President Thabo Mbeki was in league with his arch rival Moammar Gadaffi to ensure that Alpha Konare got the job of first permanent chairperson of the African Union Commission.
The record will show Konare was elected by the majority of heads of governments of the 53 AU members. But the former Mali president actually got his job through pressure, plotting and a compromise struck in smoke-filled rooms reminiscent of the old Africa this new union seeks to replace.
The brief departure statement by Amara Essy, the former Côte d’Ivoire foreign minister, was the only dignified thing about it.
In fact, Essy was knifed in the back by those who praised the work he has done building the edifice of the union created in Durban last year.
When he refused to stand aside for Konare, a hard core of African heavyweights got at his president. So it was Laurent Gbagbo who eventually pulled the rug out from under Essy by withdrawing his candidacy.
Mbeki was at the head of this diplomatic ambush along with Gadaffi, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and the host President Joachim Chissano.
They knew that Essy had been promised a substantial number of votes in a secret ballot.
Mbeki never favoured Essy. He wanted Salim Ahmed Salim, the Organisation of African Unity secretary general for 12 years and the man most likely to become the next Tanzanian president, to take the job as interim president of the new union.
Mbeki was not swayed by glowing reports from his officials about Essy’s performance in materialising the South African vision of the union.
The South African president wanted a head of state, to raise the status of the organisation.
Konare’s election means the nine other commissioners are raised to ministerial level.
”This is the difference between being received by a head of state when you visit a country and having to find your own way into town from the airport,” a South African official explained.
At the rock face, officials doubt the lust for status will pay off in practical terms.
Officials, ambassadors and even ministers with whom Konare will do his quotidian work fear he will be haughty and offhand.
Konare showed an arrogant streak refusing to fight an election against a mere foreign minister. The man who was Mali’s first elected president is a dreamer and an idealist. His wife recalls proudly that he shunned movies with friends, preferring to stay home and read Che Guevara.
South Africa was also instrumental in trying to ease out Zambia’s Kasuka Simwinji as candidate for the deputy chairperson because of a patchy past on financial management.
Rwandan Patrick Mazimhaka was preferred, even though his candidacy broke a gentlemen’s agreement not to present an East African runner so soon after Salim had occupied the top African job for so long.
Mbeki emerges from the summit very satisfied. His brainchild, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), has been acknowledged as the backbone of the union’s development efforts.
The three-year period he has been given to fold the secretariat currently based in Midrand into the AU apparatus in Addis Ababa has been blurred. This integration is now conditional on the AU structures becoming ”fully operational”.
Persuading the heads of government from the 20-member Nepad implementation committee to actually attend its meetings remains a problem for Mbeki.
The need to have the required 27 countries ratify the proposed Peace and Security Council (PSC) has moved up Mbeki’s priority list.
If Africa is to put out its own fires, there is an immediate need to develop a rapid reaction force. This would do the job that the British did in Sierra Leone, the French are doing in Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo and that United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan wants the Americans to do in Liberia.
The PSC embodies the primary difference between the AU and its ineffectual predecessor. This is the ability and the will to intervene when a fellow African steps over the line on gross human rights violations, war crimes and genocide.
The PSC looms large in Mbeki’s strategic thinking because it is through this organ that he will project influence over Africa when he leaves the troika of past, present and future AU presidents after the 2004 summit.
In the longer term, Mbeki could be even happier as Gadaffi withdraws from Africa.
The Brother Leader arrived here a state-stealing day ahead of Mbeki and was pointedly rude about the guest who had kept the South African leader at home.
Gadaffi told reporters United States President George W Bush was trying to ”sabotage” the African summit by timing his visit to coincide with the gathering of heads of state.
Obasanjo and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni both had to leave early to receive Bush in their respective capitals.
Gadaffi irked Mbeki by snatching up the villa the South African was hoping to take: close to the presidential palace and the love nest of Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel.
However, the body language of Mbeki’s team exudes confidence about Libya.
Responding to Gadaffi’s assertion that having foreign troops in Africa is an indictment of the AU, an official retorted: ”He should come here and say that so we can explain the realities to him.
”None of us likes having foreign troops do the work Africans should be engaged in. But how can we live with our consciences if we do not do everything necessary to stop the killing as quickly as possible?”
Libya has scrapped its Ministry of African Affairs and meshed the officials into the Foreign Ministry. The Maputo summit is a different place without Ali Abdusalam Triki, the former African minister wielding Gadaffi’s generous cheque book.
In the past Libya has paid the deficits of errant members in exchange for their votes. This year, eight of these remained glumly frozen out of proceedings.
The Libyan candidate lost the race for a place on the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights. Libya also looks set to lose the contest with South Africa to host the Pan African Parliament, which might be the last straw for that camel.
Triki himself has been looked after. He has been named the AU Special Envoy to Central Africa but may have to give this up to become Gadaffi’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York.