New vision necessary for African leadership

By Michael Kibaara Muchiri

YOGYAKARTA (JP): While Africa is trying to forge a Union of African States, it is imperative that she looks back and sees what has perennially plagued the Organization of African Unity: the absence of transformational leaders and concrete vision.

From issues as controversial as awarding the 2006 World Cup Finals to Germany to health issues such as HIV/AIDS, it is crystal clear that Africa needs a stronger functional Union of African states.

Coming on the wake of the loss of the African bid to host the greatest football spectacle in the world for the first time, and hot on the heels of the Durban AIDS conference, the approval by Organization of African Unity leaders of the legal texts that pave the way for the creation of an African Union is a step in the right direction.

Even though the fine print of the agreement signed in Lome, Togo, points to a longer timetable for the creation of the new pan-African grouping, and even though the formal creation of the new union that will replace the moribund OAU will not start until two-thirds of the OAU's 53 members have ratified the texts, it is still a bold step remembering that it is envisioned to take effect in about one year.

This African Union, which follows the European Union model envisages a pan-African parliament, a court of justice, a central bank, an African monetary fund and an investment bank.

Proponents of a more unified, stronger Africa will have backed Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi's vision of a federal United States of Africa. But the jealousies, fears and suspicion that have continued to plague and haunt Africa seem to have won the day. So it is a cautious step towards the creation of the African Union.

The trouble with current African leaders is that most of their priorities are short-term, and revolve around politically expedient moves that are always detrimental to the state. While Africa continues to battle HIV/AIDS, most governments have not shown enough will to attempt to educate the populace on the scourge. Lack of money aside, there is zero governmental will in arresting the AIDS affliction.

Most African governments apparently have abdicated their roles as their citizens' custodians and urgently need a wake-up call by a body such as this new African Union.

The United Nations Children's' Fund report released before the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, says that HIV-infection rates among young people are a searing indictment, documenting failures of vision, commitment and action of almost unbelievable proportions.

Then the data: life expectancy in most sub-Saharan African nations is plummeting towards 3o years and below; Botswana, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe all have life expectancies of below 40 years; and, of the 34.3 million people around the world carrying HIV or AIDS, 24.5 million are black Africans. Thus the African Union may be the only hope in helping sub-Saharan Africa tackle the calamity.

In the past, African leaders have been labeled egocentric -- only supporting and searching for self-aggrandizing projects. It will be pitiable if South African president Thabo Mbeki tries to water down Qaddafi's efforts. The two are the only remaining icons of any pan-African transformational leadership left in the continent.

They have the money and capability to make an African Union feasible. It was encouraging to hear Mbeki call for a more effective instrument that would combine political as well as economic roles.

Condemned by the west as a terrorist and terrorism sponsor, Qaddafi is one of the few visionaries in Africa who has made his country happy, plowing back the oil riches of the nation for the benefit of its citizens.

He is in a different league from the rest of a crop of African leaders who have continued to amass fortunes that they stash away in foreign banks, creating in Africa modern day exemplifiers of poverty and hell on earth.

It is these corrupt, doubting leaders who will try to abort the noble idea propounded by Qaddafi, the sponsor of the Togo summit. In any case, how many nations can afford to pay for a summit when most of Africa is in hock to the IMF and World Bank? Jealousies will abound but Qaddafi's ideas are worth taking a shot at.

There is no denying what Mbeki has all along echoed, that the rest of the world, especially the rich West, sees Africa only as an irrelevant appendage whose marginalization is an acceptable outcome, as an earlier report said. His outburst was sparked by a raw deal that saw Europe (Germany) bag for the 10th time the hosting of the 2006 world cup finals.

From the very beginning Africa never acted as a team since both South Africa and Morocco were in the race. Africa must admit that a house divided against itself cannot stand. In the ensuing pulsating neck to neck race, Africa was humiliated in a most tainted world cup vote.

When the choice came down to Germany or South Africa, even must-support-Morocco Asian and Middle East states like Saudi Arabia, Thailand, South Korea, and Qatar, voted en bloc for Germany. So why is New Zealander Charles Dempsey getting the brunt of the African vitriol? Africans should realize that division and lack of one voice and vision cost Africa the votes of her close supporters.

Unless Africa has a Big Brother figure like the newly-proposed African Union, the wars of Africa will never end. A stronger Union would eventually give birth to permanent armed forces like those of the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), where individual African nations would not have functional armed forces to be employed against other African nations per se, but rather against foreign threats.

Among other implications of such a development is that it could help arrest the infiltration of arms into Africa and the spawning of wars reportedly sponsored by foreign arms manufacturers. The African Union would be a sure way to check the ridicule of Africa by other continents and to stop raw deals for Africa engineered by other, more united continents.

If Africa wants recognition from the rest of the world, she must improve her own act first. Thus, Africa needs to adopt a more pragmatic approach to globalization, health issues, and its perennial myriad of ethnic and international wars.

Africa must embrace the African Union concept and support those visionary African leaders that propose rejuvenating transformational ideas, as well as shun those petty jealousies, fears and the mistrust that have ruined Africa before.

The writer, studying for his master's degree in psychology at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, works at the Ministry of Education in Nairobi, Kenya.