Chairs of the High Council of the African Federation
After two weeks of deliberations, the Virunga peace conference took on a life of its own. With the defeat of the mercenaries and their allies, and Thatcher safely ensconced in the Hague, the West African leaders turned their minds to the post-war order. Conference chair, retired South African Deputy Chief Justice Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, had insisted from the beginning on allowing observers from any African government that wanted to send them. As the West African delegates not only talked about a possible federation, but began working out details, delegates from other governments began getting more and more interested. Early on a Saturday morning, Ethiopian observer Abeba Ghebremichael, who had spent most of the night in a virtual cabinet meeting, took a last shot of coffee, rose to address the plenary, and astonished the West Africans by saying simply "We want in." It took another two years of negotiations, multiple plebiscites, two military coups in Gabon, three in Chad, and an uprising in eSwatini, but on 25 May 2046, the African Federation was born.
The countries that formed the Federation had many different electoral systems, some with directly-elected Presidents, others whose heads of government were elected by the legislature - and of course eSwatini, where no-one had ever voted for a head of state or government. Several countries that were ruled by interim or coalition governments argued that the typical "democratic" approach, where only leaders selected by a winning presidential candidate or political party take office in government was both wasteful of talent, and unnecessarily confrontational. This found support even among traditional parliamentary republics, as the "all talents" approach in negotiations had been bearing fruit. In the end, a one person one vote system was agreed to, with the top seven candidates serving together as the High Council (candidates also had to pass a threshold percentage in each of the six Regions of the Federation), and the candidate with the most votes serving as Chair of the High Council. the Chair was to be head of state, but in the Council, merely first among equals.
2046-2048 Tembeka Ngcukaitobi (interim)
It had become clear even in the first year of negotiations that an interim structure would be needed to properly establish Federal institutions, and prepare the way for continental elections. The negotiators turned to a number of elder statespersons and jurists to form the Interim High Council, and Ngcukaitobi was the obvious choice as chair. In addition to establishing the Federal Electoral Commission, Federal Courts and numerous other structures, the interim High Council commenced the construction of the new federal captial, Kasindi-Ishango, on the shore of Lake Kivu and the Congo-Rwanda border, as well as Transcontinental One, the first federal rail and road corridor, from Pointe Noire via Kasindi-Ishango to Mombasa.
2048-2051 Carmen Pereira (Cabo Verde)
Whilst the full membership of the first elected High Council was a matter of much prediction and speculation during the election campaign, there was never any doubt who would chair High Council. The victor of the war, the leader of the West African Volunteer Field Force, the soldier who captured Mark Thatcher? The woman who avenged her father's death in the Hague, not in blood? She was popular across the continent and beyond.
Her High Council's first two years built on the formidable work done by Ngcukaitobi and his team, with new Federal institutions like the Environmental Commission and the Human and Social Rights Commission, and integrated the Federal armed forces, the Army of All Africa. The Federal government completed Transcontinental One and work had started on Transcontinental Two, from Cape Town to Djibouti, when the unthinkable happened. In early 2050, the umpteenth crisis in the Middle East spiralled into the outbreak of World War III, and South Yemen’s accession talks with Africa catapulted the continent straight into the war.
2051-2054 Carmen Pereira (as Head of the War Council) and Aisha Khoza (as Head of the Domestic Affairs Council)
The Army of All Africa was still finding its feet as a single organization when war broke out. For nearly a year, Pereira shuttled thrice a day between the High Council in Kasindi-Ishango and the Joint Chiefs in Lower Mutwanga, but with the fall of Dodoma in February 2051, it was clear to her than Africa needed a war leader.
Pereira relieved Field Marshall Odekanye, and took direct charge of the war, heading a War Council of Generals and liaison officers of the guerrilla resistance in Somaliland, Egypt, Tanzania, Senegal, and the Congo. The combined efforts of the mountain guerillas, the conventional army, and the electromagnetic pulse weapons of the nascent African space institute broke the back of the invasion at Rusumo Falls in January 2053. Pereira would direct Africa through the war for a further two years, but the continent was never existential threatened again.
During this time, matters unconnected with the war were the responsibility of a rump Council, headed by Aisha Khoza. The South African former businesswoman directed her considerable management acumen and empathy to quality of life and quality of environment issues for the continent, and it was her shoulders that the survival and growth of Federal infrastructure and institutions depended upon.
