African Union summit of infamy in Kigali

Once again the various presidents and prime ministers of African countries are meeting in yet another Africa Union summit in the Rwandan capital of Kigali from the 17th to the 18th of July 2016, amid pomp and pageantry.

These so-called leaders represent most of the more than 1 billion people of the continent in which more than half of the population are below 25 years.

These leaders come from countries in whose belly lie uncountable natural and mineral resources of any kind, with the most arable land in the world, not to mention the presence of huge water and solar power.

These leaders constitute the supreme decision and policy making structure of the African Union called the Assembly of Heads of State and Government. Founded in 1963, the Organization of Africa Unity was established for the purpose of decolonizing Africa and uniting the continent in order to better harness its resources and potential for a peaceful, developed and stable society.

In 2002, the organization metamorphosed into the African Union with the primary objective of uniting the continent. In 2013 marking the 50 th anniversary of the OAU/AU, the Agenda 2063 was launched as a 50 year program for the socio-economic transformation of the continent.

Agenda 2063 was dovetailed into the vision of the AU which aims to create, “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in global arena.”

The farce

The African Union as it stands today is totally a contravention of its vision because 54 years since its creation, the union is neither driven by its citizens nor has the continent become integrated, prosperous and peaceful. In spite of that, the indications for the actualization of the vision are also limited, if present at all.

Certainly Africans will not have to wait until 2063 to realize this dream, which in itself does not appear to be realizable based on the facts on the ground. What is clear is that indeed the AU has consistently been on a path that only seeks to disempower Africans by oppressing and impoverishing the people with impunity.

First. Since 2002 when the AU was launched, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government has mostly elected despots as chairpersons of the union. These include Obasanjo in 2004/05, Denis Sasou Nguesso 2006/07, Ghadaffi 2009/10, Teodoro Obiang Nguema 2011/12, Hailemariam Dessalegn 2013, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz 2014, Robert Mugabe 2015 and currently Idriss Deby 2016.

Out of 14 chairpersons only the following six had favorable democratic credentials: Thomas Yayi Boni, Bingu wa Muthrika, Jakaya Kikwete, Joaquim Chissano and Thabo Mbeki.

To illustrate this point better, let us look at the current chairperson Pres. Idriss Deby of Chad. Here is a man who has been in power since 1990 when he first staged a military coup and since then running a very repressive regime in his country.

Before assuming the presidency, Deby was the army commander of Chad from 1982 to 1989 under the notorious tyrant Hissene Habre whom he deposed in 1990. Hissene Habre then fled the country to Senegal where after 25 years in exile was finally tried and convicted to life imprisonment in May 2016 for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture, including sexual violence and rape.

Clearly Deby could not have been the army commander of such a despot for the entire duration of that regime and still remain uninvolved in the atrocities of that regime. The only reason Deby has not been tried along with Habre is simply because he is a sitting head of state.

That aside, since introducing multiparty democracy in 1996 in Chad, Deby continued to win every presidential election amid massive irregularities in which most of the time the major parties boycotted the polls. True to his undemocratic credentials, Deby forced a referendum in 2005 to remove presidential term limit in the constitution.

In April 2016, he emerged the winner once again in the presidential election with 62% of the vote. Would such a chairperson serve to realize the vision of any union that seeks to make the citizens drive that union? In Chad he is certainly not leading his citizens to be free and empowered.

Second. In its 2014 summit in Malabo, Equitorial Guinea, African leaders had the audacity to not only condemn and seek to remove the continent from the ICC, but went further to amend the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights to give themselves immunity from prosecution in Article 46A: Immunities:

“No charges shall be commenced or continued before the Court against any serving AU Head of State or Government, or anybody acting or entitled to act in such capacity, or other senior state officials based on their functions, during their tenure of office.”

This issue speaks directly to the continuous incidents of atrocities and the culture of impunity prevalent in most Africa countries where citizens’ rights are trampled in the mud and lives taken away by the state. But African leaders do not wish to be called to answer to these atrocities.

Thus it is clear that African leaders only wish to lord it over their people anyhow but will not be asked about their decisions and actions. Yet the vision of the AU is to have the will of the citizens drive the continent. How could that be in an environment in which leaders continuously fail their obligations yet refuse to be scrutinized and held to account?

Third. Speaking of the ICC, is it not a shame that after having signed up to the Rome Statute and after submitting most of the African cases to the International Criminal Court by themselves, yet these same African leaders are coming around to condemn the court for targeting Africa unfairly? Yet at the same time, they do not wish to face any form of accountability in their own countries and the continent?

Since the ICC indictment of Omar Bashir of Sudan in 2009 and 2010, this despot continues to fly in and out of various African countries who are under obligation to arrest him but refuse to do so. The most dramatic case was at the 2015 AU Summit in South Africa where civil society groups agitated for the government of South Africa to arrest him.

