“We have artificial 'nations' carved out at the Berlin Conference in 1884, and today we are struggling to build these nations into stable units of human society.” - Mwalimu Julius Nyerere
I think most of our leaders try to discourage tribalism in Africa for a benevolent reason & while anti-tribalism sentiments are to encourage unity in our states, these sentiments are often in vain because tribalism has not ended in decades after the age of African independence.
I always maintain that certain ethnicities should simply govern themselves because under the rule of others they fall into disarray & become disorderly but to this some say, "Africa never had borders." Sure, there were no physical walls or barbed wire borders except in a few places like Benin or various city-states across the continent but it was known & general consensus that certain rivers, forests or mountains were borders to certain kingdoms, chiefdoms, confederacies & empires. Just because there were no man-made borders, it doesn't mean that Africa was one united country. There are places with no borders between two or more countries in Eurasia but it is known that crossing a certain river or mountain range means you're in a territory of a nation that is not the one you just left.
Now, seeing the ethnic conflicts & tribal tensions in Africa - you'd think a few leaders would think, "No, the Berlin Conference made a big mistake here" & correct those borders & sure, quiet a few leaders have spoken on Berlin Conference borders but they either are too overwhelmed by the task of reclaiming/relinquishing territory, do not have legislative power or their voice is so meek in a distant rural region that it is easily ignored by the larger state they are in.
FAMILIES DIVIDED BY THE SOUTH AFRICA-MOZAMBIQUE BORDER
I often see how ethnostates in Europe govern themselves & notice how they make rules for the benefit of the people in the land & not just laws that prevent individualism like in Africa. How is it that it makes sense to make laws that make your people struggle instead of systems, legislature & infrastructure that allows them to thrive & live freely? It is counterproductive to create a land that you yourself would not want to live in as a commoner.
Now, people will say that an ethnostate Africa is "fanciful" or "An ethnostate Africa will never happen" but just because you've accepted being cooked in a melting pot, doesn't mean that it's good for you or benefits you in the long run.
Former president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere on the borders Africa was left with after the 1964 Cairo Declaration. President Paul Kagame on the borders that made Belgian Congo.
A passage from writer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's writings citing how other continents have ethnonational borders but Africa is stifled from doing so.
I've gone through a whole lot of
benefits of the ethnostate for years. It is common logic that an ethnostate works but would take some shifting of the
"struggle mentality" of Africans to a
progress & solutions mindset. When you see other ethnicities having proper schools, I doubt you'd let your own ethnic group go to school in roofless mud schools. This is one of the main benefits of an ethnostate, it allows you to work towards your people's cause instead of getting a Ferrari for your youngest son while the people you govern are starving.
I don't care what political system the new ethnostates in Africa use after we finish our reverse Berlin Conference in Accra or Addis Ababa. The nations will choose what works best for their people & ethnicity whether it's a president, monarch or collective group of chiefs or elected leaders... It makes sense to have an ethnicity govern itself than be ruled by someone of another ethnicity who would ultimately develop tribalist sentiments in time & stifle the progress of certain ethnicities/nations just out of spite that his own ethnicity isn't as developed as others. Because of Berlin Conference borders, you become stuck with a president who hates your ethnicity/nation for developing while their own are incapable of doing so for one or another reason. Just unprovoked hatred because of being born your ethnicity. It would be better if this man were just in charge of their own people & left your people alone, separate the country if need be. Silent, secret, tribal hatred festering unnoticed is worse than open campaigning for self-determination of ethnicities & nations.
This is what we notice when we campaign for an ethnostate Africa, it's not because we're being rebellious or vain - it's because ethnicities governing themselves was the norm in Africa. Even in greater empires, the individual tribes within that empire were given a decent amount of freedom to govern themselves so they do not starve or become dependent on an unsustainable, centralised state where there was no motorised transport, information relay & telecommunications networks to make governing the land easier. Each tribe in a greater tribal confederation would have it's own set of warriors which could be of use to the tribe or the greater nation, a decentralised national unity. We discard ancient African governance systems as outdated but they made a lot of sense when you look at them in the context of what individuals played in the community of certain nations.
Multicultural/multiethnic rule is discredited when you rule in a way that diminishes a people's freedom, you risk being seen as a foreign entity & not beneficial towards the people you rule. We need to understand that tribalism is not always just open disdain of other ethnicities but also ruling a certain people in a way that they live in squalor under your rule.
We need to take a look at the idea of reversing the Berlin Conference borders & even if we do not make a Pan-African Conference to Repartition Africa, we have an idea of what Africa would look like with country borders defined by original ethnic rule.
