ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA -- It is no secret that the old Organization of African Unity's (OAU) annual summits often provided an excuse to give a face-lift to the cities that hosted them. And though the group was reincarnated here last week as the African Union (AU) -- a move intended to herald the organization's transformation from a dictator's club of years past to an agent of reform and progress on the continent -- old habits die hard. Prior to the conference, which began last Monday and ended 30 hours later on Tuesday afternoon, the fence around Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi's palace was repainted; so were the city's roads. And those roads were put to use, as delegates from 53 African nations zipped around town in fleets of brand-new Mercedes and other top-of-the-line vehicles, bringing traffic to a halt and leaving Ethiopians on their way to work festering in the mid-day sun. Federal police armed with automatic machine guns sat perched atop their vehicles, holding the plebeians at bay.
Meanwhile, most delegates stayed at the Sheraton, widely regarded as the most luxurious hotel in sub-Saharan Africa. While monopolizing the pool -- it was off-limits to all other guests for four days -- African leaders such as Libya's Col. Muammar Quaddafi (who erected a tent next to the pool instead of taking a room) must have noticed the tin-roof shacks that paint the capital's landscape in all directions. Indeed, on full display here last week were the paradoxes and problems that continue to define this organization -- new name and all -- and to plague the continent it supposedly serves.
One of the biggest problems with the old OAU was that its constitution mandated a policy of noninterference in internal disputes, meaning dictators such as Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko could pillage national coffers and terrorize dissenters without interference from neighbors. As long as colonialism was the central issue for the continent, the group served an important purpose, providing material assistance and moral support for liberation movements in countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique and pressuring the West to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa. But it never took measures against African leaders themselves. And while colonialism's legacy still looms large on the continent, it is arguably some African leaders who are now the primary impediment to development and progress.
The AU says it's going to change that. "This is one time we're doing something different than the Organization of African Unity," declared Desmond Ojiako, the AU's acting spokesman. The group has elected to replace the OAU's Peace and Security Council with something called the Central Organ for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution. Unlike its predecessor, this suborganization will allow member states to intervene in the internal affairs of their neighbors.
But what took place at the conference last week suggests that African heads of state still don't have the willpower to publicly pressure their peers on issues of repressive domestic policy or cross-border conflict -- the two main problems most countries on the continent face. A motion to censure Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe for detaining political opponents and embarking on a controversial land-reform policy, which has destroyed his country's agricultural sector, did not pass the organization's assembly. As has been widely publicized in the Western media -- frequently with a disproportionate focus on the plight of white farmers at the expense of the nation's millions of landless blacks -- Mugabe began confiscating white-owned farms in 2000. While his move will end shockingly disproportionate white control of the country's most fertile farmlands, it has also left about half the country's 12 million blacks facing famine -- and, as Zimbabwe's opposition leaders have pointed out, Mugabe's cronies are the ones who will ultimately most benefit from the land confiscations.
The AU's reluctance to criticize Mugabe flows from its desire to present a united front among African nations -- a strategy it inherited from its predecessor -- even if that front is an artificial one. "What we have done is try to cool your desire for news," Ojiako said at the end of a press conference at which he refused to confirm whether 10 member countries are being sanctioned for being behind on their dues, a piece of information the AU's legal council accidentally let slip out.
The mentality is an understandable consequence of the discrimination and marginalization the continent has faced for centuries. Yet it's this same mentality that allows even once-promising young leaders like Uganda's Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's Paul Kagame to plunge their countries into a destructive war with each other without facing reprimands from other states that might have helped preserve the peace.
Summit attendees did manage to come out with statements calling for peace in the Ivory Coast (which erupted in civil war after a failed coup attempt last September) and opposing war in Iraq. In his closing speech, South African President Thabo Mbeki argued that a war with Iraq would hurt Africa's economies, which is probably true. Yet the statement seemed ridiculous when one considers that numerous African heads of state have done more to hurt their economies than outside events -- such as a war with Iraq -- ever could.
Most African countries are poorer today on average than they were 30 years ago; meanwhile, few countries on the continent have managed to diversify or industrialize enough to have some cushion against fluctuations in commodities prices. (This is true even in places such as Botswana, which, with a per capital gross domestic product greater than $3,900, claims the highest income average in sub-Saharan Africa but whose economy depends almost entirely on diamond mining and exporting.)
Africa faces a future with complex problems that demand African-initiated solutions. It's something the AU's leaders are well aware of; the question is whether they can now muster the collective strength to do something about it, as they have too often failed to do in the past.
"What do you think of the AU?" I asked a taxi driver named Mesfa as we were driving off after the closing ceremony. "It's good," he said. "Very good -- good for business."
"What about after they leave?" I asked him. "What do they do for you, or for any African, on a daily basis?"
"Nothing," he replied.
Alex P. Kellogg is a freelance writer covering East Africa for several U.S. newspapers.
