Pax Africana - dream or reality?
As this edition of ANC TODAY goes to press, the Pan African Parliament (PAP) is holding its third session at its seat in Midrand, Gauteng. We would like to take this opportunity warmly to welcome back to our country, and their permanent home, Africa's parliamentarians, and wish them success in their important work.
The convening of this regular session of PAP confirms the determination of the peoples of Africa to promote and achieve the unity of our continent. To realise these goals, the PAP, made up of representatives elected by the African masses, will discuss a number of the important pan-African issues of the day, consistent with its mandate to help determine the African agenda.
As the PAP meets, at least three important events will take place on our continent in which undoubtedly Africa's parliamentarians will be intensely interested, consistent with their mandate to contribute to Africa's renaissance.
One of these important events is the Parliamentary Elections in Zimbabwe, which were held on 31 March.
The second is the Summit Meeting of the leaders of Côte d'Ivoire, which will start in our capital city, Tshwane, on 3 April.
The third is the initiation of the training programme in our country for representatives of the leadership from Southern Sudan, which is preparing itself to assume governmental positions both in the South and in Sudan as a whole. The delegation includes an important component of women, who are correctly concerned that the Sudanese peace process should also focus on the central goal of the emancipation of the Sudanese women.
What distinguishes all these important events is that developments in Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire and Sudan have, for some years now, raised issues that transcend the borders of these countries and therefore stand at the centre of the continuing struggle of our continent to achieve its renewal.
As our continent has battled effectively to respond to the developments in these sister African countries, the peoples of Africa have come face to face with the reality that we still have the task to win our right to determine our own future, even though we had thought that our accession to independence from the 1950s onwards guaranteed us our right to self-determination.
Hopefully the PAP will take advantage of the currency of all these matters to discuss them, and publicly state its views concerning these issues, which will also be informed by the report of the PAP delegation that visited Darfur in Sudan. All this will help to provide the necessary leadership to our governments and the African masses with regard to matters that, inevitably, will help to shape the future of our continent for some time to come.
To add to the matters we have raised, we should perhaps also mention the controversy surrounding an important African and world leader, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. This has arisen from the serious questions about moral integrity in the conduct of global affairs that have been raised concerning the UN Iraq oil-for-food programme.
In particular, we must take note of the fact that in a report tabled in New York as the PAP began its current sitting, the Paul Volcker investigation into this programme cleared the Secretary General of any unethical conduct. However, it seems that the pressure from some international circles to compel Kofi Annan to resign his position as the Secretary General of the UN has not diminished.
When journalists asked him whether he would resign his position, regardless of the findings of the Volcker investigation, Kofi Annan resorted to a colloquialism and replied - "hell no!"
The proceedings concerning the future of the UN Secretary General have posed the challenge to all of us as Africans whether we too, despite our poverty, have the courage to say "hell no!", when others more powerful than we are, taking advantage of our weakness, seek to instruct us how we should think, speak and behave, regardless of the dictates of our principles, our consciences, our best interests, our knowledge, and our dignity as human beings.
It would seem appropriate and timely that the PAP should consider the "Annan affair" and hopefully add its voice to that of the AU Assembly and others who have said that the eminent African, Kofi Annan, should be allowed to serve his full term as UN Secretary General, to help implement the critically important UN transformation process he is leading. This includes the elevation of the challenge of African development to a higher position on the global agenda. In this regard, the PAP and Africa as a whole may have to answer the question whether we as Africans have the courage also to say -"hell no!" to those who think otherwise.
The crisis in Côte d'Ivoire has imposed an obligation on the PAP and the rest of our continent to answer a number of questions that are of fundamental importance to the future of our continent. These include:
- what must we do to ensure stability, democracy and inclusive political, economic and social systems in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-faith African societies?;
- what conflict resolution mechanisms should we put in place so that competing interests in our diverse societies do not lead to violent conflict and instability?;
- given the long-standing continental decision to respect the colonial boundaries we inherited, how should we manage the reality that since these political boundaries divide families and entire communities, so that they do not become a factor of conflict and instability?; * how should we design our political systems to obviate the possibility of resort to undemocratic means to gain political power, or resolve disputes, including the use of violent means and resort to coups d'etat?; and,
- what mechanisms and procedures should we put in place to ensure that the African Union is able to assist all member states of the Union to honour their obligations as defined in the Constitutive Act of the African Union and the Conventions and Protocols approved by the Union?
Similarly, the events in Zimbabwe have imposed an obligation on the PAP and the rest of our continent to answer a number of questions that are of fundamental importance to the future of our continent. These include:
- what should we do to complete the anti-colonial revolution by eradicating all vestiges of the legacy of colonialism, including the repudiation of neo-colonialism?;
- what are the appropriate socio-economic programmes we should adopt to ensure the sustained and sustainable development of our societies within the context of NEPAD and the process of globalisation?; and,
- how should we manage the political evolution in our countries so that we guarantee democratic practice even as this natural evolutionary process leads to the emergence of a number of competing political parties and organised interest groups?
An account of the recent histories of Zimbabwe and Côte d'Ivoire would make it obvious why we use the experience in these sister countries (and Sudan), to draw the conclusion that all the questions we have listed above are "of fundamental importance to the future of our continent".
