AU (African Union) is a Failure – By Suleiman Egeh

Republic of Somaliland must by pass the IGAD despotic states and directly lobby for their overdue recognition

“The definition of insanity is doing the same mistake over and over again and expecting different results”

Background Information: On May 25, 1963 Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie invited the heads of the 32 independent African in Addis Ababa. The OAU was founded in that conference.

The OAU at the time promised to liberate all the states of the continent from the yolk of colonialism. They also promise to resolve African conflicts and disputed through peaceful resolution. Another very important and controversial issue which may haunt the continent for generations to come was decided in that meeting, that issue was to leave all African borders as they were inherited from the colonial powers. In the first summit of all African states giants such as Dr. Nkrumah, of Ghana, Dr. Leopold Sengor of Senegal, Ahmed Sika toure, Dr; Julius Nyere, Dr Nimadou Azike, Dr Kenneth Kaunda of the newly independent African states in Addis Abba.
 
So far IGAD in some form or the other were involved in the former Somalia. That involvement was a miserable failure. These countries are predominately ruled by dictators. Today they have nothing to show for that involvement. They have their own internal rivalries, competition and internal problems. After twenty years it is very clear that these countries are not the friends of the people of Somali decent. In fact they are sworn enemies of all the people of Somali extraction. In their quest to restore the elusive Somali state they have made huge mistakes, and they keep making their plunders over and over again. For example the direct Ethiopian military intervention in Mogadishu in 2006 was a huge blunder which ended with catastrophe. According to some observers these states have made things worse and they used the failed state of Somalia as their play ground, where they resolve their own conflicts and fight their own proxy wars. What you see in Mogadishu today is an open warfare between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Kenya also is not far behind; they are also involved on some mischief in the areas close to the Kenya- Somalia border. The highly corrupt racket state of Kenya harasses, robs, manipulates and abuses the human rights of all people of Somali decent day in and day out including the Somalis of NFD.
 
These states are also no friends of Somaliland either; we have reports that these failing states are the main obstacles to the recognition of Somaliland. They keep on telling the world they should not recognize Somaliland. That is why the EU and other western states keep on telling us that the recognition of Somaliland must first come from the AU. AU who? The AU is nothing by a dictator country club where they connive where they can extort their next dollar and survive in their dictator den. This club has no military financial power or political power. There is no single positive thing in history in their portfolio. The report card is “F”. They are powerless and are just nothing but 19th
 Century tribal chiefs masquerading as heads of states. Southern Sudan, Darfur, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and many places have burned and they did nothing about it. The worest genocide in the later part of just departed 20th century has happened in Rwanda and the AU looked the other way. Currently genocide another major genocide is unfolding in Darfur and as usual they are doing nothing about it.  I fail to understand the relevance of this den of despots. The AU is nothing but a platform of dysfunction, inaction and corruption. They excessively use it as a platform of endless begging but these days there credibility is diminishing. More over the cold war dollars have dried up long time ago. The recognition card is the only thing in their disposal and nothing else. I believe the decolonization recognition thinking must change. In the new paradym of the 21st century recongintion must depend on good behavior, good governance, management and viability. I strongly believe the automatic recognition of  many states who emerged from colonial hegemony in 1960 must be revisited. A United Nations still dominated by a small founding group must be revisited also. International organizations need to undergo reform geared for the modern change in Africa.
 
fI believe that automatic recognition needs to be revisited. At the time no other conditions or criteria have set on the then emerging states. The post independence deal didn’t put any pressure on dictatorships, in terms of their economics, human rights record and good management. That easy and carefree atmosphere has made the AU a do nothing despot club. The club gave these dictators a voice through which they can speak to the dysfunctional international organizations such as the UN, the AU and the Arab league. Their opposition to Somaliland independence and sovereignty has nothing to do with Somalia, but it goes back to their inherent enmity towards all the people of Somali decent. But their efforts will fail if not already failed. They cannot and will not hold the faith of the people of Somaliland hostage forever. Somaliland sovereignty and independence is not negotiable. It did not come with a decision reached in Addis Abba, Nairobi, Asmara or Djibouti.  The decision came from the people of Somaliland. It came from Zelia, Borama, Hargrisa, Berbera, Burao, Eiregavavo and las Anod.
      
These countries have been also using Somalia as a cash cow, where they can milk few dollars from an increasingly reluctant international community. It is clear that those said countries have intensively lobbed for the numerous failed attempts to revive the collapsed state of Somalia. Practically speaking Sharifs modern Somalia is only confined to few blocks in Mogadishu. For the last 20 years these IGAD states were part and parcel of the Horn of Africa conflict, and each time they hold a so-called conference where they crown one dysfunctional faction or the other, a new war erupts in Somalia. These states have clearly failed.  Theses countries need to get out of the Somali affair. They have failed the people of the former Somalia (the former Italian Somaliland as well as the people of the Republic of Somaliland.
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Somaliland became the Republic of Somaliland in 1991. Puntland also formed its regional administration and until now they claim, they are part of Somalia, but lately there are calls coming from Punt land and calling to opt out of Somalia also. Almost fifty years passed since the founding of the OAU. It was 1963, in Addis Abba when the late Ethiopian dictator Emperor Haile Salessie and Africa is still a peripheral continent to the international affairs.
 
