Africa needs one president – Mugabe
2013-01-16 15:04
Special Report
Chinese vice premier Wang Yang has urged Zimbabwe to ensure peace and political stability ahead of elections this year.
Cape Town – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe says the forthcoming
African Union summit should discuss the appointment of a president of Africa to
foster unity among Africans, a report said on Wednesday.
Addressing journalists after meeting with President Thomas
Boni Yayi of Benin in Harare, Mugabe said such a move "would also ensure that
member states adhere to the founding principles of the continental body",
Newsday online reported.
"Yes, we need a president for Africa," Mugabe said. "That is
what we are going to discuss at the AU summit. Africa is not a united
continent. We are not at the stage our founding fathers wanted us to be when
the organ was formed."
Mugabe said the AU had failed to integrate Africans, with
some seen in the context of Anglophones and others Francophones.
The proposal to set up a United States of Africa was first
made by the slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1999 as a way of ending the
continent's conflicts, but it failed to secure enough support from his African
counterparts with some suspecting Gaddafi wanted to rule Africa.
Yayi who is the
outgoing AU chairperson said he was in Zimbabwe to discuss the challenges
Africa was facing as a continent and to get advice on ways to end conflict, in
countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Central African
Republic, among others.
- News24