Our continent is faced with the critical challenge to achieve the goal we have set ourselves to ensure that the 21st stands out as the African Century. To realise this goal, we must successfully address a number of serious issues that help to define our continent, with which we are all familiar. Even a cursory reading of the Constitutive Act (CA) of the African Union would show what our continent thinks these issues are.
The CA identifies democracy, human rights and good governance as one of our core challenges. Specifically, it says that our continent is "determined to promote and protect human and peoples' rights, consolidate democratic institutions and culture, and...ensure good governance and the rule of law".
In this context, the CA also commits Africa to two other related objectives. It says that our continent is committed to "respect for the sanctity of human life, condemnation and rejection of impunity and political assassination, acts of terrorism and subversive activities". It goes further to pledge "condemnation and rejection of unconstitutional changes of governments".
Intent to ensure that we achieve peace and stability throughout Africa, the CA commits all of us to the "peaceful resolution of disputes among Member States of the Union..., prohibition of the use of force or threat to use force among Member States of the Union".
Most important, it also asserts "the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity". It also grants "the right of Member States to request intervention from the Union in order to restore peace and security".
Similarly, it draws attention to the task we all face to fight and defeat poverty and underdevelopment throughout Africa. It therefore says that we must "promote sustainable development at the economic, social and cultural levels as well as the integration of the African economies".
Among other things, in this regard, it says the Union must "promote cooperation in all fields of human activity to raise the living standards of African peoples", as well as "establish the necessary conditions which will enable the continent to play its rightful role in the global economy and in international negotiations".
The CA also addresses another important matter, namely an explanation of the continental unity we seek. As we would all expect, it speaks of the "noble ideals which guided the founding fathers of our Continental Organisation and generations of Pan-Africanists in their determination to promote unity, solidarity, cohesion and cooperation among the peoples of Africa and African States".
But the CA also addresses the challenge of African unity at the national level. It therefore says our Union is "guided by our common vision of a united and strong Africa and by the need to build a partnership between governments and all segments of civil society, in particular women, youth and the private sector in order to strengthen solidarity and cohesion among our peoples".
This objective, which focuses of the important issue of national unity, or a new national partnership for development, the foundation and starting point of NEPAD, makes a critical statement about Africa's fundamental challenges.
That statement says that these challenges are of such a nature that they require the united response of the peoples of Africa within and between countries. It asserts the determination that so fundamental are these problems to the lives of the African masses, that they require a united and non-partisan engagement.
This means that we must strive to develop the national and continental consensus which will ensure that we actually succeed to make the historic progress we seek. This is as relevant to Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire and Sudan, as it is to our country.
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the development programme of the AU, and the African Peer Review Mechanism, are based exactly on all the aims and objectives contained in the Constitutive Act of the African Union that we have detailed.
Similarly, the PAP was founded on the basis of the same principles and goals. The CA provides for the PAP to be established "to ensure the full participation of African peoples in the development and economic integration of the continent".
Inevitably, therefore, even during its current sitting, the agenda of the PAP will be informed by the principles and goals contained in the CA. Consideration of the issues of Côte d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe and Sudan would enable the PAP practically to apply these principles to the concrete and pressing circumstances relating to these sister countries.
By so doing, the PAP would make an important contribution to the transformation of the CA and other policy statements of the AU into living documents. It would ensure that the AU achieves its objective of practically establishing itself as a decisive instrument for our continental integration and unity, impacting on the policies and programmes of all AU Member States.
Perhaps the most challenging task posed by the establishment of the AU and the initiation of NEPAD is the requirement that, at last, as Africans, we must take full responsibility for our destiny. In this regard, the CA even includes the pursuit of the goal of self-reliance.
Practically, this means that as it strives to implement its mandate "to ensure the full participation of African peoples in the development" of Africa, the PAP must help us to ensure that Africa acts to solve Africa's problems. In any case such solutions can only be stable and lasting if they genuinely express the conscious will of the peoples of Africa.
This also means that as we proceed in this manner, we should also strengthen the new partnership of equality, shared interest and mutual respect that must underline our cooperation with the rest of the world, which will enable us to achieve the goal stated in the CA of "establish(ing) the necessary conditions which (will) enable the continent to play its rightful role in the global economy and in international negotiations". Self-reliance does not mean that we should cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, or treat the rest of humanity as our adversaries or enemies.
What it means, however, is that we should fight to assert our right to determine the future of our countries and continent, insisting on our right as Africans to decide the future of the unique and only common home of all Africans, Africa.
The people of Zimbabwe have just exercised their right to choose their elected national representatives. The leaders of the people of Côte d'Ivoire will meet in our country, hopefully to take the necessary decisions that will end the crisis in their country, in the interest of the masses of the Ivorian people.
In both instances it is important that the leaders and peoples of these countries (and Sudan), should respect their national obligations as Member States of the African Union, and honour the commitments contained in the CA.
But it is equally important that the PAP, and the African Union as a whole, should defend the right of the peoples of these countries, acting as members of the AU, to exercise their right to self-determination. To give birth to the new Africa of our dreams, we must have the courage to say "hell no!" to any intervention that seeks to compromise our possibility to determine the future of our countries and continent.
Democracy, development and unity in Africa, and the realisation of the goal of an African Century depend on the achievement of real peace and stability in all our countries. This can only come about as a result of our sovereign and purposeful actions as Africans. Only when we accomplish this will a meaningful Pax Africana become reality rather than a dream.
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