African Union Failed the Crucial Test

Caesar Zvayi - Harare

No one denies that it is only through a Union government and unity of purpose that Africa can claim its rightful stake in the world.

Barring unity, Africa would continue suffering the depredations of Western nations bent on exploiting its vast resources for self-enrichment.

But so vast are the challenges Africa has to overcome that a really radical approach is needed if the dream of a United States of Africa is to be realised, which means there is no room for placating the West in this revolutionary undertaking.

Radicalism, however, does not mean haste, which is where Libyan President, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, appears to have got it wrong. Col Gaddafi wanted a Union government elected at the African Union Summit in Accra, and did not make it a secret whom he believed should lead it.

A few examples of the hurdles to be overcome will suffice here; all of which are linked to the colonial legacy of divide-and-rule politics.

The biggest obstacle of all is, of course, crunching poverty. That and differential development are major stumbling blocks to the proposed Union government, which would demand, among other things, a vibrant unified economy with economic parity. This does not exist on a continent that largely plays host to economies dominated by multinational corporations and foreign investors.

Even where the impressive economic indicators exist, they do so on paper only as the profits are repatriated to the metropole. In fact, most African countries, with the notable exception of South Africa, rely on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for alms, two organisations that are used by the United States and the European Union to entrench their interests in the developing world.

This dependence is also manifest in the AU institutions, some of which are African in name only; this is why it is vital that all institutions are truly African before they can be trusted with propping up the envisaged Union government.

It is also unforgivable that in this day and age, if one wants to go to the so-called Francophone West Africa, from, let’s say, largely Anglophone Southern Africa, one is forced to pass through that region’s former metropolis, France, unless the flight is charter. Likewise, if one wants to travel from Francophone West Africa to Anglophone East Africa, one has to go via London.

In short, there are no direct flights between most African countries, yet there are direct flights from nearly every African country to the capitals of the countries’ former colonisers.

What this means is that the transport links existing in much of Africa today were not developed to promote intra-continental communication, but to make it easy for settlers to siphon the continent’s resources to their home countries since most of them lead either to the coast or directly to Europe.

In fact, to this day, some poor countries route their international calls through former colonial capitals.

Similarly, if one wants to know about, say Malawi, one has to rely on Associated Press, CNN, BBC, AFP, and many other Western news agencies that never really mediate accurately, but always package their news in the service of Western interests.

While Africa saw the dangers of this and sought to address the problem through the Pan-African News Agency, perennial dependency saw Westerners compromise the agency with their ruinous conditional funds. To this day, PANA has failed to live up to expectations, which is why Africa continues relying on Western news agencies. Any wonder then, that at the just-ended AU Summit in Accra, Ghana, Western news agencies were given royal treatment where African media was treated like trash?

The organisers saw it fit to give Western media organisations unfettered access into the Accra International Conference Centre, while African journalists were barred, save for those from the host country, of course.

In fact, the officials in charge of media liaison read out the names of the agencies from a list they had, and did not even have time to hear the protests of the African media personnel present. African journalists had no choice but to picket the Conference Centre to present a strongly worded petition to the General Assembly.

What this simply showed was that the organisers were keen to ensure that the West was kept well-informed of deliberations, while Africans, whose lives were bound to be changed by the decisions reached in Accra, were kept largely in the dark.

Africa must really be wary of such signs that simply confirm that Western approval is still highly valued by some, meaning Western tentacles are still very much alive on the continent.

This brings in the question, for whose interests are some leaders pushing for hasty continental unity, even when it is apparent that as currently constituted, some of the AU institutions supposed to prop up the Union government are African in name only, with many others existing only on paper?

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