As African heads of state gather in Addis Ababa for the African Union (AU) 18th Ordinary Session, the question on the minds of many on the African continent is whether the continental union has the stamina and political will to tackle problems afflicting the continent. Of interest will be the AU’s post-mortem of the people’s revolution in the Arab North and how this will inform its strategies in dealing with Africa’s democratization challenge.
Many Zimbabweans are not surprised that the Zimbabwean crisis is not on the agenda. This is because certain historical realities shape political processes in the AU. Two weeks ago the outgoing Chair of the African Union, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, President of Equatorial Guinea made a surprise visit to Harare and met with President Mugabe for close to six hours at State House. Mugabe had been scheduled to be on holiday in the Far East until the end of the month but must have considered Nguema’s visit more important and had to cut it short. This is because as outgoing Chair of the African Union, the Equatorial Guinea President would play an important role in shaping the direction of discussions at the Summit.
Without a doubt, Mugabe leaned heavily on Nguema to have Zimbabwe excluded from the agenda, a request that the latter mush have found hard to decline. He owes Mugabe big time. Seven years ago a group of armed bandits led by British mercenary Simon Mann were on their way to overthrow his government. He is forever grateful to Mugabe for foiling that coup attempt. Mugabe’s security agents intercepted Mann and his gang at the Harare International Airport, seized their large cache of weapons and detained them at Chikurubi Maximum Prison before handing them over to Equatorial Guinea. They were to spend several months in a Malibu prison but were eventually released after secretive high-level diplomatic and political deals were cut. Mann has become a cult hero in the political underworld and his story has become an intriguing plot that will certainly inspire a blockbuster in Hollywood.
As the AU meets to deliberate on the challenges confronting the continent it is imperative to make a critical assessment of the continental body’s performance over the last few years. Obviously the major issue that immediately springs to mind is the revolution that swept across the Arab North resulting in the collapse of dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. One of the key lessons learnt from the Arab North uprisings is that the AU has neither the political will nor the capacity to solve problems on the continent. Its mantra of African solutions to African problems was exposed as a farce as the continental body dithered at every turn. What the revolutions in the Arab North also exposed is the fact that given a choice between responding to legitimate citizen demands for democratic reform and solidarity with dictators, the current crop of leadership will choose political expediency and will do everything in its power to help each other retain power.
Take the case of Libya for example. When the people of Libya stood up against a power-hungry lunatic with a penchant for tasteless ostentation, the continental body did not respond. Gadhafi responded by bombing his own people, calling them ‘rats’ that deserved to be flushed out. Instead of going into Libya with a workable plan of action the AU sent a delegation to stroke Gadhafi’s ego. The AU should have sided with the people of Libya by leaning heavily on Colonel Gadhafi to leave office, stop butchering innocent citizens and agree on a road map to democratic transition. But instead the continental body prevaricated and dithered, paving way for NATO to go in and take out Gadhafi. I was saddened by that turn of events because I believe foreign forces like NATO have no business determining what happens to an African country. But the African Union created a vacuum for NATO to move in by failing to devise a credible plan to deal with the crisis. All they did was find ways of helping Gadhafi maintain his hegemony instead of addressing the genuine needs of the Libyan people.
The likes of Thabo Mbeki want to lecture us on how NATO abused UN Resolution 1973 to oust Gadhafi. But what they do not want to admit is that Gadhafi was a power hungry kleptocract who had no respect for the sanctity of human life. Mugabe would have his supporters believe Gadhafi was a quack revolutionary, accusing him of donating camels to Zimbabwe instead of offering real money. What he does not bother telling them is that Gadhafi maintained a web of cronyism by doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to several African leaders.
A few days ago I had the privilege of being a panelist on a radio program to discuss African challenges in the context of the Addis Summit. On the panel was another analyst who openly declared himself a ZANU (PF) member. Responding to a question on the exclusion of Zimbabwe on the agenda of the Summit, my ZANU (PF)-aligned co-panelist went into a tirade about how ZANU (PF) had liberated the country and how the MDC, according to him a creation of the West, wants to reverse the gains of the liberation struggle by giving land to back to the whites. Unfortunately there was no one from the MDC to counter this drivel. All I could do was remind him that all the dictators that I had read about in history, including the recent ones in the Arab North, had alleged a Western or foreign plot against them but had died at the hands of their own people.
As I reflected on the African challenge of failed transitions to democracy and sustainable development, I kept going back to the words of the ZANU (PF)-aligned analyst. I thought his mindset was a perfect resemblance of the bigger African problem. The leadership is caught up in a time warp and it has an end of history mentality. Its political attitudes are obviously shaped by the colonial history of the continent and their thinking is that the fight against colonialism was the epitome of the African struggle for independence and that the attainment of independence marked the end of history. Any other struggles are dismissed as neo-colonial machinations to reverse the gains of independence. We have seen this script being played out in Zimbabwe and several other African states.
What the African leadership needs to appreciate is that while the fight for political independence was an important epoch in the history of Africa, and it is one that will be told forever, the younger generations are demanding the space to chart the future of their countries. They want jobs. They want business opportunities. They want to be heard. They want a say in the way their natural resources are exploited. They abhor their leaders’ opulence in the midst of poverty. They are connected and they have access to information on a daily basis, thanks to advances in technology. African leaders need to respond to all of these or they will end up in a storm drain like Gadhafi. The appropriate theme for the Summit should have been ‘Adapt or die’.
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