In our series of letters from African journalists, film-maker and columnist Farai Sevenzo looks at the 50-year long quest for African unity and prosperity.

A friend of mine we call "The General" was born on 25 May, sometime in the 1960s.

For any African, this is an auspicious day on which to enter the world.

Africa Day falls on 25 May because it was the day on which the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) came into being.

It was the birth of an idea to unite Africa's emerging nations so that they could find a common stand with which to fight poverty and insecurity, to harness their collective resources and rid the continent of the remains of colonialism and apartheid still clinging to Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and in many other peoples' heads.


The madmen did not make the notion of an African Union unsound”

My friend, The General, is of that generation who have grown up twinned to an idea Bob Marley sang about in Africa Unite.

An idea that is only half a century old, but one which has always been discussed with a whiff of condensation by the powerful and, truth be told, an idea that has ridden these five decades on the backs of visionaries and madmen.  READ MORE