AU a ‘club for brute despots’

EXPERT: ORGANISATION ‘MOLLYCODDLES LIBERATORS’

The African Union (AU) has been described as “an exclusive club for brutish despots” by South African political commentator Tafi Mhaka. “The AU boasts leaders within its ranks who have profoundly patriarchal and conservative values, questionable legitimacy and blood-spattered pasts,” said Mhaka in an opinion piece recently published on the Al Jazeera website.

“In many ways, the 55-member organisation is a fine example to how a collective determination to establish and maintain democratic principles can go terribly wrong,” said the outspoken commentator.

While the AU had proved itself to be highly efficient in publishing decisions, declarations and press releases over the last decade, it had repeatedly failed to take constructive disciplinary action against tyrannical administrations, Mhaka said.

“Today, the scarcity of viable, all-inclusive multiparty democracies, especially in central and North Africa, suggest the organisation has failed to achieve most of its goals and instead transformed into an exclusive club of brutish despots who exhibit weak, corrupt, undistinguished and divisive leadership.”

Underlining his criticism, Mhaka pointed to AU failures in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Egypt.

The political commentator said Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s win of the presidential elections in April with 97% of the vote, was neither free, fair, nor transparent.

This sham “election” should have drawn strong and unequivocal denunciation from the AU leadership and led to the brisk suspension or even outright expulsion of Egypt from the union.

“Or, at the very least, Sisi’s orchestrated win should have been a wake-up call for the AU to launch an urgent and comprehensive examination of democracy within its ranks. Of course, none of this has happened,” Mhaka said.

“The Sisi administration’s dreadful actions impugned the value of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and demonstrated how the AU’s mollycoddling of so-called ‘liberators’ like Sisi threaten African aspirations of social and economic freedom.”

Even before the farce elections ridiculed the AU’s founding desire “to promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance”, the Sisi administration had been violating freedoms by cracking down on human rights organisations. – ANA