This building is called the African Hall and it is the place where the first African conference of the newly independent states of Africa  held. In that conference the OAU was formed.

Sulieman Egeh -

Appeal to African Heads of State
Speech by Malcolm X
Chairman, Organization of Afro-American Unity
 
“Throughout June, 1964, MALCOLM X spoke, agitated, educated and organized to create a new, non-religious movement to promote black unity and work for freedom “by any means necessary.” On June 28, this new movement was born under the name of the Organization of Afro-American Unit, its “statement of basic aims and objectives” was released to the public, and Malcolm was designated chairman.

Shortly thereafter, on July 9, Malcolm again left the United States a for Africa and the Middle East. His immediate objective was to attend the “African Summit”—the second meeting of the Organization of African Unity, which had been formed in 1963 to bring about joint action by the Independent African governments.
The OAU conference was held in Cairo July 17–21, and was attended by nearly all the heads of the thirty-four member States. The welcoming address was made by President Jamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic who, while reviewing the events of the previous year, hailed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that had recently been enacted in the United States.
Malcolm was accepted as an observer at the conference. In this capacity he was permitted to submit to the delegates an eight-page memorandum urging their support of the Negro struggle in the United States and their help in bring the plight of the American Negro before the United Nations. The memorandum, which follows, was delivered to the delegates on July 17, one day before the events that came to be called “the Harlem riots.”
 

 H.I.M. Haile Selassie OAU speech 1963 African Summit
“We welcome to Ethiopia, in our name and in the name of the Ethiopian Government and people, the Heads of State and Government of independent African nations who are today assembled in solemn conclave in Ethiopia’s capital city. This conference, without parallel in history, is an impressive testimonial to the devotion and dedication of which we all partake in the cause of our mother continent and that of her sons and daughters. This is indeed a momentous and historic day for Africa and for all Africans.
We stand today on the stage of world affairs, before the audience of world opinion. We have come together to assert our role in the direction of world affairs and to discharge our duty to the great continent whose two hundred fifty million people we lead. Africa is today at mid- course, in transition from the Africa of yesterday to the Africa of tomorrow. Even as we stand here we move from the past into the future. The task, on which we have embarked, the making of Africa, will not wait. We must act, to shape and mould the future and leave our imprint on events as they pass into history.
We seek, at this meeting, to determine whether we are going and to chart the course of our destiny. It is no less important that we know whence we came. An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans. This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults. Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffers not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous. The obscurity which enshrouds the centuries which elapsed between those earliest days and the rediscovery of Africa are being gradually dispersed. What is certain is that during those long years Africans were born, lived and died. Men on other parts of this Earth occupied themselves with their own concerns and, in their conceit, proclaimed that the world began and ended at their horizons. All unknown to them, Africa developed in its own pattern, growing in its own life and, in the nineteenth century, finally re-emerged into the world’s consciousness.
The events of the past hundred and fifty years require no extended recitation from us. The period of colonialism into which we were plunged culminated with our continent fettered and bound, with our once proud and free peoples reduced to humiliation and slavery; with Africa’s terrain cross-batched and checker boarded by artificial and arbitrary boundaries. Many of us, during those bitter years, were overwhelmed in battle, and those who escaped conquest did so at the cost of desperate resistance and bloodshed. Others were sold into bondage as the price extracted by the colonialists for the “protection” which they extended and the possession of which they disposed. Africa was a physical resource to be exploited and Africans were chattels to be purchased bodily or, at best, peoples to be reduced to vassalage and lackey hood. Africa was the market for the produce of other nations and the source of the raw materials with which their factories were fed.
Today, Africa has emerged from this dark passage. Our Armageddon is past. Africa has been reborn as a free continent and Africans have been reborn as free men. The blood that was shed and the sufferings that were endured are today Africa’s advocates for freedom and unity. Those men who refused to accept the judgment passed upon them by the colonies, who held unswervingly through the darkest hours to a vision of an Africa emancipated from political, economic and spiritual domination, will be remembered and revered wherever Africans meet. Many of them never set foot on this continent. Others were born and died here. What we may utter today can add little to the heroic struggle of those who, by their example, have shown us how precious are freedom and human dignity and of how little value is life without them. Their deeds are written in history.”
H.I.M. Emperor Haile Seaside I
 
My letter to the AU
Briefly you are Excellencies your leadership for the last fifty years was a disappointment. You have clearly failed in every department. You have failed the African masses that have liberated the continent from the yolk of European colonial powers. The economy of many African counties in 1960 was more than ten times better than it is today. Post independent African leaders who took the mantle of power in 1960 and those who followed failed miserably.
 For about fifty years the continent became embroiled with corruption, mismanagement, endless wars, and lack of viable leadership. You definitely fall short of your responsibilities. Your existence is nothing more than a country club of crooks and Mafioso bosses. Today the African continent is the most backward continent in the world. They are missing from the international forums regarding economy, military, energy, green revolution and other hot button issues.  Today the majorities of African states are composed of either failing and failed states. The continent’s infrastructure is abysmal, the education, economy, health care and job creation are all in shambles.        
 
Suleiman E. Freelance writer and senior science instructor
 
Sources
Nazret.com
Betty Shabazz foundation
Library of congtress

Filed Under: Report