Presidents Thabo Mbeki, Hosni Mubarak and Olusegun Obasanjo have steered clear of the controversy over Nigerian academic Dayo Oluyemi-Kusa’s assertion that South Africa and Egypt were not black enough to represent the continent on the United Nations Security Council.
“The president would never get involved in commenting on something like this,” said Mbeki’s spokesperson Bheki Khumalo. “He would not attack a fellow president on the words of an academic.” But Oluyemi-Kusa is not just any academic. The Institute for Peace and Conflict Settlement that she heads reports directly to Obasanjo.
The heads of state have deferred to later this month discussion on an African permanent seat in the United Nations powerhouse. Their procrastination would indicate that a new African fault line has been revealed.
Dr Garth le Pere of the Institute for Global Dialogue views Oluyemi-Kusa’s comments as “outrageous” and “misinformed”. But the leaders themselves prefer to pretend that they had not been made. The AU ostensibly differs from its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), because of its ability to intervene in cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. But when it comes to honestly airing differences, the OAU culture of non-interference is alive and well.
After four summits dominated by the symptoms of these differences, AU leaders have yet to examine the traditional African fault lines.
These unspoken divides are sometimes as plain and impractical as the historical francophone/anglophone stand off. While former colonial powers France and Britain have osten- sibly called a truce on their rivalry in Africa, their erstwhile subjects are intent on keeping it alive.
French President Jacques Chirac embarks on an African trip this week starting — surprise, surprise — in Senegal. It was French pressure that got Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade on to the Nepad steering committee. Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was already on the troika driving the process, just was not francophone enough.
Egypt’s addition to that committee highlights another African fault line: the Arab/African divide. Mubarak would be incensed at Oluyemi-Kusa saying Egypt has more to do with the Arab world than Africa, even though his attendance at Abuja was his first at an African summit in a decade.
Other North African countries are dealing with their dual identities. Algeria and Tunisia plainly consider themselves African first and foremost. Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi has angrily and vocally turned his back on the Arab world and thrown in his lot with Africa.
Morocco is the exception. It has spurned Africa because of criticism of its occupation of the Western Sahara. It has fanciful designs on joining the European Union.
Yet another African fault line — that between Islam and Christianity — is felt more keenly in places like Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.
Oluyemi-Kusa’s remarks are particularly unfair to South Africa, which has managed to bridge religious and language divides in its mediation efforts in the Great Lakes and West Africa. Her assertion is designed to underline the case for Africa’s most populous country, which has relatively recently crossed arguably the most significant divide: that between democracies and the motley bunch of military regimes, tyrants, absolute monarchs and flat out autocrats, which still call Africa their home.