Somalia wouldn’t be the first or the last to be dismembered.
Why do we jealously protect and fiercely defend that which we didn’t create?
By MAKAU MUTUA
Can we through our own cartography normatively and on the African map reconstruct the African state to make it our own?
Or are we forever condemned to live under what the White Man concocted for us?
This is a more poignant question especially for those African states that have been unable to cohere into nations, or viable political societies.
Several weeks ago, I opined on Twitter that Somalia, the most dysfunctional state in Africa, must either be dismembered, disaggregated, re-aggregated, or abolished altogether.
LEGAL FICTIONS
I immediately received flak and opprobrium from all manner of pedestrian commenters. Much of the commentary was emotionally charged without any redeeming argumentation. I wasn’t surprised, or offended. That’s because as a student of the African post-colonial state, I fully comprehend the irrational affection that many of us have towards the legal fictions – nonsense on stilts – we call our states. We mistakenly believe that post-colonial states, or any states, are irreversible. I have news for the social media pugilists who went to war with me – it’s not only Somalia that should be terminated, or re-imagined.
I have argued before in my legal scholarship that many African post-colonial states are legal and moral nullities. Virtually all “our” states were slapped together without rhyme or reason by European colonial empires. The imperialists didn’t create the states for our benefit, but for the express purposes of colonising us to extract our resources and oppress us. Thus the internal logic of the African artificial imposed state was corrupt and bereft of salvation.
https://www.nation.co.ke/oped/opinion/- ... index.html
....how can one be upset when I call for Somalia to be re-thought? What more evidence do we need to conclude that Somalia can’t be viable? Let’s be pragmatists and end Somalia’s long nightmare.
