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on
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with The Final Call

FCN SPECIAL COVERAGE
AFRICAN UNION DECLARED

Minister Abdul Akbar Muhammad is the international representative for the Nation of Islam and Minister Louis Farrakhan. An historian, he has lived in Ghana for 10 years and has attended many of the OAU meetings discussing the establishment of an African Union, including the Sirte I and Sirte II meetings where the reality of a United States of Africa has drawn closer to reality than ever before. He talked with The Final Call about the March 1-2 Sirte II conference.

Akbar Muhammad (AM): As many Africans, I felt good. On the closing day, at the conclusion of deliberations, when heads of state stayed hours and hours and had the observers and other officials waiting in the corridors, when we went in and found out they had an agreement, the enthusiasm showed by President Eyadema of Togo and Col. Muammar Gadhafi was an example of how we all felt.

This United States of Africa, I feel, is something the leadership in Africa know they need, but how the process would unfold was the question; and who would have the courage to step on the stage and begin the process and see it through.

The process started but the ability to see it through from 1963 until now was not there until Brother Muammar Gadhafi started this new initiative in 1998 under a strange set of circumstances. Libya had been isolated and could not rely on its Arab brothers to stand up against the sanctions imposed on Libya by the UN. But at a conference of foreign ministers of the OAU in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), African leaders made a stand. And that�s why the hall we stood in was renamed Ouagadougou Hall. The courageous stand they made was to say the sanctions were unfair and that it was not in keeping with proper diplomatic deportment to continue these unfair sanctions against a country that has meant so much to many African nations. Under those circumstances, Muammar Gadhafi began to turn and look at Africa and what Libya could do with Africa in terms of eliminating suffering. What he saw was a United States of Africa, and he began to work on it.

AM: Kwame Nkrumah, at the time Ghana became independent, had this idea, and in 1958 he held the first All African Peoples Congress. The vision of a United States of Africa was there, but he could not implement it. In 1963, when the OAU was formed, he talked about it, but he didn�t have the money in place. So in steps a small nation of about 5 million people blessed with a tremendous amount of oil and a leadership that is revolutionary in its thinking. He�s taking the wealth that God has blessed that nation with and putting it in the service of Africa. There are many leaders in Africa, I�m sure, who could envision it, who could see it�Kenneth Kaunda saw it, Sekou Toure saw it, before Ahmed Ben Bella was overthrown in Algeria, he saw it. They didn�t have the wherewithal to implement it, so in steps Muammar Gadhafi who had the will and he had the substance to make it a reality.

AM: It means the freedom of movement. If Europe can talk about a Europe without borders so there could be freedom of movement of people and goods, then why shouldn�t Africa have the same thing? Why should I have to have a visa to go from Algeria to Zambia?

AM: They should stand up and applaud, but the west is not happy. The west loves a balkanized Africa because it�s easier to control. They can continue to rob Africa of her rich natural resources because of these small, fragmented states that are hard pressed for cash so they give up their raw materials quickly, cheaply and easily in order to satisfy their need for cash. The west should applaud the effort of a United States of Africa because this will give a better quality of life to the suffering masses of Africa that they proclaim to be concerned with. But in reality they�re only concerned with the raw materials they can get out of Africa to make them (west) live better.

AM: First they need to be informed. When it comes to this issue of a United States of Africa, because the work is emanating from Libya, it has been cast in a certain light. There is no real interest in it. If the western world makes it a non-issue, then it becomes a non-issue with us. If our brother and friend Kwame Ture were with us, he�d be on the table shouting. This is what he preached and believed in. So, the Africans in the diaspora, if they stood up with one voice, they would push African leaders who are skeptical, who are trying to play both ends toward the middle. Many resisted coming to the meeting at first and many came paying lip service just to be present, but they never thought it would go anywhere until it came to signing the declaration and then ratifying the declaration.

You have countries that you will have problems with. Morocco doesn�t even belong to the OAU; she�s trying to be European and trying to join the EU instead of joining an organization on her own continent. Egypt, who depends on America for nearly $3 billion a year, is wondering if joining this United States of Africa will hurt the finance that will be coming to them in order to run the Egyptian government. I would hope the Africans in the diaspora will make their presence felt because we are an important entity to push and even help the process because of the expertise we have gained by living in the west.

AM: You can�t put Muammar Gadhafi fighting for influence in Africa on the same scale with the French, the British or the Americans, because they�re outside entities, former colonial masters as well as the former slave traders that took the human resources out of Africa. Muammar Gadhafi is an African fighting for influence over his brothers to try to help them come together and do better for their people, so there�s a difference all together. Then they (west) try to play the Arab card, that Gadhafi�s an Arab trying to give influence over Black people. Our people should know this is nothing new with Muammar Gadhafi, how he feels about Black people. He�s concretized his feelings in his writing of "The Green Book" where he talks about the Black man�s rise to the top. He�s always been involved in Black Africa.

AM: That�s called bull baiting. We know what we suffered under the slavery of the white Europeans and white Americans, now all of a sudden, when we begin to point out the horrors of that slave trade and ask them for reparations, they turn around and say, "well, the Arabs had slaves." OK. We�ll deal with the Arabs, but now I�m focussing on you. I see the results of the slavery imposed on us as a people from white folks from Europe and America. Show me the same end result among those who were taken as slaves by the Arabs. You can�t show me a country that�s full of prisoners, 2 million people locked up in jail, as a result of what happened to us in slavery, except in the U.S. Show me that in the Arab world, suffering and being abused as a race of people because of our color. Don�t bull-bait me. An Arab (Gadhafi) is now helping Africa out of the dilemma and the mess that the west made out of it.

AM: I could see the kind of love that Louis Farrakhan has in that conference. All you could hear were the words in Arabic, "Ummi ta Islam vie Amerique Louis Farrakhan (Nation of Islam in America under Louis Farrakhan). That to me is a great feeling that I�d like to share with our Muslim brothers and sisters, how our leader is respected in those circles because he�s a principled man who has stood up for the struggling masses. Every one of the leaders expressed concern about the Minister and his health.

FCN: Thank you.