As you read this, AFRICA still has no permanent seat – no seat at all at the United Nations Security Council. This is one of the reasons AFRICAN leaders of thought insist the west and its institutions take Africa for a ride. Yet, the same UN finds it convenient to motivate and Green-Light a military attack on an African country by African nations on behalf of a European nation that sits permanently on the UN Security Council. I find this very troubling and confusing.
The billion dollar question is: Why haven’t Africans been given their right of place at the UN Security Council? Because this long struggle by African nations for respect, dignity, and recognition on the world stage are certainly not new. Well, if you care to know, there’s a very dark history to this.
As is widely known, only four independent African countries represented the continent when 50 representatives of different countries met in San Francisco, California, in October of 1945 to complete the Charter of the United Nations. With the current 54 African member countries of the UN, it is inexplicable that only four African states – Egypt, Liberia, Ethiopia, and South Africa – were part of the founding members of the UN in 1945 (when UN was formed.) Yes. Only these four. Reason? Liberia and Ethiopia were never colonized. Egypt already had its independence on February 28, 1922, and South Africa was under a White, Apartheid rule and of course those guys identify as South Africans, so they were there as Africans representing Africa, even though they were there as colonizers who were later dethroned when the apartheid regime ended in SA. That’s how only 4 Africans countries made it to the founding of the UN. What happened to the rest? They had absolutely no say other than the SAY of their owners, the colonial powers of Europe.
As long as these same colonials were at the founding event, the colonies didn’t have to be there because they belonged to their owners and didn’t have any freedom to attend such an event on their own. Such was the depth of our hopelessness under colonial Europe.
Fast forward several decades later, after we’ve been told all over Africa that we now have “independence,” why is it that the UN has refused to let the so called free nations of Africa have a seat at its security council? Doesn’t it all mean that the whole independence declarations thing across the continent were mere charades? Doesn’t it all mean that the UN still secretly recognizes the colonial powers as the rightful owners of these African nations? If these are all untrue, why hasn’t Africa been given its permanent seat at the UN Security Council? Shouldn’t this have happened before seeking to use AFRICA to fight Africans on African soil on behalf of a colonial power?
Putin was right when he declared that Africa’s seat at the UN Security Council is not negotiable and must be treated with extreme urgency. If we had true leaders in my part of Africa, they’d be demanding more respect from the UN now, rather than turning their butts to an organization that’s refused to recognize their rights to a life free of stifling colonial entanglements and sundry imperialist encumbrances. Who knows, maybe this is Africa’s time and maybe we’ll finally be able to bury self and make a break for it, once and for all.
Okechukwu is a media consultant. He posted this on his X handle, @jcokechukwu
