Kofi Annan finally steps down as from now after 10 years as secretary general of the United Nations. It is a peculiar departure, and makes you wonder how other imminent departures will be handled.
It is a peculiar departure because it is one that in normal times and under normal circumstances, should have been accompanied by bells and whistles, and the arrival of his successor should have been a suitable moment for jubilation at the continuation of a great institution.
Unfortunately the UN has proved itself to be less than a great institution, and Annan himself less than a great helmsman of that flawed body. It is not just his 10 years at the top that we are talking about. The UN has been his sole career for much longer than that, and his legacy cannot be looked at out of context of everything else his hand has touched in the workings of that expensive, relentlessly document- and resolution-producing body that can be likened to Macbeth’s soliloquy about a life ”full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
What a bitter shame for the world, but particularly for Africa at this ongoing time of trial and tribulation, that an African presence, which might have made a difference, departs the world stage having gained so little for us.
Annan, if he is to be remembered at all, will be best recalled for his spineless treatment of the British-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, at a time when the world community was more united than ever before against this naked display of aggression. His thuddingly soft-voiced approach, grating the radio and television news media across the world, provided no moral force in the end to change the outcome of what has now been recognised as a major international disaster, with a mounting death toll and body bags being shipped back to the United States, let alone a hideous local body count, to show for it.
The Taliban are back in full swing in Afghanistan. ”Insurgency” is at a rapidly rising peak in Iraq. The weapons of mass destruction that were the pretext for the war, no longer talked about, are actually only those that are deployed by the invading forces from the West, and to precious little effect, as it turns out. Laser-guided tomfoolery that once again produces a lot of sound and fury, and ends up delivering not much in support of the invaders’ stated objectives.
So much for Afghanistan and Iraq (although we’re sure to hear more from them in the not-too-distant future). Annan’s trail of havoc covers far more territory than that.
The most blatant part of it concerns the horrific events in Rwanda that unfolded in 1994 — a genocide that claimed the lives of about a million people. Annan was at the time one of the under-secretaries at the UN responsible for liaising between the Security Council, as it is facetiously known, and the combined military forces that were supposed to don their baby-blue helmets and go and stop the mayhem, armed with rubber truncheons, water pistols and gumboots, and precious little else.
Annan and his fellow under-secretaries sat in the safety of the UN building in New York while their surrogates on the ground at the sharp edge, led by the Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, sent increasingly frustrated messages about the deteriorating situation. Annan and the UN could have done something — if only to mobilise the world community to react in some way, rather than sitting on their hands in Manhattan.
Instead, a racial genocide was unleashed. Hutus and Tutsis hacked each other to death in the most brutal fashion. Bodies piled up in the streets, festering in the tropical heat. Dallaire’s UN soldiers witnessed impossible sights — people wading through blood as bodies were piled up in open garbage trucks, orphans clinging to their dead mothers, nowhere to go and no hope in sight. Rats gorged on human flesh till they grew to the size of dogs. All this is true.
Annan oversaw all of this, and said not much of any note. In his measured Ghanaian tones he tried to make it all seem reasonable and reasonably fixable. Just as he would later make the war in Iraq look like a reasonable outing on a reasonable day at a reasonable Sunday school.
So I wonder what, if anything, his legacy will be. So far it doesn’t look too good. But that seems to be the way the world goes these days.