, it leaves them anxious about their own countries.

 

Intellectually, it is an important separation, for it is the first time a truly African country is being born.

 

Under a treaty signed to end the country’s first civil war, the first autonomous government ran Southern Sudan from 1972 to 1983, under, incredibly, OAU sponsorship, until president Jaffar al Nimeiry revoked it, which led to the second civil war.

 

Since decolonisation, right-wing scholars have referred to the African state as counterfeit (leftist scholars generally pretend there is no such a thing as nation).

 

While this hurt the pride of Africans, it is true if by state one means a self-propelling polity capable of generating its own sovereignty.

 

With nearly all these countries on the drip, incapable of defending themselves militarily should a nuclear-armed super-state roll in, and unable to generate bonding myths, the African state remains a joke.

 

Sudan has called the bluff. First, the borders of Sudan will become the first on the continent with naturally defined corners, in contrast to the stacked-box look of the Sahel and the barcode alignment of West Africa. This is truer of the internal identities therein.

 

But it is more than just land breaking off. Sudan was the one African state in which colour, religion and history intersected most tragically, and hence was prone to breaking up in a way that Botswana isn’t.