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"id": 227040,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/227040/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Raila",
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"legal_name": "Raila Amolo Odinga",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I would also like to add my voice to that of those who have spoken in support of this Report. I am very happy to note that the issue of the situation in Eastern Africa was discussed at the ACP-EU meeting. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will begin by saying that I am a Pan- Africanist. I am an afro-optimist as opposed to an afro-pessimist. In other words, I believe in the ability of the people of Africa to develop Africa. I have been saying year in, year out that time is gone when we kept on lamenting about our colonial past. We have kept on blaming the colonialists for our under- development. Just last month, Ghana celebrated her 50th independence anniversary. In the life of a human being or a nation, 50 years is a long time. That is the time African countries began becoming independent. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the history of the independence of Africa is a sad one. Today, we are still talking about instability, ethnic clashes, inter-ethnic wars and so on. It is so sad that we are still witnessing situations like the one in Darfur. Likewise, we have seen a very terrible situation in Somalia where a super power has even come in and became a friend, to try to bring the so-called order in that Government. That is a clear indication that Africans have failed, in a number of ways, to govern themselves properly. The issue of governance is so crucial to the instability that we are witnessing in the rest of Africa, whether it is in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and so on. Therefore, we, as the newer generation of leaders, need to have vision and be much more proactive in coming up with solutions to that problem. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for a long time, we had the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which had tied its own hands through a clause in its Charter which said that it should never interfere with the internal affairs of a sovereign state. So, for a long time, we had African dictators who were rubbing rub-shots over their populations and the rest of Africa was not able to move in and assist the people who were suffering. During that time, the Cold War was ranging on. During the Cold War, so long as you said that you were an ally of the West in the war against communism, nobody cared how you ran your country. That is how we created dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin Dada, Kamuzu Banda and Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic. Idi Amin could lynch hundreds of thousands of Ugandans and yet, he could still be elected as the Chairman of the OAU. That was a big shame! After the end of the Cold War, things changed. The West began to apply a different criteria for Africa. New words were invented in the Western vocabulary. There were words such as \"transparency\", \"accountability\" and \"good governance\" in the management of public affairs. Those words were unknown during the era of the Cold War. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, some of the progressive people who have been fighting against political dictatorship on the African Continent must come up now and consolidate the gains that have been made at a great cost to the people of Africa. We must not allow the retrogressive forces to roll back the gains that have been made at a great cost. We must move forward. That is why I fully support the recommendation that has been made here with regard to the Government of Sudan. What is happening in Darfur today is nothing short of genocide and racism of extreme magnitude. It must, therefore, stand condemned by civilised progressive Africans."
}