H.I.M words concerning unity
``Ethiopia is a nation fully committed to
African unity and to the greater guise of world peace and shall continue to
support and strengthen the O.A.U., which was established as an African
instrument for peace and progress.
O.A.U.
The Organization of African Unity, is an organization which the people of our
vast continent have established with a view to performing certain specific
tasks.Briefly speaking, the organization is established for the purpose of
protecting in a better fashion, the independence of African States.
It is also meant to expedite the economic and social progress through
cooperation of African peoples. It also has the important task of assisting in
the maintenance of international peace and security.
We know that unity can be and has been attained among men of the most disparate
origins, that difference of race, of religion, of culture, of tradition, are no
insurmountable obstacles to the coming together of peoples.
We stand today on the stage of world affairs, before the audience of world
opinion. We have come together to assert our role in the direction of world
affairs and to discharge our duty to the great continent whose two hundred and
fifty million people we lead. Africa is today at mid-course, in transition from
the Africa of Yesterday to the Africa of Tomorrow. Even as we stand here, we
move from the past into the future The task on which we have
embarked, the making of Africa, will not wait we must act, to shape and mould
the future and leave our imprint on events as they pass into history.We seek, at
this meeting, to determine whither we are going and to chart the
course of our destiny. It is no less important that we know whence we came. An
awareness of our past is essential to the establishment our personality
and our identity as Africans.
This world was not crested piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier
than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less
than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues
and faults. Thousands of years ago,civilizations flourished in Africa which
suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those
centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent.
Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.
The obscurity which enshrouds the centuries which elapsed beteeen those earliest
days and the rediscovery of Africa is being gradually dispersed. What is certain
is that during those long years Africans were born, lived and died. Men on
other parts of this earth occupied themselves with their own concerns and,
in their conceit,proclaimed that the world began and ended at their horizons.
All unknown to them, Africa developed in its own pattern, growing in its own
life and, in the Nineteenth Century, finally re-emerged into the world's
consciousness.
The events of the past hundred and fifty years require no extended recitation
from us. The period of colonialism into which we were plunged culminated with
our continent fettered and bound; with our once proud and free peoples reduced
to humiliation and slavery; with Africans terrain cross-hatched and checker -
boarded by artificial and arbitrary boundaries Many of us, during those bitter
yearn were overwhelmed in battle, and those who escaped conquest did so at
the costs of desperate resistance and bloodshed. Others were sold into bondage
as the price extracted by the colonialists for the 'protection' which they
extended and the possessions of which they disposed. Africa was a physical
resource to be exploited and Africans were chattels to be purchased bodily or,
at best, peoples to be reduced to vasselage and lackeyhood. Africa was the
market for the produce of other nations and the source of the raw materials with
which their factories were fed.
Today, Africa has emerged from this dark passage, Our Armageddon is past. Africa
has been reborn as a free continent and Africans have been reborn as free men.
The blood that was shed and the sufferings that were endured are today Africa's
advocates for freedom and unity. Those men who refused to accept the judgement
passed upon them by the colonisers, who held unswervingly through the darkest
hours to a vision of an African emancipated from political,economic and
spiritual domination, will be remembered and revered wherever Africans meet.Many
of them never set foot on this continent. Others were born and died here. What
we may utter today can add little to the heroic struggle of those who, by their
example, have shown us how precious are freedom and human dignity and of how
little value is life without them.Their deeds are witten in history.
Africa's victory, although proclaimed, is not yet total, and areas of resistance
still remain.Today, we name as our first great task the final liberating of
those Africans still dominated by foreign exploitation and control. With the
goal in sight and uriqualified triumph within our grasp, let us not now falter
or lag or relax. We must make one final supreme effort now,when the struggle
grows weary, when so much has been lost, that the thrilling sense of
achievement has brought us near satiation. Our liberty is meaningless unless all
Africans are free. our brothers in the Rhodesias, in Mozambique, in Angola, in
South Africa cry out in anguish for our support and assistance. We must urge on
their behalf their peaceful accessionto independence. We must align and identify
ourselves with all aspects of their liberation andnot fail to back our words
with action. To them we say, your pleas shall not go
unheeded. The resources of Africa and all freedom-loving nations are marshalled
in your
service. Be of good heart, for your deliverance is at hand.
1.
One important lesson that we have learnt from the experience of the last ten
years is that we cannot leave the further progress of African unity to take its
own direction at its own pacewithout active guidance from us.
The volume of intra-African trade, which at present, accounts for less than ten
percent of our total foreign trade should be progressively increased, so that by
the end of the decade trade among African countries should occupy a significant
place in the exports of each of our countries.
2. African countries should establish progressive targets for reducing tariffs
and other trade barriers among themselves.
3. Our Ministers charged with the responsibility of economic planning should
hold regular consultations so as to harmonise our development policies and plans
and to open up potential avenues for the expansion of intra-African
trade.Through regular consultations, we should undertake to identify the need
for and to establish industries which may cater to our common needs.
This is important, because the scale on which modern industries can become
viable today necessitates that we should create in Africa wide economic bases to
support a balanced economic state.``