OPINION ] ] Cry the beloved African Union
Alan Paton wrote the novel entitled Africa: Cry the beloved Country. Our colonial school teachers made us read the book but left out profiles of racial brutalities under apartheid in South Africa. Our History teacher from Basutoland (now Lesotho), Mr Leloka, only pulled out gold dust he smuggled out inside his waist belt from a mine in South Africa. African miners, he said, stripped naked and their bottom holes were examined to make sure gold nuggets were not hosted there in a smuggling trick. He too remained silent about racist southern Africa.
Alan Paton came to mind when I read a plea by Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, former prime minister of Tanzania; foreign minister and Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU); and is the current chairman of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. At a Thabo Mbeki Foundation lecture he delivered to mark Africa Day on 25 May 2014, he insisted that “We have a duty to bring the issue of a United Africa to the people.” Among those he charged with protecting, promoting and nurturing “the vision of a United Africa for the new generation” are nongovernmental institutions.
When it comes to media coverage, the African Union is one of the tallest and largest orphans sharing global history. The African media are too poor to support a corps of correspondents at its headquarters in Ethiopia. Africa does not have a government of Qatar who funds Aljazeera lavishly. Foreign media powers pressure most governments not to fund Africa’s own “Pan African News Agency (PANA)”. The status of the AU as a squatter in the premises of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) was ignored by the African media. The late Colonel Muamar Gaddafi even mocked member states by offering to host it in Tripoli. The passion in his offer forced Ethiopia to take a loan from China. Summits of the African Union (AU) are major tourist contributors to Ethiopia’s economy and cultural income each time delegates surge in with interest in her exotic clothes and artefacts.
Ambassador Salim makes a strong case for the media to tell the story of the African Union. He recalls days when inside offices in the United Nations, European and American delegates pompously pronounced that European racists would rule Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and South Africa forever. Ian Smith, as prime minister of Rhodesia, bragged that his race would rule over the black majority for another one thousand years. Corporations who owned diamond and goldmines in South Africa discouraged American media and Congress from supporting Africa’s liberation struggles.
The Liberation Committee set up and funded by the OAU in 1963, however, was resilient in collaborating with liberation movements to make racist regimes illegal at the United Nations. Apartheid was declared “a crime against humanity”. Leaders like Mwalimu Julius Nyerere (in Tanzania), Kenneth Kaunda (in Zambia), and Milton Obote (in Uganda) gave military bases and institutions for training future administrators. Nyerere and Kaunda persuaded China to construct a railway line from Dar es Salaam to Ndola in Zambia to break a blockade against Zambia’s imports and exports through ports in South Africa and Mozambique. Despite Nigeria’s distance from southern Africa, her vigorous support gave her membership of the ‘Frontline States’. Brilliant diplomats with youthful vigour and idealism for the realisation of African dignity and economic freedom converged from Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guinea, Senegal and Tanzania. A tapestry of diplomatic skills came from Nigeria, Ghana, Sudan, Cameroun and Somalia in the war under the banner of the OAU.
As Namibia won freedom in 1990, these diplomatic warriors were drawing plans for a new war for Africa’s economic power. Political dignity must drive new economic diplomacy. Ambassador Salim concedes that some African leaders lacked the flare for fighting colonialism and racist dictators. Yet the African Union invented the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as a comprehensive strategy for guiding political and economic governance.
The media in Africa are not waving it as a mirror to Africa’s intellectuals, politicians, religious leaders and bureaucrats. The media have failed to interrogate its status as a rival to ‘ The Marshall Plan’ used for rebuilding capitalism in Western Europe to prevents communist parties from taking power and becoming allies of the Soviet Union. The media is not holding seminars on the record of implementation of NEPAD.
In a speech to Aljazeera, Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa, said we must celebrate several grand new visions by the African Union. One is the “African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM)”. It harvests the most trained minds from around Africa – including former ministers of finance and heads of central banks – to join local experts and NGOs to dissect the condition of a country and draw new ways forward. They boldly criticise government’s failures as well as commend good measures taken. The African Union, thereby, makes the health of each country the exertions of collective Africa. This is a novelty in governance.
Thabo Mbeki notes that the Peace and Conflict Protocol of the AU seeks to prevent conflict “through entrenching and practising democratic governance, fair distribution of resources and proper and just treatment of all citizens”. It is paradoxical that Nigeria’s media has not called on the National Conference to note that scripts of their heated drama recommend Nigeria for urgent attention by this body.