Following United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s visit to South Africa recently, it is worth assessing his 10-year legacy as he steps down from his job in December.
Annan was elected secretary general in 1996 under controversial circumstances. The United States stood alone among the 15 UN Security Council members in vetoing Egyptian Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s re-election. At the time of his appointment, Annan was widely regarded as a competent administrator, who had ascended the UN system after a 30-year career. He seemed to be charming and unflappably calm, but appeared to be better suited to the discreet role of a faceless bureaucrat than the high-profile role of a prophetic statesman.
Boutros-Ghali and Annan expanded UN peacekeeping into Africa. Ironically, it was the North African Boutros-Ghali — whose country is usually accused of having its body in Africa and heart and head in the Middle East — who was seen as more committed to Africa than the Ghanaian, Annan, whose country had blazed the independence trail in 1957. Trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Macalester College, Annan has never quite shaken off the impression of being indebted to Washington. Many Africans at the UN distrust Annan and have often doubted his conviction on African issues. Critics have also accused Annan of not standing up to the US when it used the UN to spy on Iraq and rained down bombs on Kosovo, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq without Security Council approval. African diplomats and UN staff have privately criticised him for not promoting African candidates to top UN posts.
But Annan did appoint senior Africans like Ibrahim Gambari, Olara Otunnu and Lakhdar Brahimi, and has consulted regularly with, and sought the advice of, African leaders. Annan has often shown a superficial understanding of Africa, describing an idealised traditional society where people sit under a tree and talk. He has sometimes employed stereotypes of Africa as an undifferentiated continent of conflicts. He notably annoyed African diplomats during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 by saying that African governments were not contributing troops because they “probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations”. (African troops were actually offered, but the West dragged its feet in providing the promised logistics.)
One lingering accusation Annan has not been able to shake off is that, while serving as head of UN peacekeeping, he did not respond appropriately to a cable warning of an impending genocide in Rwanda. Much controversy still remains over Annan’s failure to report the contents of the cable to Boutros-Ghali and the Security Council. A subsequent UN inquiry report of December 1999 criticised him for this failure. But Annan has mostly avoided taking direct responsibility or apologising unambiguously for his role in this tragedy. Instead, he has often hidden behind formulations of collective responsibility by citing the culpability of “the international community”. Nevertheless Annan has been the most moralistic and proselytising UN secretary general, presenting himself as the champion of “humanitarian intervention.” At the African Union summit in Addis Ababa in July 2004, he called for an end to dictatorships in Africa in front of all the assembled continental leaders. Annan is the only living secretary general to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he won in 2001.
Seen at first as a “made in America” secretary general, he eventually acquired American critics in government and media circles. During a visit to Baghdad in February 1998, Annan said he could do business with Saddam Hussein if it meant preventing a war. This statement was treated by his critics as the treacherous appeasement of a dictator. He displayed uncharacteristic hubris following this trip and seemed to believe in the propaganda of the ultra-loyalists around him. The agreement with Hussein soon unravelled, and Annan lost his halo among his former devotees in the US Congress and media.
Annan’s relations with the George W Bush administration were also badly affected when he clumsily declared the war in Iraq “illegal” in the middle of the US election campaign of 2004. This coincided with several American congressmen calling for Annan’s resignation and launching five investigations into the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq in which Annan’s son, Kojo, was rewarded by Cotecna — a Swiss company hired by the UN — possibly to the tune of $484 000. Combined with the spectacular failure of UN reform in September 2005 was the release of a report on the “oil-for-food” scandal, which uncovered staggering corruption and gross mismanagement within the UN secretariat. These events threatened to turn Annan into a lame duck two years before the end of his term. Amid his tribulations, Annan figuratively and literally lost his voice, his hands visibly trembled in meetings, his shoulders slumped and he seriously considered early resignation. He naively lamented the strange disappearance of once-loyal “friends”.
It is often said that all political careers end in failure. This appears to be apt as one observes the tragic twilight of Annan’s tenure as UN secretary general. In retrospect, his 2001 Nobel citation, which praised him for being “pre-eminent in bringing new life in the Organisation” now sounds anachronistic in light of Rwanda, the oil-for-food scandal, and the failure of UN reform in 2005. Annan’s current travails could yet transform him into a prophet without honour, with his final years being embroiled in scandal and having been rendered a lame duck by the country that did the most to anoint him secretary general in 1996. Annan has finally and painfully discovered the wisdom that one needs a long spoon to sup with the devil.
Dr Adekeye Adebajo, executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, University of Cape Town, served on UN missions in South Africa, Western Sahara and Iraq