Like a bad hangover Moammar Gadaffi has lingered on after the African Union (AU) inaugural celebration.
At stop after stop on his motor-cade heading north from Durban — Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi — he has been bad-mouthing the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad).
Dismissing the shining success of Durban might normally put one at odds with the African leaders who not only endorsed Nepad, but also insisted that it was part and parcel of their new organisation. African heads of state, however, are inured to the antics of the Brother Leader. So apparently are the Western powers whose approval President Thabo Mbeki is so keen to maintain for Nepad and the African renaissance that it posits.
Ambassadors from at least five of the group of eight (G8) most indus-trialised countries — who have officially endorsed Nepad — expressed amusement at Mbeki’s nervousness about his guest’s behaviour and the preoccupation of the South African media with the Libyan showman’s hardware and haranguing.
Even the very real prospect of Libya becoming the seat of the proposed Pan-African parliament does not fill them with the same foreboding as it does the pilots of Nepad.
”That parliament is many years away,” said one European ambassador. ”It will be decades before any African country cedes any sovereignty to a central parliament. Look how long it took in Europe. So throwing Gadaffi that bone now is neither here nor there.”
Allowing Libya on to the expanded implementation committee of Nepad might place some strain on the programme’s credibility — as would including Zimbabwe and Kenya.
Here again, the Western observers appear to be more sanguine than Mbeki.
”Gadaffi was able to upstage everyone here because we have never seen his show before,” said Jakkie Cilliers of the Institute for Security Studies, the leading South African think-tank on the summit.
Cilliers insists the summit made ”remarkable progress”.
”It launched the key structures of the African Union. It adopted the protocol relating to the establishment of the Peace and Security Council. That protocol is now open for signature and ratification.
”The assembly of heads of government decided to strengthen the role of the AU in election monitoring and observation.
”The assembly also approved a range of benchmarks to monitor issues relating to security, stability, development and cooperation,” said Cilliers.
Significantly, the summit approved the Nepad African Peer Review Mechanism and related documenation. ”Perhaps delegates were spurred by the threat of Nepad creating a competing secretariat,” said Cilliers.
Mbeki faces at least one more stand-off with Gadaffi. Six months or so from now, probably in Libya, he will have to chair an extraordinary summit dealing exclusively with amendments proposed to the AU Constitution by Gadaffi. Most notable of these are the call for a single African army. While Mbeki finds it vexatious, the Gadaffi watchers dismiss it as fanciful.
Other amendments include trying to make the chairperson of the AU spend his year at the union headquarters. Exactly what is behind Gadaffi’s bid to get a president to leave home to spend a year in Addis Ababa is best understood by the Brother Leader himself.
”Perhaps this is another bid to get the leadership, because he is the only one confident enough to be away so long,” quipped a Southern African Development Community ambassador. ”Anyway, I cannot see the amendment succeeding.”
It was not only Gadaffi who had Mbeki feeling edgy.
The most heated exchange of the summit involved Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade, who banged his country’s nameplate on the table to attract attention and jumped the queue of leaders waiting to talk.
Relations between Mbeki and Wade have never been warm.
Mbeki kept the Senegalese leader waiting for an appointment for three days in a Pretoria hotel last year when Wade passed through South Africa on his way to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Lusaka. At the time, Mbeki was showing his disapproval of Wade barging into the steering committee of the African recovery plan.
Madagascar was Wade’s preoccupation at Durban.
Following the decisions taken by the OAU summits in Algiers and Lome, the government of Marc Ravalomanana was excluded from Durban because it was adjudged to be improperly constituted. Wade and his team persisted with their objection to this matter, taking it through ambassador, foreign minister and finally heads of state level. His stubbornness was matched by that of Nigeria’s president Olusegun Obassanjo, who insisted that Madagascar remain red-carded. To the delight of leaders angered at being elbowed out of the way, Obassanjo reminded Wade that as Africans they should put their continent above the interests of their former colonial powers. This was a cutting reference to Wade apparently carrying a brief for France on getting Madagascar admitted.
”But you are a putchist,” stormed Wade to Obassanjo.
”I am an elected leader,” replied Obassanjo.
Not content with that, Wade rounded on all the Anglophone leaders calling them ”representatives of the Commonwealth and the Anglican church”. The Senegalese president later apologised for this outburst, but he made his point by leaving the summit early without attending the closing session.
The most notable absentee was Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, who forced his way into the Nepad cockpit at the same time as Wade.
Mubarak has not attended an OAU summit since an assassination attempt on him at the Addis Ababa summit five years ago. Given the pivotal role he has sought for himself, it was thought he might make an exception for this historic event. Mubarak was also not among the Nepad leaders at the Kananaskis summit of the G8 last month.
Security considerations and regional difficulties aside, his absence renewed criticism that Egypt plays the African card very selfishly. As the second-largest economy on the continent, it cannot be left out of African affairs. But when the chips fall, Egypt’s interests are primarily in the Middle East.