AU and Africa’s sovereign status

pan-African body, to carry out serious introspection.
Events of the past six months or so, particularly the recent political upheavals in the Maghreb and North African regions have rudely exposed the AU as a lame duck in dealing with the new challenges facing modern day Africa.
Whereas its forerunner, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), pre-occupied as it were, with the anti-colonial struggle, where matters of liberation, self-determination, sovereignty, racial equality and majority rule formed the essence of the ideological content of the pan-Africanist agenda, the AU in contrast seems caught up in a quandary of sorts.
Not only has the AU seemingly failed to define, assert and adopt a common post-liberation ideological and political agenda, which gives real and tangible force to the momentum built up in the anti-colonial struggle for the promise of a new egalitarian order of freedom, peace, economic prosperity and the pursuit of happiness, it is even lacking visibility.
At present, the AU appears hopelessly caught up in a time-warp where it has not only failed to assert its moral and political authority but perhaps more importantly, shown a mortal failure to define its role, relevance and crucially, a new post-liberation pan-African vision, and stance on globalisation issues.
This month, on the 25th of May, Africa will celebrate the creation on this day in Addis Ababa in 1963, of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now AU, by 30 African Heads of State and Government, as an inter-African continental organisation.
This was after many attempts to form such a grouping had been thwarted by political, linguistic and economic differences among others. But, despite the differences in interests and aims, the ideals of a continental organisation remained.
To put matters into perspective, it is worth revisiting the founding charter of the OAU with a view to understanding its major aims and objectives.
At its formation, the OAU set out the following aims and objectives:
l to promote the unity and solidarity of the African states;
l to co-ordinate and intensify efforts to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa;
l to defend their sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence;
l to eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa; and,
l to promote international co-operation, have due regard to the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In order to realise the stated aims and objectives, “the member states pledged themselves to harmonise their policies to achieve political and diplomatic co-operation, economic co-operation, including transport and communication, educational and cultural co-operation, health sanitation and nutritional co-operation, scientific and technical co-operation, co-operation for defence and security”.
The Charter also enshrined seven fundamental principles amongst them “the sovereign equality of all member states; non-interference in the internal affairs of states; respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each state and for its inalienable right to independent existence; peaceful settlement of disputes by negotiation, mediation, conciliation and arbitration; unreserved condemnation of political assassination in all its forms . . .”
AU membership now stands at 54 states, many of which have a marginal ability to survive on their own in an increasingly complex and imperfect world.
Modern day Africa is a living show of the limits to the principles of self-determination. To be sure, Africa is today at a point when the lofty principles of self-determination and sovereignty have become pragmatically unrealistic.
This is because, at best, Africa is made up of what are termed “micro-states” i.e. countries with tiny populations, territories and economies, and therefore do not have the economic and political ability to stand as truly sovereign states – what scholars have termed “negative sovereignty”.
To most African countries, the theory of self-determination carries a real worry about political liability.
The events in the Ivory Coast provide ample testimony, where a truly Ivorian nationalist, Laurent Gbagbo, gets pitted against a predatory larger power – the real source of danger for him – France, and is humiliated, vilified and deposed with the tacit support of the French army, to be supplanted as president, by a foreigner from neighbouring Burkina Faso.
Allasane Ouattara, whose father jumped the border to work on the Ivory Coast’s rich cocoa fields, (the world’s largest to be exact) now, masquerades as a democratically elected leader, despite what all this implies to a deeply divided nation, in dire need of national healing after years of north-south strife and armed conflict.
Contrast Ouattara’s case to that of President Obama. Long after he was elected President, Obama still has to convince some very wealthy and powerful Americans that he was indeed born in Hawaii, that he is not a “colonial”.
Huge amounts of money are being spent just to prove that Obama should not be President of the United States of America because he is not, in their view, truly an American.
Poor President Gbagbo stands out as the typical example of the kind of quandary Africa finds itself in today – a victim of an imperfect world where what matters most is your military and economic strength.
African states, with their minimal defence capabilities and marginal economies, are prone to outside interference by and clashes between stronger powers that create macro-political havoc.
The French, as former colonial masters, are oblivious to the fact that the national question in the Ivory Coast is far from resolution.
It is not, and never has been a simple issue of governance. There are deep-rooted nationalistic interests at play, which matters cannot be wished away.
