It Is African Solidarity In Crime?
- Category: The Comrade
- Date 01-08-2010
- 412 views
The 15th African Union (AU) Summit has just ended in Kampala with a theme, ‘Maternal, child health and development’. The high point of the summit was nonetheless not about maternal or child health but perhaps about two other issues – the recent Kampala twin bombings and the indictment of the Sudanese president by the international court of justice (ICC). The threat of the al Shabaab militants has lately spiraled beyond Somalia causing the Kampala tragedy of 11th July 2010, where about eighty soccer fans perished as they watched the World Cup finals.
Many international heavyweights from America and Europe turned up at the summit and expressed sympathy for the victims of the bombings as well as support for peacekeeping troops in Somalia. The United States and United Kingdom representatives said little, if anything, related to the theme of the summit. Their interest lay elsewhere: ‘fighting and defeating terrorism’ in Somalia. Interestingly, they all seemed unbothered about state inspired terrorism in Africa as we shall see below.
While the AU chairman Dr Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, like other leaders at the summit, praised South Africa for successfully hosting the World Cup, he also poured scorn on the ICC for issuing an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president, Omar al Bashir. In 2009, the ICC declared Mr. Bashir a wanted man, accusing him of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during his government’s military campaign to stem the insurgency in the country’s vast region of Durfur. In June 2010, the ICC expanded the catalog of accusations to include genocide too, and still calls on governments to help arrest the indicted president and hand him over for prosecution since the court does not have a police force to enforce the detention. The arrest warrant still hangs on Bashir’s head.
At the opening of the Kampala AU summit where Bashir was conspicuously absent, Dr Bingu asserted that the ICC erred to issue an arrest warrant against a sitting head of state because such an action ‘violates the principle of African solidarity and state sovereignty’. Here lies Africa’s problem! Where is ‘African solidarity’ really? Is it solidarity in crime?
The Comrade wanted to call Dr Bingu aside and explain that all animals are equal and none is more equal than others. It is not right that any man should commit crimes with impunity and expect ‘brotherly solidarity’ simply because he is a ‘sitting head of state’. This was the state of affairs in the past and African despots will continue to derive inspiration to wreak injustice and suffering on wananchi without taking liability. They will continue to cling to power if that is what can save them from accountability.
When Dr Bingu proclaimed that the ICC was wrong to ask President Bashir to account, delegates at the summit cheered thunderously. They clapped joyfully ‘in solidarity with Bashir’. This was a sad moment. Many citizens of Sudan in the Durfur region have been dehumanised and subjected to the mayhem of displacement, homelessness, poverty, starvation, disease, and death. They are citizens of the Sudan, Africa and world. They were born naked like any delegate that clapped hands when their suffering was implied at the AU summit. One of the suffering citizens would be occupying Bashir’s office and him a mere mwananchi who would not like to suffer as they have suffered. The problem is that our leaders believe that they have all rights to live in splendour while ordinary folks can face all the suffering and that is okay.
Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thing’o has stated that ‘whenever anyone is degraded and humiliated, all of us are degraded and humiliated because this is about human beings’. If the AU delegates clapped their hands for the suffering people of Durfur, they were celebrating the suffering of all Africans about whom respective governments feel threatened.
Therefore, they clapped for rigging of elections and the ensuing bloodbath in Kenya. They clapped for the endless murders in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They clapped for the toppling of democracy in Zimbabwe. They clapped for the routine brutalisation of opposition politicians in Uganda. All this is state inspired terrorism. If occasion demanded, the delegates would clap for murder of albinos - if they were a threat to the ‘sitting head of state’ – and express solidarity in crime.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: The Comrade, The Guardian on Sunday