Africa`s New Path?

Fifty years ago, as African nations were starting on the road to independence, great things were expected of a resource rich, independent and democratic Africa and of the socialist model most of African nations adopted.

The OAU itself goes back almost 40 years, to this time of heady optimism and great intentions. But, early on, the OAU adopted a policy of “non-interference” in domestic issues of member nations. In what was to become a dictators’ club, “non-interference” was a green light for brutality and corruption.

The exceptions to the non-interference policy were white-ruled South Africa and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, under the erratic dictatorship of one-time freedom fighter Robert Mugabe.

While the OAU rightly condemned South Africa and Rhodesia, it remained deaf and mute about some of the world’s worst small-time dictators including Chad`s Hissene Habre, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Uganda’s President-for-Life Idi Amin and Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, to name a few. The OAU didn’t merely accept dubious members, it welcomed them with all the ceremony that only emperors and presidents-for-life merit.

The OAU was also largely silent about the horrid civil wars that plagued Africa, such as those in Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda. The OAU stood aside when genocide broke out in Rwanda.

More recently, but with more international attention, the OAU endorsed Zimbabwe’s violently rigged election. It uttered hardly a peep about the increasing chaos and terror throughout Zimbabwe, the violent appropriation of white-owned farms, and the resulting threat of mass starvation in one of Africa’s most fertile nations.

What’s different about the AU? Not much at this point, other than words and intentions. The leaders and bureaucrats who just checked out of the OAU have now checked in at the AU. Even Mugabe was welcomed to the founding meeting. Of the 53 members, only half a dozen are democracies, but many of these, like Nigeria, are shaky.

The hopes that the AU’s intentions have sparked – and the desire of the AU to model itself after the EU – are most evident in the AU’s end-game plan: an African economic community with a single currency and central bank, like Europe today.

Along the way to this vision, African leaders say they will pull down trade barriers and build up institutions such as an African parliament, court of justice and a Peace and Security Council, with the power to intervene in other nations in support of peace and democracy.

At the centre of all this lies the principles on which the AU was founded, human rights, democracy and free markets. This brings us back to NEPAD. While NEPAD’s wording remains mushy, this African-inspired and written document promises democracy and economic freedom in exchange for aid and debt forgiveness.

The principles the UA and NEPAD share truly are a break with the past. They contradict the African model, developed under the OAU – and sadly prevalent today – of powerful corrupt governments, which see freedom as a threat to their security.

Still, ideas matter. The UA’s and NEPAD’s endorsement of democracy and freedom may help spread these ideas throughout Africa. Support for these ideas were spurred by the clear failure of the socialist model and the better lives that democracy and free markets have brought to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.

NEPAD can be viewed as Africa’s pledge to the rest of the world to undertake the reforms that could lift Africa out of poverty. The AU is Africans’ pledge to themselves. Of the two pledges, the most important is the latter. Only Africans can solve Africa’s problems.