History in the making?

By Gamal Nkrumah
No one said it would be easy to bring about African unity, what with many worried that national interests will suffer under the shadow of common continental concerns. The champions of African Union, however, argued that the two are neither contradictory nor incompatible. Forty-odd years ago, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and a leading figure in the anti-colonial movement, and a handful of other founding fathers of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) attempted in vain to accomplish African political and economic union. Since then, a combination of tedious bickering, petty jealousies and personal rivalries have thwarted their pioneering efforts.
In a bid to rekindle Nkrumah's dream, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi invited African leaders last weekend to assemble in Sirte, a seaside oasis with a population of 500,000 and the distinction of being Gaddafi's birthplace.
There is too much prestige at stake. This is the OAU's fifth extraordinary summit on African Union, with the specific purpose of unifying the continent, convened at the Libyan leader's behest and financed almost exclusively by him. Notwithstanding initial difficulties and last minute hitches, Gaddafi's labours were crowned with a victory of sorts.
The helter-skelter nature of the event came in for biting criticism from some African heads of state. Some openly warned that attempts at speeding up African Union were unnecessary, counter-productive and politically dangerous. But men of the political stature of former South African President Nelson Mandela, who flew to Sirte to help his old friend, lent Gaddafi's efforts sorely-needed approval. And representatives of over 30 African political parties meeting in the Burkinabé capital Ouagadougou urged African leaders to work harder at African unity and endorse Gaddafi's endeavours.
Last Saturday, all 53 OAU member countries heeded Gaddafi's call and signed the Constitutive Act of African Union, better known as the Sirte Declaration of September 1999, which was formally adopted in Lomé, Togo in July 2000 at a regular session of OAU heads of state and government. By the end of the Sirte summit, some 31 African states had ratified the Union's Constitutive Act. The African Union does not come into full effect, however, until at least two thirds of OAU member states -- 36 countries -- ratify it. When that happens, Gaddafi promises, he will organise another impromptu summit.
After two days of grueling debate, the assembled leaders pledged to speed up the process and establish African Monetary Union, an African Central Bank, an African Economic Community, an African Court of Justice and an African Parliament, to be inaugurated formally later this year. The foundation stones of African Union have thus been laid in Sirte. Still, there is no guarantee that African Union will be able to avoid machinations similar to those that foiled the plans of the OAU's founding fathers in Addis Ababa in 1963. To begin with, the larger and more powerful African countries insisted on a loose arrangement; political union has been ruled out. And despite a consensus that greater economic cooperation is desperately needed, anything more binding than the European Union in the economic sphere has few takers these days.
So hope for genuine African Union remains tenuous. Is Africa actually ready to unite? To most observers in Sirte, that question has already been answered. Gaddafi initially wanted African leaders to agree to the creation of a United States of Africa and help draft the blueprints for this ambitious plan. Other African leaders, however, focused on a more narrow list of priorities, topped by the creation of the African Economic Community which was already planned in the 1980 Abuja Treaty and the 1990 Lagos Plan of Action.
With such a plethora of plans for African governments to co-operate more closely among themselves in political, commercial, economic and monetary matters, the 500 journalists covering the event had trouble restraining their perhaps understandable scepticism. Western media reports invariably insinuated that the Libyan leader was effectively bribing the African signatories to ensure their compliance. Libyan largesse may, in fact, have played a big role, the signing and ratification of the Sirte Declaration by a handful of small and impoverished African countries long preceding that of larger and more powerful African nations, most of whom signed reluctantly and failed to ratify the Sirte Declaration.
Conspicuously absent were the leaders of Libya's North African neighbours. Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika attended, but was embroiled in a terrific row with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade when the latter bemoaned Morocco's absence, dating from its withdrawal from the OAU following the admission of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in 1985. Algeria has traditionally been the SADR's main supporter and has had several border disputes with Morocco.
President Hosni Mubarak gave his blessing to African Union, sending a large delegation headed by Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. Tunisian President Zein Al-Abidine Bin Ali also failed to show up.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, on the other hand, made an appearance and was received with a standing ovation, empathy for the Intifada and moral support for the Palestinian people from the African leaders present. Arafat called on them to stand by the Palestinians at the United Nations and other international forums in the same way that they stood by the Libyans during the Lockerbie Affair.
Like Arafat, several African leaders utilised the forum as a political platform for their national agendas or to iron out problems and patch up differences. Congolese, Somali and Sudanese government and opposition figures held talks on the sidelines of the summit. It is hardly surprising that peace-making and conflict resolution featured prominently at Sirte, as Gaddafi has made repeated efforts to referee various African conflicts in the past several years. Indeed, these efforts have given him the legitimacy and staying power that has allowed him to surmount hostility to his grand designs of African unity.
Thorny issues such as the creation of an African Court of Justice, based on the Banjul Protocol (also known as the African Charter of Peoples and Human Rights), were raised, but delegates avoided discussing the African Defence Force recommended by the 1988 OAU General Assembly, even though Gaddafi repeatedly brought it up.
The notion of African Union is about to be put to the test. Gaddafi risks offending key African leaders if he moves too fast. But his detractors stand to lose if they are perceived to have engineered Africa's failure to make better use of the golden opportunity Sirte provides. If African leaders merely pay lip service to African Union, only to revert to their customary jostling for positions and squabbling over turf, then true African unity will be deferred once again.
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