AU spots remain unchanged
Mmegi Editor | Thursday February 4, 2016 12:15
Going into the meeting, African states, to varying degrees, are facing challenges of climate change, flatlining economies, rising poverty and inequality, conflict, civil unrest, disease and upliftment/protection of marginalised groups among others.
In our neck of the woods, the region is facing its harshest drought in many years, with the regional breadbasket, South Africa, running on empty and expected to import from the Americas.
Further north, disease and conflict stalk citizens, while the threat of terror is a constant spectre, killing scores frequently and sending ripples of instability throughout the continent.
Far from being the new growth node of the world and for all its potential and massive resources, Africa remains a region of uncertainty, where capital fears to tread and where citizens live in unending cycles of hopelessness and defeat.
One of the biggest issues expected to be tackled at the meeting was the crisis in Burundi, where President Pierre Nkurunziza’s successful bid for a third term has unleashed a wave of violence, arbitrary killings and associated mayhem.
The AU leaders gathered in Addis Ababa over the weekend did as many of their critics expected them to do. They roundly condemned the violence, but unanimously shot down the deployment of peacekeepers. Instead, in a shocking twist that is uniquely African, Burundi was elected to the AU’s Peace and Security Council, with its representatives at the summit saying this “proves the country is a respected member of the African Union”.
Back home in Burundi, meanwhile, evidence was being unearthed of a mass grave, believed to be the murdered victims of protestors against Nkurunziza’s reign. The same Nkurunziza at his third term installation last August, vowed to “beat my enemies with the aid of God and scatter them like flour thrown into the air”.
This is the Africa its youth are inheriting and this is the true nature of the AU, a toothless, self-congratulatory group of peers for whom simply agreeing on pursuing a ‘Vision 2063’ is a major achievement, forget the achievements of the vision itself.
With a few exceptions, AU leaders are a cabal of self-serving peers, each protecting each others’ backs and interested mainly in the AU as a token of continental unity and less so for what it can actually achieve on the continent.
That the leaders are self-serving can be seen in the fact that over the weekend, the major ‘achievement’ was the leaders’ backing a call to withdraw from the International Criminal Court because it “unfairly targets the continent”.
That the leaders are a cabal can be seen in the cult-like applause given to Robert Mugabe’s racist and anti-Western ramblings as he tottered off the AU’s chair. From the visionary, legendary African leaders of the 1960s, is this what the continent has been reduced to?
Today’s thought
“I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.”
- Nelson Mandela