Time holds all the answers – even to Somalia and the colonial project

This would require allies prepared to tell it the truth about the impact of its armed presence — be it by proxy or not — in the region’s conflicts, especially in Somalia, where past US support to Siad Barre’s nightmare regime has not been entirely forgotten.

The Americans’ real challenge will be to avoid finding themselves beholden to regimes that seek to wed themselves to its interests for the purpose of prolonging their own survival, which comes with the risk of eventually creating new Somalias in their own territories.

A true friend will tell you what you need to know, as opposed to what you may wish to hear, and the US needs to be told that regimes that do not practice constitutional rule at home have no ability to export it to Somalia, as you cannot export what you do not have.

Unfortunately, the voices driving the African Union’s Somalia policy — such as Uganda’s — are the very regimes in question.

They cannot honestly discuss the relative merits of an orderly Czech-like break-up, since the essential ingredients that led to the collapse of Somalia are present in the fiefdoms of all the European-founded African states that they head.

If they were normal governments of normal countries, the African Union would have come up with a more coherent and consistent position on the question of how best to help the people of the former Somalia, instead of promoting the fetishism of colonial boundaries.

It is such intellectual cowardice that has led to the ridiculous spectacle of Ugandan soldiers dying in an attempt to impose a “federal” government on Somalia, having returned from shooting Ugandans dead for demanding actual federalism back home.

It is this absence of an organic, logical policy rooted in a coherent worldview that best demonstrates the extent to which there is no real link between pan-Africanism and the Amisom mission, and the extent to which therefore the mission will exist for reasons quite divorced from legitimate African aspirations.

What is left is to see how long it will take for the Western powers to realise just how comical their hope that AU dictatorships will bring constitutional democracy to Somalia makes them look.

What they should accept is the fact that Africa is moving from the failed, unmanageable post-colonial polities, as the transition to “post-post-colonial” political arrangements gathers pace on the continent.

Whether it will be a peaceful, managed process, or a violent and chaotic one, depends on decisions they make now.

As western Ugandans also say: “Beware of time, as it holds all the answers.”

Kalundi Serumaga is a political and cultural activist based in Kampala