When Neil Armstrong dreamt about going to the moon, it took him several years before he could achieve it. Same is true of Albert Einstein and other great scientists and achievers whose works have stoked in perpetuity the whirlwinds of change across the world.
Yet still, same applies to Nelson Mandela when he dreamt of conquering apartheid and restoring the dignity of the black and other races in South Africa. Kwame Nkrumah, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jnr, all had dreams that were achieved several years after they had dreamt them. But all of these were achieved. So it is safe to imagine thus that the African Unity dream, long dreamt and established, will be realized.
It has been a very long time since the African Unity dream was made and established. Yet it still seems a distant one. All the dreams enumerated above and in fact all dreams that have been achieved were once distant dreams. What is needed is the ACTION to bring the dream to reality and therein lies the difference between the dreams above and the African Unity dream; therein lies the missing link. Pan-Africanists and all progressives who believe in a united Africa, an Africa operating under one federal government with one military command and one foreign policy must not just lie down and dream. They must wake up from slumber and take this project beyond just dreaming and having a passion. It is well and okay to dream but that alone has long proven inadequate.
But what kind of action is needed? Kwame Nkrumah once said that “organization is decisive”; and that is exactly where we must take our inspiration from. The kind of action we need is “organization”. There is the need for the mobilization of the masses of Africa. It is important to begin a conscious effort to organize the people of Africa both home and in the diaspora behind the dream of African Unity. We must explain in this organizational effort why African Unity is a reliable panacea to the development challenges of the continent, the liberation of the people from the shackles of disease and poverty and from the devilish fortress of mental slavery constructed by colonialism and neo-colonialism.
It is undeniable that the current posture of the pan-African movement is lackadaisical, uninteresting, anything but serious. Innovation and creativity must be woven into the struggle to raise funding which is critical for a mass mobilization campaign. The campaign must be targeted at the grassroots people in whose interest it is to unite the continent. The media both mainstream and social media must be deployed to keep in touch with the youth and other sections of society. The hierarchy of leadership must be so focused and organized that no one is left behind.
It is apparent that no dream has ever been achieved without “action”. Albert Einstein did not just sit down and dream in order to invent the theory that made him the greatest scientist of all time, he acted. Neil Armstrong did not just dream of going to the moon, he acted. M. L. King Jnr, did not just dream of an America which respects people of colour, he acted. Nelson Mandela did not just dream of a South Africa free of Apartheid, he acted. No dreamer has ever achieved their dream by just dreaming; perhaps only magicians do and unless pan-Africanists want to assume themselves to be of that breed, concrete action is certainly a sine qua non. Africa Must Unite.
