Dignity Does Not Stop at the Flag
Sovereignty should allow peoples to choose their future, not only allow their governments to defend their prerogatives. For FedAfrica, African unity must meet the same test: make freedom more real, without moving domination somewhere else.
In Conakry, on 25 August 1958, Ahmed Sékou Touré told Charles de Gaulle: “There is no dignity without freedom” (transcript of the speech, in French; our translation). His argument tied the refusal of colonial subordination to the recognition of the dignity and the right to independence of African peoples (text of the speech).
This demand deserves more than a commemoration. We propose to make it a test for judging our institutions: do they really give citizens the power to decide, to challenge and to build their future?
A sovereignty measured by freedom
Owning a flag should never excuse us from asking about real power. Who sets the collective priorities? Who negotiates the commitments made in the country's name? Who can examine them, debate them and demand accountability?
In our view, being sovereign does not mean being able to live without others. It means being able to choose one's relations with them, to know their obligations and to have the means to defend one's interests. A freely negotiated cooperation is not a humiliation; an imposed dependence does not become acceptable because it is called a partnership.
We must, however, avoid a misreading: human dignity is not a reward granted only to independent peoples. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes it in every person and states that rights do not depend on the political status of a person's territory (preamble and articles 1 and 2, text of the Declaration). Domination therefore does not remove the dignity of those who endure it; it violates the respect owed to them.
The people must not disappear behind the state
Defending external sovereignty while refusing internal freedom would be a contradiction. A government that demanded respect abroad but treated its own citizens' criticism as treason would fall short of the very standard it invokes.
The sovereignty we defend must belong to the people, not become the property of a president, a party or an administration. It should take the form of accountable institutions, an independent judiciary and the possibility of replacing leaders peacefully. The national interest cannot serve as a pretext for removing public decisions from debate.
Reading Sékou Touré does not oblige us to turn the man into an unquestionable model. It obliges us instead to apply to every power, including one that speaks in the name of liberation, the demand for freedom that we take from that sentence. We must say it plainly: the government Touré led itself imprisoned and killed opponents (on Camp Boiro).
To unite without submitting
African unity must be examined with the same rigor. A federation would not become legitimate by its continental scale alone: it would have to show what it makes possible to decide better and to guarantee better.
The 1958 speech itself envisaged voluntary transfers of certain powers within a Franco-African association, while affirming the right to independence (transcript of the speech). That project must not be confused with the one FedAfrica defends; it nonetheless invites us to distinguish power shared by consent from submission imposed.
Our conviction is that an African federation could increase its members' capacity to act by letting them exercise certain responsibilities together. But that possibility is not a guarantee. Common powers would have to be clearly delimited, representatives democratically chosen, and citizens' rights protected against abuses by the centre as well as by local powers.
We do not defend a union in which the smallest would be reduced to silence. We defend a union whose rules would let everyone take part, and whose institutions would have to answer for their actions.
Freedom as the measure of unity
The decisive question is therefore not only whether states would agree to share part of their sovereignty. It is whether that sharing would give peoples more hold on their destiny.
That is the debate FedAfrica wants to open: not choosing between dignity and unity, but building a unity worthy of its citizens. A unity that protects differences, makes power accountable and never asks for silence in exchange for belonging.
Let us not only ask who carries the flag. Let us ask who can decide under that flag, who can speak freely in it and who can have their rights respected there. Only on that condition does sovereignty become lived freedom, and does unity deserve to be chosen.