How could they tell him no? Muammar Gaddafi, resplendent in the gold brocade robes that he probably made from his mother’s curtains and wearing his usual bug-eye sunglasses, was urging all the other African leaders to join him in creating the United States of Africa. The world’s oldest teenager had just been made chairman of the African Union, and this was his Big Idea. The African presidents and prime ministers heard him out patiently — which took some time, for Gaddafi, who has ruled Libya for the past 40 years, is used to people hearing him out patiently at quite some length. If they are Libyans, they then say, “Yes, sir. Excellent idea,” so his expectations in this department have also grown over the years.

The other African leaders were not going to say that, and indeed some of them had been reluctant to let Gaddafi become the head of the African Union. It was North Africa’s turn this year, so it was awkward to say no, but on the other hand Gaddafi is so eccentric and downright bizarre....

Last August, for example, he invited some 200 traditional kings, princes, sultans, sheikhs and chiefs from all over Africa to come to Libya. Most of these tribal leaders are not wealthy men, and joining his “forum of traditional leaders” meant free trips and lots of gifts, so they came to Benghazi — and dutifully declared that Gaddafi was Africa’s “king of kings”. His usual egomania, certainly, but Gaddafi was also trying to build support for his “United States of Africa” project. Few of the other African Union leaders who met in Addis Ababa recently approve of Gaddafi’s forum of traditional rulers or think that a “United States of Africa” is a good idea. But in the end, despite all their misgivings, Gaddafi got the job of the AU chair anyway.

At the final evening’s session, Gaddafi rambled on for hours about his great idea. It was well after midnight when Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni walked over to him and whispered in his ear that it was past everybody else’s bedtime. As they departed, Gaddafi remarked that “silence gives consent” — so unless they openly oppose him at the next summit, the United States of Africa will then automatically come into existence.

Single identity

It won’t. The African Union works by consensus, and almost all of its 53 presidents and prime ministers think “the US of A” is a terrible idea. Cynics might say that’s just because their own jobs would vanish in an Africa with a single army, a single currency and a single passport. But the men and women in that room probably had close to a thousand years of political experience as African leaders between them, and they were not all cynics.

It was Gaddafi himself who pointed to the fundamental problem when he said, at the same summit, that Africa is essentially tribal. Multi-party democracy leads to bloodshed because the parties get tribalized, Gaddafi explained, and therefore the right model for Africa is his own country, Libya, where there are no parties and no elections.

Africa’s biggest problem is too many small ethnic groups and few big ones. One African friend long ago suggested to me that the only solution was a pan-African dictator, a Stalin who would kill off all the ethnic demagogues and unify the continent under a single “African” identity. But even Stalin did not succeed, as the Chechens, the Ukrainians, the Georgians and dozens of other post-Soviet ethnic groups demonstrate.

The alternative approach, which is to build a national identity slowly while trying to maintain a non-tribalized democracy, is hard work, but it kills fewer people and can succeed in the end. The model for the African Union is the European Union, a loose association of democracies with long separate histories, not the United States of America with its single shared identity. It is probably the right model.