3rd January 2024, Windhoek/Namibia  -  Wishes 97 / 98 / 99

In the name of Peace and Justice.

I have three wishes today, which I present to you in the name of Peace and Justice - in the hope they may be fulfilled.

All of these three wishes are about Sub-Saharan Africa. Basically, I repeat what I already spelled out in my introductory chapter Africa. It's about the necessity to form a political union of all African countries, the working out of a huge development plan for the whole region, and a scheme for the financing of such plan..

As for the political union, that's the toughest part. My wish is that the leaders and the peoples of the countries concerned come together and agree on the establishment of one single common union, with one common constitution, one common government, one common currency, one common military. The Pan-African Parliament shall consist of three chambers: an Upper House (with two members each of every country), a Lower House (with a total of, say, 500 representatives, elected proportionally to the size of each country's total population, see example attached), and a Peace Council, made up of, say, 100 of the most distinguished peace activists of the region.

I could envisage a government made up of nine ministers, representing the different ethnic regions and languages and the different political parties of the union, with one of them acting as formal President and Head of State for a period of twelve months, similar to the system at work in Switzerland.

All border disputes have to be settled once and for all, in a peaceful, just manner. What's more, all national borders, that had been drawn at will by the colonial powers, should be reconsidered and redrawn in accordance with precolonial realities concerning tribal, linguistic, cultural, even economic, adherence. No present-day national border shall be considered sacrosanct.

It goes without saying that all sorts of corruption has to be stamped out in the most vigorous way.

Within the context of such new political union, this is my second wish for today. A huge development plan should be worked out, covering every aspect of human needs, starting from schools and hospitals/clinics of the highest standard, to safe high-quality housing, and a wide variety of infrastructural projects such as roads, railway, electricity, communication, industries, and so on. The safeguarding of healthy available food and drinking water in abundance everywhere, at all times, must be a top priority.

Such a development plan will cost huge amounts of money. And so here I come to my third wish for today. Once a viable, stable, trust-worthy political union in Sub-Saharan Africa has been established and a sound development plan presented, the international community and, foremost, the old colonial powers who have built their economic success on the enslavement and exploitation of the African continent, are asked to provide the necessary funds to put in effect such development plan - through grants, loans, gifts, investments, joint ventures, whatever.

A debt has to be paid by rich Western countries for past crimes against humanity, perpetrated in Africa through slavery, colonisation, economic exploitation, and many other wrongdoings. I've put that debt at some 13 trillion USD (13'000'000'000'000), the equivalent of 1 MIO USD for every one of the approximately 13 million Africans enslaved and deported to the Americas. This should be the minimum amount I consider adequate for the financing of said African development plan. 

Such are my three wishes for today, which I present to you in the name of Peace and Justice, in the hope they may be fulfilled.

In the name of Peace and Justice, thank you!