Dlamini-Zuma upset some men and leaves AU prematurely, but she advanced cause of women, says Liesl Louw-Vaudran

around and make it far more effective.

Certainly, reforms such as video conferencing; more thorough financial audits; and curbing unnecessary travel by AU staff were put in place.

Her tenure also saw the launch of an AU Leadership Academy to train staff.

Drawn up by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and a team of experts, a new plan to reform the AU Commission is also on the table and will be discussed at the upcoming 28th AU Summit.

However, the Commission still suffers from huge problems such as a lack of young professionals (the majority of AU employees are civil servants and the average age is 50), and a lack of capacity to carry out funded programmes.

Where Dlamini-Zuma has really made a difference and did show some impact, however, was her commitment to promoting women’s rights in Africa.

Even though some would argue that this is a “soft issue” and perhaps not the core mandate of the AU, it is a worthy and urgent cause given the dire situation faced by many women in Africa.

For two years in a row, the AU theme, discussed at its bi-annual summits, focused on women. This didn’t please everyone.

“We will definitely not have another woman chairperson at the AU – she clashed with too many people,” one North African diplomat in South Africa recently quipped during a discussion about the succession race for the AU’s top job.

But Dlamini-Zuma continued with her campaigns regardless. The most visible of these initiatives has been the drive to include more women in political participation in Africa, to try and highlight the plight of women in war situations by appointing a special envoy for women, peace and security, and the campaign to stem child marriage.

The latter might be the one campaign that succeeds in making a dramatic difference to the lives of millions of girls, even in the shortterm.

According to statistics released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), there are up to 125 million girls in Africa under the age of 18 who are already married – some before the age of 15.

In some countries, like Mozambique and Zambia, the number of girls below 18 who are already married is close to 50%.

This has a devastating effect on the lives of adolescent girls. They are forced to leave school, suffer health problems due to bearing children at such a young age, and are often helpless against abuse from their much older husbands.

During her tenure, Dlamini-Zuma attempted to persuade governments to enforce legislation and international agreements on combating child marriage. She targeted heads of state and crisscrossed the continent to discuss the topic with them.

In November 2015, the AU also organised the first summit in Zambia on this issue.

Still – has the campaign made any real difference? Or is it just all talk and no action? So far, the number of young girls getting married is slowly dropping, thanks to campaigns like that of the AU, but also global campaigns by the likes of Unicef.

The decrease in the number of child marriages is mostly in urban areas and among the more affluent. The campaign is also slowly filtering through to local level in individual countries, and will hopefully see traditional leaders and cultural groups moving away from this practice.

At the end of last year, both Nigeria and Liberia had joined the AU campaign, which has now reached 18 African countries.

If these figures drop even further and more girls go to school instead of being forced into marriage, it will be, in part, thanks to these campaigns. Dlamini-Zuma’s tenacity seems to have paid off on at least one score.