Africa: Is the Crimea Referendum a Good Model for Africa?

What would happen if African peoples where given the chance to vote in referenda to decide which country they wanted to be part of or if they wanted their own?

The referendum in Crimea is a dangerous precedent reminiscent of the Austrian Anschluss and the other uprisings in eastern Europe to join Germany in the 1930s. I used to think that Europe's states had grown naturally, organically - in contrast to Africa's imposed borders. That I thought was a major reason for Africa's weak states and small local wars.

Then I read up on the post World War One settlement and discovered that Europe's borders had been reset by three men: Woodrow Wilson, the American president, and two Europeans; David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, and Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France.

As a result of the lines they drew on the map, the tribes of Europe were reorganised, some freed from foreign rule, some forced into countries they felt no loyalty to and some displaced and forced to leave their homes. It was a mess and planted some of the seeds of World War II.

Africa's arbitrary borders, mostly drawn by people who had never set foot in the continent, have always been an obvious target for renegotiation. But Africa's first rulers, who foresaw chaos and disintegration if the nation states were reconfigured, ruled it out.

"Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each State" was one of the founding principles of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the forerunner of the African Union. Despite all the wars, internal and external, this principle has been pretty much adhered to by both presidents and people.

Loyalty to an African state is not always related to the ability of that state to make the lives of its people better. Patriotism, an emotional thing, does not take these benefits into account, even in countries where the majority of citizens are marginalised or oppressed by the government.

Even in the catastrophic recent meltdown of South Sudan after just two years of independence, no one is advocating return to rule from Khartoum. In the dying days of Mobutu's Zaire (now the DRC) I was astonished to find that people felt it to be a great country. I asked why Katanga, the rich south east province, didn't secede - as it had in 1960. My suggestion was greeted with shocked surprise.