"We, the Peoples of these United Nations ... " So starts the Preamble of the United Nations Charter, in an acknowledgement to the hopes and aspirations of the American Constitution. In contrast, the African Union's Constitutive Act starts with these prophetic words: "We, Heads of State and Government ... "

Guns thundered over Pretoria today as French President Emmanuel Macron visited the Presidency, fresh from a Africa-France summit aimed at cementing a post-colonial economic and political relationship that affirms the emigration of hundreds of thousands of destitute and marginalized Africans to Europe, and a reliance on military solutions to political problems in Central Africa. 

On the agenda will be the development by Total of France of oil and gas discoveries in the Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique, where insurgents from a marginalized, dispossessed population took up arms to try to regain some form of control over their land and their lives. Total, setting up a gas plant, displaced more than 556 fishing and farming families, leaving them destitute. President Macron has proposed to Mozambican President Nyusi a French security cordon. In the past, Russian contractors failed to secure similar Russian developments, and a South African private security company shared with the Mozambican forces and indigenous insurgents seeking an ISIS franchise a leading role as violators of human rights in this sad region. 

The Southern African regional body, SADC, decided, in the last few days, to send troops to Cabo Delgado to combat terrorism in support of a fellow Head of State and to ensure 'lasting peace and security.' President Nyusi felt that the summit had adopted measures to address the root causes of terrorist actions by strengthening the operational capacity of security forces. The European Union and the United States have likewise committed support. Not a word of establishing governance and eliminating poverty.

To repeat what has been said before: This region has suffered from lack of governance, from poverty and an absence of economic development for years. Amnesty International documented in detail the exploitation of this region by illegal logging, exploitation of the gemstone deposits which might contain half of the world's rubies, massive oil and gas deposits and the atrocities by security forces and insurgents in this conflict. It is clear that the insurgents, faced with government repression, sought support and the only support they could get, sketcy as it is, was from Islamist forces in the Congo and elsewhere.

The American Revolution was based on the idea and spirit of John Brown, whose body may be mouldering in the grave, but whose soul goes marching on. Insurgents, disaffected people may be shot, starved, expelled, the extremists driven out of the area, but the poverty, the marginalization and repression of a people will spread and create an ulcer in the region that will last for years.