When former South African President Thabo Mbeki spoke at a recent event marking the sixty-third anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – which morphed into the African Union (AU) in 2002 – he sounded less like a retired statesman and more like a distressed custodian of a fading dream of a united Africa.

Mbeki may not have been among the generation of leaders who gathered in Addis Ababa in May 1963 to establish the OAU, but his pan-African credentials are not in doubt. Through his central role in the transformation of the OAU into the AU and his championing of the African Renaissance and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, he has been one of the continent’s most articulate and consistent advocates of African unity, self-reliance and a collective destiny.

In recalling that fading ethos of solidarity, Mbeki offered a revealing anecdote from 2001, when Southern African leaders quietly agreed that Festus Mogae, the late former President of Botswana, should approach Zambia’s Frederick Chiluba to dissuade him from pursuing a controversial third term as President.

That episode, modest as it may sound today, reflects a time when African leaders felt a collective responsibility for not only one another’s economies and security but also for the democratic health and constitutional integrity of neighbouring nations.

Mbeki also regaled his audience with an anecdote illustrating the extraordinary solidarity many African governments once extended to South African liberation movements. He recalled how an ANC cadre stationed in Lusaka, the movement’s headquarters-in-exile for much of the anti-apartheid struggle, had been assigned to receive arriving comrades at the airport and therefore enjoyed access to otherwise restricted areas.

The cadre allegedly abused those privileges by assisting Zambians involved in the drug trade. Yet, when Zambian authorities uncovered the scheme, they quietly requested the ANC to remove him from the country to avoid embarrassing a liberation movement fighting to overthrow apartheid in South Africa.

These stories were intended to illustrate a deeper point, namely that, in Mbeki’s view, Africa has regressed from an earlier ethic of solidarity, mutual responsibility and shared political purpose.

It was against this background that Mbeki turned to what some regard as growing anti-African foreigner sentiment in South Africa, a characterisation rejected by those most vocal in expressing such views, who argue that their stance is not aimed at Africans generally, but at those who are in the country illegally.

Mbeki views this development as incompatible with the ideals that shaped the continent’s liberation struggles.

I must hasten to add that what’s happening in South Africa has precedent elsewhere on the continent and is often a symptom of an economy under strain. West Africa offers a particularly instructive example. In the early 1980s, as Nigeria’s oil boom reversed and economic conditions deteriorated, the authorities expelled a large number of migrants, including more than one-million Ghanaians, many of whom had been drawn to Nigeria during earlier years of prosperity.

Ghana had earlier, in 1969, also expelled foreign nationals, including Nigerians, amid its own post-independence pressures.

This illustrates how quickly the language of solidarity can give way to the politics of economic survival.

The same spirit of solidarity that once led to Chiluba – Zambia’s second post-independence leader – being dissuaded from amending the Constitution to extend his tenure could be put to far broader use today, had we not “regressed”, in Mbeki’s words.

It might, for example, be channelled into quiet but firm engagements with the leaders of countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique, encouraging them to strengthen governance and economic management so that citizens do not feel compelled to vote with their feet and seek a better life in South Africa, whose economy is not in the best shape.

As matters stand, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is hell-bent on extending his second and final term by a further two years beyond its constitutional limit in 2028. Unlike in the past, when Mogae was mandated to persuade Chiluba to step back from similar ambitions, I am not aware of any comparable discreet effort by Southern African leaders urging the Zimbabwean leader to adhere to established term limits.

But it’s not too late to reclaim something of the spirit that animated Africa’s early leaders in 1963, namely the belief that solidarity shouldn’t be a slogan but rather a practical commitment to mutual responsibility and the shared stability of neigbouring nations.