High hopes and cynicism greet birth of African Union

Leaders from around the continent hope today’s inauguration of the African Union will be the first step in bringing prosperity and good governance to the world’s poorest people.

The AU replaces the Organisation of African Unity, long seen as an empty talking shop, hobbled by bureaucracy, infighting and a host of wars.

But there was cynicism at the summit in Durban, on South Africa’s coast, with many suggesting things would remain much the same.

‘‘The new body will inherit an ineffectual structure and a continent riddled with corruption, disregard for the most basic tenets of human rights, and a continent crippled by poverty and disease,’’ said Johannesburg’s Sunday Times.

‘‘What is worrying is that some of the leaders who will commit themselves to the AU’s objectives are themselves dictators, murderers and thieves.’’

The OAU was created 39 years ago as the wave of post-colonial liberation swept across the continent.

Many complained that the toothless organisation did little more than prop up dictators and give them a lavish summit to attend each year.

The 53 nation AU, by contrast, is billed as a new organisation for a new era - linking a commitment to democracy and human rights to economic development.

‘‘To achieve these objectives, and therefore give hope to the hundreds of millions of Africans who necessarily carry the deep scars of centuries of the humiliation of the peoples of Africa, today’s leaders of these masses will have to convince themselves that they have to exercise their stewardship in a new way,’’ South African President Thabo Mbeki wrote recently.

Inspired in part by the European Union, it will have a security council, a legislature and an economic development plan.

The union’s muscle is to be the peace and security council, whose 15 rotating members will be able to authorise a proposed peacekeeping force to intervene in cases of genocide and war crimes.

The union’s other key element is the New Partnership for African Development, or Nepad, which seeks billions of pounds of international investment in Africa in return for stable democratic governance and fiscal responsibility.

The world’s wealthiest nations embraced the program at last month’s Group of Eight meeting in Canada.

But not all AU members will qualify for membership in Nepad. They must first be able to comply with its basic tenants. A mechanism of peer review is to be set up so the member states can police one another.

Critics doubt their leaders’ commitment to a union that in theory will take away some of their power, and they question whether it will be allowed to use soldiers to end civil conflict and human rights abuses in African countries.

Noel Twagiramungu, a human rights official in Rwanda, where more than 500,000 people were killed in a 1994 genocide while Africa and the world looked on, said he was doubtful African leaders would rise to the occasion.

‘‘For Africa to see fundamental changes, there must be a major change in the attitude and thinking of its leaders,’’ he said.

‘‘The biggest problem facing the AU even before it is born is that none of the present leaders can stand up and say, ‘I am a credible leader with moral authority and my peers should follow my example.’’’