A job title and job description copied entirely from the European Union. A position that has been as irrelevant to the continent and its people as the position it was supposed to replace -- Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity. So, you have two mostly irrelevant entities, the OAU and the AU, what is the difference? Well, at least the OAU had an "original" name. Sort of.
Anyway, South Africa's Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has just been elected Chairperson of the AU Commission.
The headlines focus on the fact that she is the first woman to hold the post. The stories hint at "Francophone" and "Anglophone" differences that stymied the first vote to keep or replace Gabon's Jean Ping in January; a few within those note that nominally "Anglophone" countries like Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia opposed Ms. Dlamini-Zuma. There is mention of the understanding between Africa's more powerful countries that none of their number should hold the seat, an understanding South Africa has just broken; and mention of a retort from South Africa that a Nigerian was Secretary-General of the OAU for two years (more correctly he was interim SG).
And there is a lot of talk of how ineffective her predecessor, Gabon's Jean Ping, was as Commission Chair. Jean Ping is a knight in the service of the Bongo Family monarchy in Gabon. The set of things that are good for the African continent, and the set of things that are good for the Bongo Family, are mutually contradictory. No one could expect Jean Ping to advance any of the things that are good for Africa, and it was no surprise that he didn't.
Having said that, I have no idea why the South Africans were so keen on forcibly imposing Ms. Dlamini-Zuma on the African Union Commission.
Don't get me wrong.
No, it is not about nationalism or the supposed rivalry between my country Nigeria and South Africa. To be blunt about it, having a Nigerian occupy some fancy job at an international or multilateral agency or organization produces little or nothing (usually nothing) of value to Nigeria as a whole or to any particular Nigerian outside of that person's immediate family. In spite of all the public back-slapping and back-patting when it happens, my reaction to it is the same as my reaction to having an ethnic or regional kinsman take a domestic political job -- for all the hype about how it is supposedly a good thing for me, it basically doesn't change anything for me, doesn't improve anything in my life or in my community ... and above all, the issues I have been desperately waiting for someone to address are every bit as ignored as they were when the occupant of the office did not share a language/region/citizenship/etc with me.
And no, it is not that I think she will do a bad job. Nor is it that I think she will do a good job. If anything, the "African Union" will be its usual self, no different than if it was led by a Nigerian, by Jean Ping or by Ms. Dlamini-Zuma. It will not affect the price of matches in Makurdi, nor will it influence the peace (or lack thereof) in Patani.
I am just curious as to what the South Africans, and what SA President Jacob Zuma, think will be accomplished by more or less imposing Ms. Dlamini-Zuma on the job. If they are thinking that they will now have official sanction to govern the continent, they must surely be kidding themselves. If they think that the reason the rest of the continent has been ignoring their attempts to govern is that they were doing it from Pretoria and not from Addis Ababa, they must really, really be kidding themselves.
Most countries in Africa have ignored the Organization of African Unity and the African Union for decades, simply as a matter of standard operating procedure. But with a South African at the head of the Commission, a lot of countries, and especially the more powerful countries, will take to ignoring the African Union as a point of diplomatic and political pride, especially because Ms. Dlamini-Zuma will be seen as no more than an echo of President Zuma's decisions.
It is not just that certain countries in Africa do not want to be governed (even indirectly) by Jacob Zuma or any South African president, but even if Zuma made no attempt to do that, these countries will make it a point of projecting to the world that they are not under Zuma's thumb. In the world of dishonesty that is diplomacy, appearance is sometimes as important as substance, if not moreso.
One way or another, the African Union will continue to be non-functional. And at this point, I am not sure that is a bad thing. I shudder to think what they would do if they had the power to do anything and actually used that power. Indeed, Ms. Dlamini-Zuma is quite like Jean Ping, except where he is a fully integrated part of the Bongo Family political machine, she is just as much a walking, talking embodiment of South Africa's more or less perpetual ruling party the African National Congress.
The ANC is different from the Bongo Family (it is not a monarchy, for one thing), but the ANC is as much a part of the normal politics of Africa as the Bongos. South Africa's liberation may have come three and a half decades after the rest of the continent's, but the ANC are like every other African "liberation movement".
Mind you, we are no longer in the days of the one-party state. We have moved instead to the era of the one-party-dominant state, where a single, massive, all-encompassing, perpetually-ruling, politically unbeatable governing party is surrounded by tiny-by-comparison opposition parties that exist only to allow for nominally/notionally "democratic" elections the ruling party can never lose.
The first step towards understanding South African policy in Africa is to understand that this is the way the ANC prefers all African countries to be governed; Pretoria is almost never neutral in the internal disputes of other African countries, and 100% of the time favours whoever/whatever is the closest in incarnation to the one-party-dominant model.
Again, this isn't nationalistic criticism. If anything, Nigeria has metamorphosed from a First Republic of mutually antagonistic ethnic/regional political blocs, to a Fourth Republic of the one-party-dominant Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Sadly, Abuja and Pretoria, while ostensibly rivalling each other, basically have the same view of what constitutes the "ideal" form of government in any and all African countries. And while you might look at a particular President, and find his or her policies to be against our strategic interests, rest assured that neither Goodluck Jonathan nor Jacob Zuma sees anything wrong with what that Presdient is doing -- if anything, they are doing the same sorts of things in Abuja and Pretoria, albeit with bigger budgets to play with.can never be lost by the governing party. I
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