New political union launched in Africa

AFRICA'S new political union was launched yesterday with the continent's economic powerhouse, South Africa, firmly in the driving seat.

At least 40 of the continent’s 53 presidents and monarchs were in the port resort of Durban to see the launch of the African Union (AU) with President Thabo Mbeki as chairman for its first year. “Through our actions let us proclaim to the world that this is a continent on the rise,” Mbeki told some 20,000 people in a sports stadium before a helicopter fly-past and a concert by South African musicians.

The crowd gave its biggest cheer to ex-President Nelson Mandela, 83, who spent 27 years in prison for his fight against white minority rule.

The AU’s 39-year-old parent, the Organisation of African Unity, was given a state funeral on Monday with full honours but few real tears.

Saddled with debts and bureaucracy, the OAU had declined sadly from its anti-colonial origins in 1963 and failed to resolve African conflicts or improve governance. Mbeki, closely backed by oil producer Nigeria, intends to change all that. He has the means to do it. South Africa’s self-sufficient economy is bigger than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa’s combined.

“There can be no sustainable development without peace. We must end the senseless wars on our continent which have caused so much suffering to our people and turned many of them into refugees,” Mbeki said at the stadium rally where tight security may have limited attendance by ordinary Durbanites. The AU’s first session approved the creation of a Peace and Security Council that will have greater powers to tackle conflicts than its predecessor in the OAU.

A good start would be made at Durban if the two key presidents involved in a multi-sided conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accept face-to-face talks. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whose army supports the biggest rebel group in the DRC, told Reuters he might meet DRC President Joseph Kabila with Mbeki and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan taking part. South Africa is assuming a mediating role in Africa, hosting DRC peace talks and sending a military protection force to Burundi. One of Africa’s old-style leaders - usually

nicknamed Big Men or Dinosaurs - stepped in to remind the world that radical progress in Africa will require more than a name change.

“All too often, some leaders go through the motions of attending peace conferences while actively fueling conflicts,” Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, in office since 1978, said in his speech, representing East Africa.

Organisers of the stadium party were certainly not trying to hide the old-timers. Togo’s President Gnassingbe Eyadema, 64, and Gabon’s Omar Bongo, 66, spoke for West and Central Africa. Both took power in 1967 and Eyadema, who also staged independent Africa’s first military coup in 1963, is the continent’s longest-serving head of state.

One challenge for Mbeki and other leaders fighting to bring Africa in from the margins of world affairs will be old-time presidents who are reluctant to embrace accountable and transparent government.

“The major problem of the OAU has always been African solidarity - a club of brother leaders who stand together and who do not condemn, certainly not publicly,” said South African political analyst Jakkie Cilliers.

Any hopes among Western diplomats that President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe would be on the carpet in Durban looked far-fetched on the second day of the summit.

Indeed, the political and economic crisis in South Africa’s northern neighbor Zimbabwe was totally absent from the agenda.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who claims ownership of the AU, filed last-minute amendments on Monday night to turn Africa into a single country with one single army. Other States kicked the amendments into the long grass, invoking procedural rules.

Gaddafi was also in the thick of the action yesterday.

“Africa for the Africans! The land is ours! You are the masters of your continent! You are marching to glory!” a purple-robed Gaddafi told a crowd of thousands in fractured English.

“Forgive the whites! They are now poor. We are bigger than them,” he said to roars of approval, echoing the reconciliatory policies of Mandela, South Africa’s first black president.

The summit will endorse the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, a blueprint to transform the continent’s economy and political governance. Amara Essy, a former foreign minister of the Ivory Coast and outgoing secretary general of the OAU, was appointed interim chairman of the AU commission. But a senior West African delegate said Essy’s term might be as short as six months.

“We may need an extraordinary AU summit to elect a top-flight person for the job and to tie up the loose ends we are bound to leave hanging here,” the delegate said. Mali’s former president Alpha Oumar Konare is regularly mentioned as the leading candidate to run the new AU commission - the union’s secretariat.