African dreams ride on 'African Union'

By Michael Bitala

NAIROBI (DPA): Just for once, all the African countries agree -- the continent is worse off than ever before, and the rest of the world has never seemed to care less.

Not only is war raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo -- formerly Zaire -- in Sudan, in Angola, Burundi and west Africa, but almost half of all Africans live in extreme poverty. One out of two of them can neither read nor write. AIDS is rampant, snatching away whole generations of children, of teachers, police officers, and workers, even in stable countries like Botswana. Africa is dying, so the common complaint, and no one cares.

As legitimate as parts of that assessment may be, the disbanding of the world's largest regional political amalgamation, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), at its last summit in the Zambian capital of Lusaka on Monday suggests that African leaders are largely responsible for their countries' misery.

Since its beginnings in 1963, the OAU -- with 53 member states, in which 800 million people live -- has never managed to speak in a unified voice for the continent or to mediate in conflicts between member countries. More than a dozen of its member countries are currently enmeshed in civil war. Of the OAU's 21 treaties and conventions, only 13 have been formally ratified -- although not necessarily implemented.

For decades, Africans have chosen a policy of non-intervention in their neighbors' conflicts, a principle which can tend towards comfortable non-action, the easy way out. The OAU has taken no part in peace efforts in Congo; it has played the impassionate observer in skirmishes between Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea for years. Even in the now-resolved conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the OAU hesitated for far too long before stepping in as a mediator, despite the location of its central headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital.

The OAU has never been more than a meeting place for individual heads of state, none of whom wishes to jeopardize his own power. Their selfishness has been the OAU's downfall. It appears that no African president has any interest for what happens in a neighbor country -- as long as his own land remains unthreatened by war or floods of refugees.

African regional organizations like the West African Economic and Monetary Union or the East African Community, made up of Kenia, Tanzania and Uganda, can barely agree on shared policy, to say nothing of a shared currency. Thus it is essentially meaningless that OAU is being replaced by a new organization called the "African Union", which was initiated by Libya's dictator Moammar Qaddafi.

The ambitiously worded lines of the treaty establishing the new union are causing some to scratch their heads in puzzlement. There are to be a new African central bank, an assembly of heads of state, an African parliament, an African court of justice and a common currency. Only the principle of non-intervention is not being challenged.

After almost four decades of failure, a new name can do little to force the national leaders to cooperate for the benefit of their continent.