2054-2059 Fatoumata Keita (Mali)
With the Bougainville Conference, the war ended, and Africa could return to peacetime governance, building, and rebuilding. Delayed elections for a new High Council were held, and Pereira retired to São Vicente.
The elected councilors were mainly a mixture of pre-war political leaders and diplomats, such as Abeba Ghebremichael, and war leaders. Keita, who was elected Chair, was a Malian soldier who had served with Pereira in the West African Volunteer Field Force and later as the senior general of the West Africa Commanded in the Army of All Africa, before her transfer to command the North Rift Valley Front during the war. Her greatest fame came from the liberation of Nairobi and capture of Field Marshall Chelmsford in January 2054.
Most of Keita's term was naturally reconstruction, as well as the completion of pre-war projects like Transcontinental Two, but there were also new initiatives, key among them the eradication of malaria, and the establishment of the Pan African Space Institute. When she retired home to Yanfolila, Keita left behind a continent whose life expectancy had jumped up to 75 and under five mortality dropped down to 12, as well as African colonies on Ganymede and Mars.
2059-2063 Benjamin Moyale (Kenya)
Ben Moyale was not a soldier, as such - they had only basic military training, as was required for civilian administrators within the Army of All Africa. A highly capable administrator, Moyale served in the Army of All Africa as Comptroller of Technical Integration, responsible for such diverse issues as artillery calibre standardisation and cybersecurity integration, before Pereira selected them as Secretary of the War Council. After the war, they entered politics and were elected as Senator for Kenya in the 2054 election. A solid and reliable voice in the Pan African Parliament, they ran for Council in 2059 and narrowly got the highest votes.
There was a dichotomy to Moyale's term: the older councilors, who had held office during the war (and many of them before that) were focused more on consolidating and growing the Federation, completing Transcontinental Three (Port Sudan to Dakar) and Four (Pointe Noire to Tunis) and the Mount Elgon space elevator. On the other hand, there were the youthful councilors, who had generally come into politics after the war, and were referred to as the Vijana (youth in Swahili). Led by the Deputy Chair, the Vijana were far more concerned with social change, leading initiatives such as derecognition of gender classification in government records and equity at federal level for different types of family relationships, marriages and partnerships.
It was not a conflict as such, more a divergence of focus: the Vijana did not oppose the infrastructure and political projects, nor did the Warhorses (as they youngsters called the older councilors) oppose the social changes (aside from two marriage traditionalists), but rather that each group of councilors tended to ignore the other as far as possible. Moyale, while technically a warhorse, got on well with most of the other councilors, and so spent their term trying to keep the councilors listening to each other, and the stress took an increasing toll on their health. A few months into their third year as Chair, Moyale suffered a stroke and died, during a meeting with the Joint Chiefs at Lower Mutwanga.
2063-2064 Kayla Nyikayaramba (Zimbabwe)
With Moyale's passing, the generation of war leaders came to an end. Kayla Nyikayaramba had been only 22 when the war broke out, and lived through it as a pharmacist in the relative peace and safety of inland Zimbabwe. In the second post war election, they had readily captured the youth vote, coming first in Southern, Northeastern and Extraterrestrial Regions, and second to Moyale in East and Central Regions, giving them the Deputy Chair's position on the Council. Moyale had been happy to throw their weight behind several of Nyikayaramba's social initiatives, as well as the establishment of the African colony on Proteus.
Nyikayaramba completed their Council term as Chair, before declining nomination for re-election, instead leaving politics, training for space, and doing pharmaco-medical research the rest of her life on Proteus.
2064- Rachel Bruktawit Elias (Ganymede)
The child of platinum singer Betty G, Rachel was one of the first generation of Ethiopians to use matronymic names alongside their patronymic - or as we now say, both parenymic names. After the war, during which they worked in infrastructure, Rachel retrained as a cosmoengineer at the Pan African Space Institute, and served on Mars, and later on Ganymede. It was during this period that they became involved in politics, as a campaigner for extra-terrestrial voting rights, and was elected as the first Senator for Ganymede in the Pan African Parliament. During their second term, Rachel led the successful campaign for establishing the Extraterrestrial Region as the seventh Region of the Federation, and in 2058 delivered a solid majority of the Region's votes for Nyikayaramba. When Nyikayaramba informed Rachel that they wanted to leave politics and return to science, Rachel met them on Mars, intending to persuade them to reconsider. By the end of the two days they spent together, it was Rachel themself who agreed to stand for High Council.
And so now the child of the home of African unity, but one who has lived their working life as an extraterrestrial, is sworn in to lead the High Council.