Organization of African Unity (OAU) celebrated its quarter-century in 1988. In 1989 Salim Ahmed Salim was elected Secretary-General. Until then OAU’s twin missions had been Africa’s liberation and defending the territorial integrity of African states.

Salim arrived in time to participate in the most difficult final chapter of liberation — Namibia’s transition to independence and the concluding struggle against political apartheid.

Salim Salim became the first real post-colonial Secretary-General of OAU. By "postcolonial" we mean when basic decolonization in Africa was completed. What was to be the new postcolonial agenda of this Pan-African organization?

In June 1991 in Abuja, Nigeria, Salim called upon Africa’s Heads of State to confront the need for a new postcolonial agenda. The Abuja Summit (with thirty three delegations led by Heads of State) passed the Treaty of the African Economic Community. This became the foundation of what later became the African Union in the year 2001. It was the Abuja summit 10 years earlier which had envisaged an economic union for the continent, a Pan-African parliament, a Pan-African court of justice, and a single currency by the year 2025.

At the summit of 1992 in Dakar, OAU’s postcolonial agenda included the African Diaspora. The Reverend Jesse Jackson from the United States addressed the summit. And Secretary-General Salim presented to the Heads of State 12 names of a new Group of Eminent Persons on Reparations, "sworn in" before the summit, and entrusted with exploring the modalities of a crusade for reparations for the historical enslavement of the African peoples. Salim Salim made it possible for an ad hoc committee of this Reparations Group to meet every year (including the year 2000) and to promote the debate on reparations in the United States as well as Africa. Today the issue of African Reparations has become world news.

In Cairo in 1993 Salim presented proposals for a new OAU role in conflict resolution throughout Africa. There emerged the OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution and the equally ambitious concept of an OAU Peace Fund. Salim Ahmed Salim was ahead of his time when he asked OAU to establish a much-needed peace keeping force of its own. The summit was not ready for such a force yet.

Although handicapped by inadequate resources and limited by weak institutional support, OAU since then has been involved in the quest for solutions from Burundi to Sierra Leone, from the Comoros to the Congo. OAU was also sensitive to the plight of the Libyan people under United Nations sanctions, and played a major role in having most of those sanctions lifted or suspended. The Libyan leadership was so grateful for this Pan-African support that Tripoli became one of the main driving forces behind the transition to the new African Union.

It is not often that a servant of Heads of State becomes more famous than some of those Heads of State themselves. Henry Kissinger was not more famous than President Richard M. Nixon, but Kissinger certainly became much more famous than President Gerald R. Ford whom he also served from1974 to 1976.

Salim Salim is not more famous than his late mentor Julius K. Nyerere. But over the years Salim Salim has become a more illustrious African figure than most African Heads of State since independence. He has risen high without losing his sense of modesty and his respect for the Heads of State whom he has served.

This son of Africa has synthesized in himself patriotism with vision, professionalism with diligence, and Pan-Africanism with wider human concerns. He has served as the first postcolonial Secretary-General of institutionalized Pan-Africanism, and helped to reformulate the movement’s postcolonial agenda.

CONCLUSION

Let me conclude in symbolic language. King Solomon of the Jews bequeathed to the English language two adjectives based on his name – the adjective "Solomonid"[with a d] applied mainly to the Royal Ethiopian Dynasty descended from Menelik I, and the adjective "Solomonic"[with a c], referring to the wisdom of King Solomon.

OAU, in its inception, was originally hosted by a Solomonid Emperor — "Solomonid" with "d". The Organization matured into its postcolonial role under the administrative leadership of a wise and Solomonic Secretary-General — "Solomonic" with a "c". Haile Selassie spread out the original Solomonid carpet of welcome for OAU. A quarter of a century later a man arrived in Addis Ababa from the South West. This new man synthesized "Solomonic" with his own name "Salimanic", and helped to change the course of the history of institutionalized Pan-Africanism.

We salute MR. AFRICA, Salim Ahmed Salim – servant of the continent, hero of its people, and one of the architects of Africa’s future.

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