President Peter Mutharika on Monday challenged fellow African Heads of State to respect national borders which colonialists left.<\/p>\n
Mutharika\u2019s speech, which he delivered at the opening of the 14th Ordinary Session of Pan-African Parliament in South Africa, was a veiled reference to the border row between Malawi and Tanzania over ownership of Lake Malawi\u2014which is called Lake Nyasa in the eastern African country\u2014 with Tanzania claiming part of the lake.<\/p>\n
The dispute is being handled by former presidents of South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique, Thabo Mbeki, Festus Mogae and Joaquim Chissano, respectively.<\/p>\n
In his speech, Mutharika recalled that during Ghana\u2019s 40th independence celebrations on March 6, 1997 in Accra, Tanzania\u2019s founding president, Julius Nyerere, said countries must continue respecting the borders they found after colonialism because \u201cwithout unity, there is no future for Africa\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Resolution 17(1) of the First Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the OAU, all member states solemnly pledged and declared \u201cto respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most outstanding of those forefathers was Julius Nyerere who sponsored the resolution and led Tanzania in playing an active role in respecting the territorial integrity we inherited from colonialism,\u201d Mutharika said.<\/p>\n
He further recalled that from the 1890 Heligoland Treaty to the 1964 Resolution on Border Disputes among African States by the OAU, there has never been a reason for disrespecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfrica did not come to be what it is by mistake. It is then wise to remember that we co-exist peacefully because our forefathers who founded the countries we govern today valued unity in spite of our boundaries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At the opening of the meeting, Mutharika spoke on behalf of English-speaking African countries while President Roch Marc Kabore of Burkina Faso spoke on behalf of Francophone Africa.<\/p>\n
He stressed that unity should be Africa\u2019s key guiding principle in everything so that the continent can realise its potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is impossible for this parliament to achieve anything if we cannot share a common goal. Let us be guided by the wisdom of our people, who in one proverb say to us: \u2018he who does not know where he is going will never know whether he has arrived\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Africans, we can best share a sense of a common destiny when we cultivate a shared critical consciousness of our history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Pan African Parliament was established as an organ of the African Union (AU) in order to ensure full participation of Africans in development and economic integration of the continent.<\/p>\n
The current session is running from May 8 to 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Peter Mutharika on Monday challenged fellow African Heads of State to respect national borders which colonialists left. Mutharika\u2019s speech, which he delivered at the opening of the 14th Ordinary Session of Pan-African Parliament in South Africa, was a veiled reference to the border row between Malawi and Tanzania over ownership of Lake Malawi\u2014which is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46152,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46149\/revisions\/46152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}