The recent African Union summit confirmed that the African continent remains united “in its determination” to pursue the objectives fundamental to the African renaissance, including accelerating socio-economic development, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
Taking issue — in his regular internet column, ANC Today — with mistakes in reporting last month’s session of heads of state and government by a national Afrikaans newspaper, the president criticised the trend in the media to stereotype Africa and focus on the negative.
Mbeki noted that the South African newspaper had referred — for example — to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where the summit was held, as the Tanzanian capital.
He noted, too, that at a World Economic Forum panel discussion on “the Promise of Africa”, Germany’s Burda Media executive, Hubert Burda, had strongly denounced the “unfortunate reality in terms of which the media, including his own, is enslaved by a highly negative stereotype of Africans and Africa, refusing to see, acknowledge and report the very many positive things the people of Africa are and have been doing to extricate themselves from a centuries-old crisis of dehumanisation”.
In contrast to negative reporting, the Eighth Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the AU had been a positive one. The renaissance commitments included “promoting African integration and unity, ensuring peace and stability, entrenching democracy and a culture of human rights, accelerating socio-economic development to address the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment and ensuring that Africa takes its rightful place within the world community of nations”.
Mbeki said further: “As an expression of its commitment to achieve these objectives, the assembly took important decisions to assess the effectiveness of the institutions of the AU, precisely to ensure that Africa realises the faster progress that it needs to achieve.”
For example, he said, the assembly accepted a proposal made by the African ministers of finance and economic affairs for the elaboration of an African Charter on statistics.
The charter will be considered by the AU executive council — the foreign ministers — at its meeting in July, he reported.
The South African president said clearly the continent needs accurate statistics precisely to measure the progress it is making in addressing its challenges.
“However, the decision to elaborate the … charter … emphasises the point that much of what is presented as fact, concerning our continent, is little more than guesswork. Of course, this gives the possibility to all and sundry to characterise our continent in any way they wish.”
He added: “The AU must ensure that it has the capacity to attain the important goals it has set itself. This is what the January 2007 Eighth ordinary Session of the AU Assembly decided. With that, it conveyed an unequivocal message of hope to all the people of Africa.”
Taking issue with stories indicating that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir had been rejected for the post of chair of the AU in 2007, Mbeki said the appointment of Ghana’s President John Kufuor had been a unanimous decision and reflected the stance that “everything should be done” to commemorate the historical independence of Ghana 50 years ago in 1957.
The decision had “absolutely nothing to do with humiliating or rejecting … Omar al-Bashir”. — I-Net Bridge