South Africa celebrated a ”one-down- and-one-to-go” victory at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week when Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma secured one of the five upper-tier seats on the African Peace and Security Council (APSC).
South Africa will share the three-year appointment to this body, which is at the epicentre of the continent’s new political and economic organisation, with four other heavy hitters: Nigeria, Algeria, Ethiopia and Gabon.
The other 10 seats on the APSC went to Lesotho, Mozambique, Ghana, Senegal, Sudan, Kenya, Libya, Togo, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo, who will all serve two-year terms.
Gaining the seat on the APSC was central to South African plans for the AU, which have been relatively modest.
South Africa has, for example, not sought to have any members on the AU Commission, which is the secretariat that runs the day to day activities of the 53-member organisation.
The last two members of that commission were also named by foreign ministers in Addis Ababa this week. They are MM Mkwezalamba of Malawi, who assumed the economic affairs portfolio, and Libyan Mohammed Assayed, who will responsible for human resources, science and technology. The latter post is of particular significance as the AU streamlines its bureaucracy and tries to inject expertise into the organisation. ”Clearly the commission is key to the viability of the AU,” a European ambassador to Addis Ababa told the Mail & Guardian this week.
”This is acknowledged by the Western friends of the organisation that have concentrated their financial support on building capacity in the commission.
”We believe there have been some excellent appointments to that executive. Until now, though, they have been working in a vacuum with no support structures.
”Only when they are up and running will it become clear whether this AU is really going to amount to anything.”
President Thabo Mbeki’s concentration in the organisation whose birth he presided over is on the APSC.
Styled on the United Nations Security Council, this is the body that separates the AU from its predecessor where the air of collegiality precluded leaders from criticising one another.
The APSC has the power to intervene in cases of gross human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mbeki is also the pilot of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) that has become the continent’s official development programme. Many of his African colleagues say he shows insufficient faith in the organisation by clinging to the Nepad secretariat as long as possible.
Becoming the seat of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) has become the second South African priority at the AU. Libya withdrew its candidacy just before the parliament began its inaugural session in Ethiopia this week. This leaves South Africa in a two-horse race with Egypt.
Dlamini-Zuma led her team — including National Assembly Speaker Frene Ginwala — with a decided spring in her step, having broadened support for South Africa considerably beyond the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), which has officially backed its candidacy.
The support comes at considerable cost to the SADC, which cannot expect any other AU bodies to follow the parliament to the southern-most tip of the continent.
Ginwala herself abandoned any candidacy in the continental legislature. Having performed energetically at the head of the PAP steering committee she was virtually guaranteed her pick of the posts. But AU rules preclude any country from having both the seat and the leader of any
organisation.
South Africa’s candidacy is further improved by the fact that Egypt has fallen out of favour with many of the Central, West and East African leaders for a less-than-enthusiastic participation in AU affairs.
Even as a member of the five-nation Nepad steering committee, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fails to make an appearance at important meetings. He has not attended an African summit in a decade.
The extent of the leaders’ irritation will become known at their summit in July when they vote on where to site the union’s parliament.
Observers are frankly intrigued at South Africa’s passion for the PAP, which they see as a ”nice to have” rather than a truly powerful body within the union. They draw parallels with the European Parliament that took decades before it became a real factor in European Union affairs.
By design the PAP will not pass any legislation for five years. Failing some dramatic alignment of Africa’s diverse legal systems it will be a lot longer than that before any continent-wide laws will be passed.
Too many African leaders don’t trust their own subjects with sovereignty and are unlikely to pass on any of that power to a wider continental authority. For some time to come then, the PAP will be at best a pressure pad and at worst a hot air factory.
This week before leaving for Ethiopia Ginwala said the PAP would be free to debate anything it chose —including the actions of African
colleagues.
Ginwala, with others, looks set to make the PAP a ”name them and shame them” forum by putting the spotlight on undemocratic behaviour and poor governance. But the AU already has that twice over with the APSC and the peer review mechanism in Nepad.