Read Time: 2 minutes
By: Abena Osegu Boateng
Yesterday was a sad day for Africans everywhere. The Pan African Parliament failed to elect its leadership and its members spent precious time trading blows and insults.
Julius Malema, the maverick South African populist politician even went to the extent of threating to kill a Member of Parliament from Mali.
The shocking news is not the fighting and insults, reprehensible as it is. What is most shocking is the fact that in May, 2021, African leaders are still fighting over being English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Official sources told news organs that the fighting erupted because some parliamentarians wanted to set aside a rule which provides that the election of leaders should be on rotational basis between English speakers and French speakers.
Can you believe that this senseless dispute flared up into blows and kicks and eventually manifested in death threats?
How can the Pan African Parliament serve the interests of the African people, when its members place such premium on being French and English?
The passion they exhibit in their sittings is not about building a new and fair international economic and information order but who is French and who is English. It is not even about the pursuit of the unity of the African people in the face of mounting racism against Africans.
The peoples of African rejected, fought, and defeated colonialism only for their leaders to wear vestiges of colonialism as badges of honour in 2021.
Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure and Patrice Lumumba must be crying in their graves over this betrayal by today’s leaders of Africa.