As birds of the same feather flock together, Pres. Zuma refused to fulfill his obligation but let Bashir escape. The matter was taken to court by the civil society and the South African court ruled that the government of Pres. Jacob Zuma was under obligation to arrest this criminal. The court described the action of the South African government as unlawful and inconsistent with its constitutional duties.

Fourth. The AU Assembly continues to be dominated by leaders who have spent more than 10 years in office and still seeking to be on top even more. In many of these undemocratic societies, there is a growing incidence of leaders staging fake referendums to change the constitution to remove term limits.

The host of the summit itself, Paul Kagame is the latest to do so. In 2015 he organized a fake referendum that allows him to stand again in 2017 after his second mandate ends. This means when, not if, he wins the 2017 election he will rule until 2024 when the term ends. Then the presidential term drops to a two-five year terms. Meaning he could stand again and win the election in 2024 and 2029, thus effectively making him to continue to be president until 2034.

Meanwhile the man has been president since 1994 and stretching that to 2034 would make him president for a whopping 40 years. Lord have mercy! Apologetics for Kagame should give us a break when they claim that Rwanda is a shining star.

Kagame is already running a very repressive regime, and we must not give excuses to leaders to oppress just because they build infrastructure and claim to develop the nation. Ghadaffi had done a lot of that, as in many other societies around the world only to witness those societies crumble down in civil wars.

Fifth. In view of the widespread despotic leadership and unaccountable governance systems in most of these countries, the resources of Africa are serving very few Africans, while these leaders and their few elite around them grow richer. Such poor leadership can now be seen unfolding in the newest state on the continent, South Sudan.

From 2011, when it gained independence, two men, the president and his vice, continue to hold the entire nation to ransom. Their disagreements always end up consuming innocent lives as they result in the senseless massacre of our people in that country.

Yet the AU lacks any mechanism to bring about justice other than to continuously issue statements of appeal to the same people who are fomenting the conflict. No wonder they always respond with utter disregard for the AU and its statements.

All over Africa, the consequence of such poor leadership can be seen in the incessant incidences of conflict, hunger, terrorism, corruption and excruciating poverty and inequality. Millions of young Africans, lacking opportunity and with no hope in their motherland continue to embark on dangerous journeys through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean to seek better lives in Europe.

Thousands perish on the way. At the same time, millions of Africa’s best brains and professionals have been forced to leave their countries and the continent out of necessity to work and live in more stable societies. Still millions more have to flee to save dear life from despots who rule their countries. Such is the profile of the lives of majority of Africans in 2016.

Even those countries that have been identified as beacons of hope because of adherence to presidential terms limits, free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power and a largely open society, there has not been much hope beyond that.

For example, for the past 20 years Ghana has met this profile, but the country has been unable to transform civil and political rights into strong social and economic benefits. Unemployment, poverty and inequality remain high in that country which has been so rich with mineral resources that the colonialists initially named it the Gold Coast.

The same could be said of Senegal. Various assessment reports, such as the Ibrahim Index of African Governance also show that good governance in general has been declining in Africa. And even countries such as Botswana, Cape Verde and the Pacific island nations of Mauritius and Seychelles, which have favorable indicators, one is still concerned that these are yet to build strong independent economies because of the lack of industrialization.

Without industrialization and development of the productive base of the economic, relying only on services and tourism, no nation can sustain a high quality of life for its citizens for long.

AU passport

To add insult to injury, African leaders have now unveiled the AU passport, but only provided to the leaders themselves. What a discrimination? This decision begs the question as to whether the AU is for these leaders or for the masses.

What would a president require a passport for when he or she does not need a passport to travel? Passport is for citizens who travel around the continent and the world to study, to do business or to visit places. It is citizens who stand in immigration lines at airports, seaports and border posts to be identified by their passports.

By giving a president this passport, what is its value to an individual African in our villages and towns, in the farms and markets of Africa, and to the African student? What is it that the AU want to prove with this passport? If it is to prove unity, let the African leaders first implement their own treaties by removing the barriers to free movement of goods and people.

African people need a continental body that is composed of countries that are run by leaders who are democratic and accountable. Africans want a continental body that will politically unify the continent now in order to harness its incredible socio-economic potential to produce one of the most advanced societies in the world. This is the demand of African people for the past decades.

Not a passport for presidents when individual Africans cannot easily and freely move into another African country without a visa. As the AU summit is taking place in Rwanda, majority of Africans cannot entire Kigali without a visa.

Majority of Africans cannot visit the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia without a visa. The Pan-African Parliament is located in the city of Midrand in the municipality of Johannesburg in South Africa, yet the majority of African people cannot enter that country without a very hard to get visa.

Yet instead of forging closer integration and removing all colonial barriers from within Africans, these leaders decide to issue themselves passports that have no benefit whatsoever to the common African man and woman other than levy costs. If African Union has a passport, it must be for the masses of the people first and foremost, and not for a bunch of 54 individual lousy men and women otherwise called leaders.

All Africans must condemn the AU for issuing this passport to these leaders and demand that the AU implement urgent policies for the removal of colonial vestiges (barriers) and unify the continent now.