The OAU is dead, long live the African Union. The dream of a united Africa, given substance and form by Libya’s charismatic Muammer Ghaddafi, may be the long sought after hope for Africa’s millions - or it may become nothing more than the old OAU in new clothes. Tom Nevin ponders the options.

For so propitious an occasion is was hardly heralded; but when the curtain went up, the world sat up and took notice. It seemed to like what it saw and is watching to see if Africa’s new guiding body is a golden carriage or a pumpkin. The OAU died with hardly a whimper, and the African Union strode on stage with a resounding bang.

The stage was the conference centre in Lusaka and the players were Africa’s 55 Heads of State, there to witness and be part of the changing of the OAU old guard into the new lean and hungry AU commando. It’s mission: to drive Africa into the future with strength, vision and purpose using an apparatus trimmed of much of its fat and replaced with battle-ready muscle to meet the challenges of Africa in the 21st century.

Much of this will sound familiar and the cynics will have heard it all before; the more optimistic will take comfort and encouragement from the rewritten constitution that promises action and resolve in falling in step with global economics. If words turn into deeds and the AU has its way, then the continent of Africa is in for a thorough shaking up.

A melting pot of cultures and languages, politics and economics, war and peace, acquiescence and intransigence, Africa’s path ahead will be tough going. The real challenge facing the AU is to get 55 nations all reading from the same page.

Gadaffi’s ambition

The AU’s strong entrance is not unexpected considering the author of the script. Muammar Gadaffi, the enigmatic, charismatic and unpredictable Libyan leader, has a life’s ambition to redirect Africa’s fortunes through an organisation he designed to carry Africa into a glorious new global economic dawn.

He is the first to admit that he borrowed heavily from the structural blueprints of the Economic Union. There’s much about the EU’s modus operandi that Gadaffi likes - and a lot that he doesn’t.

He took those aspects that could be applied to Africa, added much of his own philosophy, retained some of the OAU’s nuts and bolts, and packaged the plan and punted it to Africa’s leaders.

Not all nations responded with equal enthusiasm. His ambitious plans for a pan-African parliament, court of justice, central bank and common currency were initially sidelined by some leaders, worried that proposals for political and monetary union were unrealistic and could be destabilising. Eventually, when Africa’s two biggest economies, South Africa and Nigeria, fell into line, Gadaffi won the two-thirds majority necessary for creating the AU.

What’s in a name?

Will the AU have more success with Africa’s challenges than the OAU? How much has changed in the last 38 years since the OAU was born?

Mathatha Tsedu, chairman of the SA National Editors Forum, thinks that the AU is walking down a well-trodden path.

In Tsedu’s view the catalogue of Africa’s current woes is no less intimidating than the list of colonies that confronted Kwame Nkrumah and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere nearly four decades ago.

?No more than nine countries attended the first gathering that brought the OAU into being,? he says. ?But as they sat in Addis Ababa 38 years ago, looking at the range of countries still under colonial rule, the view was as daunting then as it is today. When one looks at the mess our leaders have made of the continent. It is enough to make one cry.?

He believes two questions that need answering: How relevant was the OAU to today’s challenges, and what is the way forward for economic emancipation?

?Instead of an organisation focused on fighting non-existent colonial battles, the AU is to fight the new battles of the globalised world. That means uniting the economic blocs that constitute the continent and ensure the pooling of resources, creating bigger markets for our own produce.

It means creating a social and political environment where we can stop bullying people into submission, but instead create democracy and allow people to lead their lives in peace.

That is the hope embodied in the AU charter. This continent deserves a leadership that dares to dream of a better place and is prepared to work towards that goal despite its odds.?

?Obedient mimicry’

Others are unhappy with the direction the AU has chosen. Dr Anthony Holiday of the University of the Western Cape’s school of government and at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris, says the organisation’s decision to fashion itself after the European Union is ?obedient mimicry’, in which the African continent takes another step away from its authentic cultures, religious, artistic and political traditions.

?What else does the new dispensation signal except an African acknowledgement - justified or not - of the superiority of our erstwhile colonial masters’ way of doing things?? he asks. ?What does it amount to, if not an admission that the European ethos represents our only hope of escape from the cycles of economic failure and fratricidal strife that have become synonymous, for many observers, with the very name of Africa?

?We cannot go on using a doublespeak without generating a new politics of resistance on the part of a generation of young Africans of all colours and creeds, who demand to be told the unambiguous truth about where their leaders are taking them,? says Holiday.

When outgoing General-Secretary Salim Ahmed Salim addressed the OAU for the last time, he asked: ?Is the AU merely the OAU in a different name? What difference will it make in addressing the day-to-day challenges that confront the ordinary African, including the burning issues of poverty, Aids, external debt, and natural and man-made disasters??

UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, went further by saying that if the AU were to achieve anything, ?it would need proper leadership, courage and a willingness to depart from the ways of the past?.

When two plans come together

Even though doubt has been cast over the success of the AU, there remains hope and determination to build on the vision. What is needed now are drivers with skill, resource and purpose. At the outset, South Africa, together with its two strategic partners Nigeria and Algeria were identified by the west and international financial institutions as having the capacity to lead Africa’s recovery.This initially took the shape of President Thabo Mbeki’s Millennium African Recovery Plan (MAP). Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade had also been working on a rival African economic blueprint, called the Omega Plan.

The two programmes were merged and the resulting New African Initiative (NAI) was adopted by the African Union summit ?as a new phase of realism among African leaders that holds out the promise of a major new partnership to benefit all of Africa’s 600m or so inhabitants?, explained to Nazeem Mahatey, director of communications research in President Mbeki’s office. ?The decision to adopt MAP-Omega is a shared vision which represents a growing consensus among African leaders of the need to take responsibility for addressing Africa’s development challenges collectively, but also realistically, within the context of the global economic system,? said Mahatey.

NAI - a canny fusion

The NAI is a canny fusion of the two doctrines. Omega’s emphasis is on economics and the need for Africa’s recovery to be based on inter-regional co-operation and infrastructure development.

MAP has a more political and philosophical inclination, stressing the need for African leaders to take charge of their own destiny in partnership with the developed world, based on good governance and self-reliance.

If NAI is a pillar of the African Union, then the Continent has a good chance of realising its ideals .

By adopting the spirit and the letter of the African Initiative, Africa has accepted that its future lies in integrating globally through trade and investment which will generate the growth to drive upliftment.

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