VOICE OF COURAGE Selected speeches of Obafemi Awolowo (Vol 2)

MR Chairman, Your Imperial Majesty, Eminent Heads of State and Government, Brothers, After four years of existence, it would appear that the need for serious stocktaking within the Organisation of African Unity is imperative. Such an exercise would help us to appraise our achievements thus far. It would help us to place the emphasis where it properly belongs. It would give us a clear sense of priority and direction; and we would thereby avoid a tendency to drift, or to being bogged down with unessential.

Of all the purposes in Article II of our Charter, only two are vital to the honour, progress, and unity of all the peoples of Africa. They are: the eradication of all forms of colonialism from Africa. and

1. ii) Intensification of economic co-operation, designed to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa. Since the declaration of these objectives among others, Angola and Mozambique remain firmly under Portuguese rule: Ian Smith and Apartheid continue to flourish; Fernando Po remains a camp where Africans are made to slave labour; South Africa holds firmly to South-West Africa; and the Specialised Commissions set up by this Organisation to formulate proposals for harnessing the natural and human resources of our Continent for the total advancement, welfare and well-being of all our peoples have failed to meet, on more than two occasions for LACK OF QUORUM

The point must be constantly borne in mind that, with Ian Smith and Vorster, we are running a race in which, in the short run, Time is not on the side of this organisation. In the long run, all human problems do settle themselves aright, whatever anyone or group of people may do. This is so, because all those who do wrong and injustice, whether they acknowledge or arc aware of their wrongdoing and injustice or not, are merely setting themselves against the powerful tide of Nature’s or, if you like,

History’s dialectical progression. Temporarily, this tide can be held back; but certainly, not permanently. In the fullness of time, the accumulated water bursts the dams and all the obstacles which hold it in check, and cause devastation in all the adjoining areas, before it proceeds majestically and irresistibly along its chosen course. All that this Organisation set itself out to do four years ago, therefore, and all that it can do in any case and at any time, is, in the short run, to hasten Africa’s dialectical progression to total ‘freedom, equality, justice and dignity’, by removing from its path all the frictions and obstacles which Portugal, South Africa, Ian Smith, and others of that ilk, symbolise and constitute. We have, no doubt, been making some efforts, these past four years, to rid Africa of all vestiges of colonialism and neocolonialism, and of brutal discrimination against our race. But, unfortunately, we have not been seen by our peoples or by the world at large to be making any worthwhile effort at all, simply because we have not been able to make any disconcerting and decisive impact on those concerned.

The reason for this, of course, is obvious. All the independent countries of Africa lack, in sufficient quantity and quality, the requisite sinews for making such an impact. This brings me to the second aspect of our declared objectives to which I have previously referred, namely: economic co-operation by all the countries of Africa.

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Today, Africa is a Continent of COMPETING BEGGAR-NATIONS. We vie with one another for favours from our former colonial masters; and we deliberately fall over one another to invite neocolonialists to come to our different territories to preside over our economic fortunes.

As long as IVC permit ourselves to play this role, with much apparent relish and enthusiasm, as we have so far been doing, so long will poverty ignorance, and disease with their concomitant phenomena, such as colonialism and neo-colonialism, prevail in Africa.

We may continue and indeed we will be right to continue, to use the power and influence which sovereignty confers, as well as the tactics and manoeuvres which international diplomacy legitimatises to extract more and more alms from our benefactors. But the inherent evil remains – and it remains with us and with no one else: unless a beggar resolutely shakes off, and irrevocably turns his back on, his begging habit, he will forever remain a beggar. For, the more he begs the more he develops the beggar characteristics of lack of initiative, courage, drive and self-reliance.

It follows from all that I have said that the economic of Africa is of the utmost importance and urgency. The sort of Union which I have in mind is one under the auspices of which Africa must be economically independent and self-reliant. Unless we take definite and detailed steps to accomplish this kind of union NOW, our next immediate state, economically and politically, would be much worse – though because of many disguises this may not appear to be so; our next immediate state, economically and politically, would be much worse than it was in the years before we attained to independence and sovereignty.

In our pre-independence days we were the unrelieved hewers of wood and drawers of water. Our present state should not be looked upon as any better simply because, by virtue of our independent political status, we arc elevated to the position of attractively-garbed tools bearers in a giant and ever-growing world economy exclusively controlled and manipulated by countries other than African.