Pan-African Technocratic Union

## History

The brainchild of Hector de Klerk, a South African man of Afrikaner descent, one of the world’s most successful hypertech inventor and one of the richest man on the planet right after Maximilian Kessler, his former employer.

While he worked for Kessler Industries, de Klerk was responsible for some of the earliest publically available cybernetics on the market before he founded his own economic empire.

The death of de Klerk’s diplomat parents from a terrorist attack in 1981 lead to his manifestation as a parahuman hypertech inventor and hyper-cognate with precognitive abilities based on data trend analysis. The same incident inspired him to ‘fix’ Africa’s problems, which he tried first through legal means but meeting with little success in the destabilized continent would lead him to try more drastic actions.

Hector would reappear in 1994 at the head of an army of high-tech soldiers in the midst of the of the collapse of the country of Zaire and the Rwandan genocide, his army quickly defeated local forces and declared the foundation of a new nation; The Pan-African Technocratic Union.

The following two decades saw a rapid expansion of the Union’s territory, conquering other nations already brought to their knees by internal conflict, war, foreign interference and the leftover damage of colonialism.

During the 2012 Earth-Tzari war, the Union requested audience with the invader’s leadership to negotiate, believing themselves to have similar goals and ideology. Ultimately the potential alliance fell through and the Union joined the war effort on the terrans’ side.

## Territory

The Union has seized large parts of Central Africa along with a strip of Western African territory. As of 2016 the Union claims the following territory equivalent of the real world:

*Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, D.R Congo, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Dusan, Sudan, Western Sahara, Zambia.*

The Capital of the Union is currently Kinshasa located within former Zaire. The past decades as seen the city growing exponentially into a modern sprawling metropolis rivalling first world cities.

## Government

### **Rulership**

The Technocratic union is at its core a meritocratic autocracy based on technocratic principles, with the reigning Lord Technocrat supported by a large council of various scientific experts which are appointed by Hector himself.

The provinces of the Union are divided into administrative areas which although ruled by appointed administrators also see yearly electronic elections appointing local representatives to bridge the gap between citizen and the government.

### **Economy**

The Union is a strongly socialist country, with virtually all public infrastructure and land owned by the government which extract heavy operation fees for what foreign interest it allows within its borders.

The Union not only provides free healthcare for citizen but free higher education as well as a universal income system. Conversely, tax rates are particularly high on incomes above what would be considered middle-class, along with inheritance taxes.

The Union has used its funds as well as the continent’s rich natural resources to prop a rapid increase in industrialization and high tech sector development. The Union also undertook massive infrastructure projects in heartlands. Despite all these improvements, the Union still heavily rely on agricultural sector for income and feeding its population.

### **Military**

The Union requires all citizen who decide not to undertake higher education to perform a two year tour of military duty. The Union’s army is well known for its faceless visored helmets and technological armor wearing soldiers, which has earned its bearer the nickname of ‘stormtroopers’ abroad.

The Union makes extensive use of drones, automated vehicles and emplacements, and even large battlerobots. Despite this, they have remained untouched by HYPERION, which has fuelled conspiracy theories about the Union’s involvement with the dangerous rogue AI.

## Culture

### **Human Rights**

Despite its autocratic and anti-democratic nature, the Union maintains a long list of human rights for both its citizens and visitors, including full right to free speech and association, lack of censorship and laws protecting citizens from arrest without fair cause, the presumption of innocence, the ensuring a fair trial with a short period of time, access to a lawyer among many others.

The Union is however notorious for its unrelenting surveillance over the whole nation. Although the right to the practice of religion is guaranteed by the government, the state has generally denied the construction of sites of worship and those who exist are taxed heavily as businesses.

Since its inception, the Union has recognized LGBT rights, the right of womens and has anti discrimination ordinance covering the more traditional gamut of race, sex, gender, and sexuality, but also species, and parahuman status.

### **Language**

The Union’s main languages are French, Portuguese, English, Swahili, and Afrikaans. Although the latter was not spoken much in the region prior to the rise of the Union, it has rapidly gained popularity as being Hector de Klerk’s mother language.

### **Academia**

The Union’s youth has developed an extremely strong focus on academia and personal accomplishment, with cadres of recruiters constantly on the lookout for signs of talents and untapped potential to add to the Union’s government, industry and military.

## Foreign Relation

Although the Union was admitted to the United Nations in 2002, its relationship internationally is rather poorly received, especially with its African neighborhood who perceive the union as a dangerous expansionist empire which has resorted to terrorism, espionage and other dubious methods to prop nations for invasion and subjugation.Another source of friction with global authorities are the Union’s continued usage and research of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and other controversial scientific fields.

The Union maintains an open door policy immigration for refugees, xenoforms and parahumans of all sorts, which has helped bolster its economic and political expansion.

The Union has maintained rather cold attitude toward superheroes. While the Legion has been allowed on Union territory for international affairs, they have been restricted from interfering in civil and internal affair of the nations.

## Demographics

The Union has an extremely diverse population of including hundreds of sub-ethnic groups of the Bantu people, white africans of Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese, and French descent.

The Union is home to the world’s second largest Tzari settlement after the Andalusian settlement of Spain. Despite the war, Lord Technocrat de Klerk has been highly interested in the alien species and personally guaranteed them a home and protection.

In 2009 the Union built a Venus dome close to its capital of Kinshasa