The prospect of the African Union becoming a Permanent
Member of the United Nations raises many doubts and fears.
The AU has consistently failed to demonstrate that it
represents the many citizens of its nation members. It has, to a very large extent, been a well-fed,
foreign-funded discussion group to enable the Heads of States in Africa to
hatch plots to rob their citizens of cash, assets and rights, with practically
nothing being done to solve the many large problems confronting the continent,
from autocratic leaders who flaunt their ability to disregard their
constitutions and the laws of their country, to the abject poverty that is
growing apace throughout the continent, while said leaders are gaining in
wealth all the time.
The latest failure of the AU to ensure peace in Burundi, in contravention
of its resolution to send a peacekeeping force there to protect the citizens,
is a flagrant example of the inability, or unwillingness, of the continent’s
leaders to do anything to prevent a wrong developing into a genocidal crisis,
or, even worse, into a continental scale war.
The example set by Rwanda of how this can happen was simply
ignored. One wonders what incentives
were handed to the leaders involved to look the other way. However, Burundi is only one of a long chain
of denial of the rights of the citizens, which the AU professes to hold
dear. Rwanda is another example,
Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Sudan, Nigeria others, not to mention the
crippling droughts that are killing millions in large areas of Africa, without
the AU doing anything more effective than expressing anguish for the suffering
of the ‘ordinary people’ affected and calling for foreign aid to feed the
citizens (ignoring the fact that the present President of the AU diverted US
foreign aid to sell it, for his own benefit, to members of his Party while
depriving the Opposition areas of food, while it should have been initiating
programs years ago to prevent the development of the conditions that have
caused those problems. The same
criticism applies to the AU in its lack of action to prevent the religion-based
civil wars affecting many more millions.
The only peacekeeping actions undertaken under the AU have been subject
to rumors about how much has been promised, and paid, to leaders of the nations
supplying the peacekeepers, with Robert Mugabe again being involved in this way,
and even those peacekeeping actions have demonstrated the absolute incapacity of
those nations to do anything meaningful in the field.
A consideration that should be of great concern to the
citizens of the world is the likely composition of the body that will make the
decisions driving the actions of the AU should it gain Permanent
Membership. They will include the likes
of Robert Mugabe, a man decisively linked to genocide in his own nation, to
election rigging, to the collapse of the previously strong economy of Zimbabwe,
and to the promotion of inflammatory statements regarding Western countries,
Omar al Shabir, a man who is the subject of a Warrant of Arrest issued by the
International Criminal Court (which many of the AU member nations want to
abolish, because it ‘targets only African leaders’ – as though they have not
earned that), Jacob Zuma, a man who arrogantly ignores the findings of
organisms of the State founded under the Constitution to control the excesses
of his office, who simply disregards Orders of the High Court (to prevent al
Shabir leaving the country, to hand over the tapes recording the discussions
leading to the dropping of 749 criminal charges against him, who is likely to
be prosecuted on those charges by any new Government not under his control, and
who has waged war against the participants in the economy in South Africa in
the interests of handing over a large slice of that economy to private interests
while, no doubt, pocketing huge bribes in the process, Burundian President
Pierre Nkurunziza, who has pushed through an amendment to the
Constitution permitting him to retain his grasp on power for another five
years, who is suspected of huge corruption during his term of office, and who
is now suspected of genocide of his own people but who remains uncorrected by
the AU, by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has imposed a
draconian policy of silencing any opposition to his rule, extended indefinitely
when he orchestrated a change of the Constitution limiting the Presidential
term of office in 2005, which effectively bars any reporter who criticizes his
Government from access to the proceedings of the AU, and who runs the country
in a totally undemocratic way, and Hifikepunye Pohamba, President of Namibia, a
country which views the North Korean style of Government as worthy of
emulation. There have been reports of
the corruption of numerous of the African Presidents, including Angola and
Nigeria, of genocides carried out in several African countries within recent
years, and of other aspects of dishonesty, criminality and lack of adherence to
the rules of democracy to which those countries claim to adhere.
One must ask the question: “Do we really want to hand over the
functioning of the United Nations to an entity that is controlled by incompetents,
men who place their own interests highest on the list of priorities with those
of the people only a very distant second, men who are the political equivalent
of the Mafia dons?
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