And yet, there has been deafening silence from the AU in the face of such open French intrusion, meddling and intervention on a member state caught in the same web of open, and naked aggression by a larger power seeking to regain what it lost in the anti-colonial struggle – manipulation, influence and control – this time by proxy.
Events unfolding in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Ivory Coast and other simmering hotbeds of tension point to the fact that a small country’s survival is only contingent on its capacity to repel predators. This is the conundrum that Africa finds itself in today.
Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral must be turning in their graves to hear that it is actually true that the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, showed up at the last summit meeting of the AU, and not only addressed and lectured African Heads of State on governance in their plenary, but also sat through committee meetings of AU Heads of State.
Living founding fathers of the AU, such as former President Kenneth Kaunda, must have vomited at hearing such news. Just imagine President Mugabe, or for that matter, President Jacob Zuma, sitting through a summit of the European Union (EU).
Unthinkable! Not even imaginable, but such is Africa’s present day vulnerability. The new crop of African leaders seem all too compromised, or suffer legitimacy deficits to be forthright and pronounced on key ideological questions now facing the continent.
As a result, Nato forces are now occupying Libya, whatever the pretext might be, with the express authority of the AU and the Arab League!
What next? Where is African nationalism in all this? Whatever happened to Afro-Arab solidarity? What is the content of that solidarity that guided Gamal Abdel Nasser, Julius Nyerere and Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. Whatever happened to the grand ideals of pan-Africanism? When is Africa going to get reparations for colonialism?
All these key questions beg answers from the AU. At least Clinton apologised for slavery, but where is Africa’s collective conscience in this fresh and sustained onslaught?
It is clear the new thrust of the larger countries, guided by a neo-liberal agenda, is that which seeks to paint African nationalism as some atavistic, premodern phenomenon that is slated to disappear with the growing modernity of the world.
It appears President Mugabe is now a lone voice speaking for authentic and foundational pan-Africanism? Who else? How is Africa to resolve this conundrum?
Thabo Mbeki’s Nepad comes way too short of addressing the critical questions facing Africa today.
What this all says about pan-Africanism is that applying the principle of self-determination is increasingly becoming evasive in this complex new web of international relations.
Why so for Africa? Americans, Europeans and others have long advocated the theory of a right of self-determination.
The American Declaration of Independence asserts just this when it declares that, “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another” and to assume “separate and equal” status, then it is the “right of the people to alter or to abolish and to institute new government”.
Yet this is also the true story of Africa.
The quandary for Africa is exacerbated by the fact, according to outspoken businessman and Senator, Guy Georgias, “that predatory larger powers, the former colonial masters, are the real source of danger.
It should not surprise anyone that, on matters of sovereignty, President Mugabe has rightly identified the threat to African self-determination. It is the former colonial powers.”
Adds Georgias: “It cannot be denied that they have been outright meddlesome in African affairs. Where it suits them, they have propped up despotic regimes, spawned coup d’états, economic mayhem, political instability, the list goes on”.
To Georgias, and many commentators on Africa, “self-determination and talk of sovereignty come with the political liability that we have seen repeatedly played out in the so-called clients states, where former allies are sacrificed when they outlive their usefulness.
“Imagine how pivotal President Mubarak was to US Middle East policy, the protection of Israel, over the years, only to be cast away?
Yet, the concept of self-determination is held sacrosanct by Americans. We are often reminded of the statement to congress way back in 1918 by President Woodrow Wilson that “self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action”.
The Zimbabwean question, in the eyes of Sadc even, now also appears to be a simple matter of good governance.
That the Zimbabwe question is deep-rooted in the country’s colonial past now appears burdensome to the African collective conscience.
That, what lies at the heart of the matter, after a bitter protracted struggle for majority rule and democratic governance, is the crucial question of redistribution of national wealth to correct past imbalances!
It can be argued that if President Mugabe had maintained the status quo, he would today be receiving invitations to the royal wedding at Buckingham Palace. guided by a neo-liberal agenda? Not so!
What is Africa to do in the face of what appears to be have been unforeseen threat?
Exuberance with mere liberation is proving to have been irrational for Africa.
The African question, and the aims and objectives of the AU, as defined by the founding fathers, to “co-ordinate and intensify efforts to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa” now appears to suffer immense and sustained setback.
For the AU, this is time for a rethink!