Forget Mugabe and the AU

via Forget Mugabe and the AU – The Zimbabwean 4 February 2015 by Tawanda Majoni

I see that many people have been working up a big sweat over President Robert Mugabe’s elevation to the African Union (AU) chairmanship. That is energy ill spent. The AU, in its current form and spirit, is not worth worrying about.

Mugabe’s critics offer one main argument in their protest against his chairmanship of the continental body for the next 12 months. They say he lacks the legitimacy to superintend over African affairs because he has failed to do that in his own country. The Zimbabwean economy is in tatters, local elections have been disputed since 2000, the land reform process is still mired in deep controversy and his successive governments have poorly managed natural resources.

The critics say he is the last person to talk of value addition to local resources or even about infrastructure development. The manner in which his government has handled the Chiadzwa diamonds provides ample support to this. Almost all of the surface diamonds have been harvested, with hardly any benefit to the citizenry. There was massive plunder, with government colluding with shady capitalist agents to scrape the diamond fields dry.

Since the gems were discovered about a decade ago, Mugabe and his lieutenants have not raise a finger to build local infrastructure to tap maximum benefits. Nor did they make the feeblest attempts to beneficiate the minerals and add value. Charity, clearly, did not start at home and it is hardly likely that it will be seen through Mugabe’s chairmanship of the AU.

The problem is that the critics talk as if the AU is a serious and functional entity with the capacity to change the fortunes of the people of the continent. They seem to believe that by taking over the chairmanship, Mugabe will be ruling Africa more or less like Barak Obama is ruling the USA. Nothing could be further from the truth. The AU remains a lame duck which is hardly capable of anything. You could even vote in a donkey as chair and the difference would not be noticed. I doubt if many people will remember that the last chair was from Mauritania, still less what he achieved during his tenure.

By the way, this is the same body that spent about four percent of its funds on its core programmes while a whopping 96 percent went towards salaries, allowances, hotels bills and all the niceties that come with being in office in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is home to the AU HQ – yet that country is one of the worst in terms of governance and respect for human rights. If the HQ is viewed symbolically, it says a lot about what the AU stands for—a body that remains in the Stone Age in terms of respect for democratic values.

Why, then, should be people be surprised and aggrieved when Mugabe is given the chance to direct the affairs and processes of an undemocratic body? They should start by protesting the fact that the AU headquarters remains in a country that charges journalists with treason for being critical of the government.

This just goes to show that the AU is a band of repressive misfits that we must not lose sleep over. Even if Mugabe had not become the chair, another miscreant would have taken over from Mauritania and the story would remain pretty much the same.

We often hear that the AU is a pan-African body that seeks to revive the fortunes of a long-suffering continent. This intention and ideology might be there, and no sane person would quarrel against an agency that fights for the prosperity of the African people. However, the body’s composition, attitude and actions are not pan-Africanist. There is no palpable unity among the states outside of diplomatic pronouncements.

Arab Africa still looks on sub-Saharan Africa as a junior partner. While the AU’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), delivered tangible results by helping a good number of countries attain independence from colonial rule, the re-modelled body is yet to give us anything of note. Respective governments are busy oppressing their people and corruption is rife. Unless the bloc goes through much soul searching and changes its way of doing things, it will remain an abstract body with little else to do besides making speeches and violating its own covenants.

Thus, it doesn’t make sense to lambast the AU for making Mugabe its chair. This is the same as legitimizing the illegitimate. – To comment on this article, please contact majonitt@gmail.com