Darfur refugees           Photo courtesy

The AU is a comfort club for African dictators where they meet to pat each other on the back and compare notes on suppressing their citizenry. In order to be relevant today, the AU must change its dubious dealings from a "Dictators’ Only Club" to a people-based organization. The heart of AU’s impotence is its principle of non-interference and non-intervention. This simply means that member states turn a blind eye to their neighbours. a position that explains why Darfur’s Genocide will continue as long as the AU remains in charge in Darfur.

 

What is happening in Darfur today also happened in Rwanda, leaving many to choke and drown in their own blood from April to July of 1994. Darfur is Rwanda in slow motion; the only different is the number of deaths. So far 300,000 people have died in Darfur while 800,000 died in Rwanda. This is a hidden holocaust which is unfolding before our very eyes.

 

Corruption and lack of good leadership as well as clear vision have contributed to the poverty and underdevelopment of the continent. Good governance is the key to development in Africa, and leadership is the most powerful lever to good governance and clear vision.

 

The founders of the OAU (and later the AU) had a bigger vision for Africa and were willing to build Africa from nothing. A clear vision gives people direction. Through good leadership, Africa can move forward and extricate itself from the cesspool of underdevelopment, and poverty that has plagued the continent since independence.

 

African dictators are well known for their high level of corruption. They have been implicated in the disappearance of public funds. Foreign aid and development money ends up in their private accounts in banks overseas. To combat, corruption in Africa, it is very important that Western governments pass and enforce laws that will prohibit transfer of money from Africa to western banks without transparency. The law must persecute the international banks or bankers who fail to disclose any private accounts from Africa, especially if the account is related to statesmen. Failure of the Western governments to act means that the West is encouraging the endemic corruption in Africa.

 

The Rwandan Genocide could have been prevented if there was good governance. If each member state of the AU had provided the Canadian hero, General Romeo Dallaire, with 50 troops, Gen. Dallaire could have stopped the killers from their genocidal operation. By sending African troops to assist Gen. Dallaire in his mission in Rwanda in 1994, it would have sent a different message to the international community that Africa is responsible and in charge of its destiny. This would have lent credence to the AU regarding the offering of uniquely African solutions to African problems. Unfortunately that did not happen from the AU. Therefore; why should the West believe, and trust the corrupt dictators of Africa that they will solve Darfur’s Genocide?

 

No one African leader or statesman raised their voice against Khartoum’s regime regarding the genocide in South Sudan, Nuba Mountains, and Darfur. The AU turned a blind eye to South Sudan’s genocide. In fact, "The OAU will not even allow our story on  South Sudan to be heard in its council," according to General Joseph Lagu, Chairman of Anya Nya I, in 1971. The reason is that most of the AU leaders are involved in corruption and suppressing their oppositions in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Chad, Burundi, Liberia, Congo, and overthrowing elected governments in Africa. For example, how could Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian president, point fingers at Omar Bashir,about the situation in Darfur, and label it as genocide that requires UN intervention while giving Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, a safe haven in Nigeria?

 

Most African countries depend on financial aid, and loans from the West. How can the AU support its troops in Darfur if it can not bankroll its army? The international community is fully aware that the AU lacks experience, training, logistics, and history of dealing with crisis. For example, to this date, the status of Western Sahara remains unresolved. The crises in Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Uganda, Angola, and Zimbabwe remain unresolved. Since its inception in May 26th, 1963, the OAU (the forerunner of present-day AU) has not solved one single crisis in Africa.

 

On the contrary, the failure of the international community consists of allowing Darfur’s Genocide to continue by leaving the Right to Protect (R2P) to the weak hands of the AU, which lacks a clear, and strong mandate to fight back, arrest, and detain the janajweed militia, backed up by Khartoum’s regime, which terrorizes unarmed men, children, raping innocent women and girls. Can the weak protect the weak?

 

Africa's oil is the property of Africans; however, Africa's leaders view oil money as their personal asset and use it to enrich themselves with the support of foreign companies and governments. When it comes to wars in Africa, Western leaders say, "It is Africa’s problems". However, when it comes to exploitation of Africa’s resources, and fuelling wars in Africa, the West, including Canada, has always maintained its presence in Africa in order to protect its interests. Western greed, therefore, contributes, and fuels the persistent poverty, and underdevelopment in Africa.

 

Revenues from oil generate billions of dollars. If used wisely, the revenues can improve healthcare, education, security, alleviate poverty, build infrastructure and  fund the AU mission in Darfur. Instead, the West is dishing out more money to the AU which fosters corruption due to a lack of transparency, and accountability. Eventually, war in Africa will be viewed as channels of generating funds to the African dictators’ private accounts. There are so many NGOs worldwide especially in Canada, and US collecting money to support the AU mission in Darfur, but we have not seen any statement from the headquarter of the AU in Addis Ababa detailing how much donations the AU mission has received, and how it was spent.

 

Time has come for the AU to take responsibility of funding its troops in Darfur since it has oil money or at least pay half of the cost in order to learn how to be responsible and functionally proactive in preventing wars from happening. A member state which creates a problem must pay for the cost of the solution. "If you get married, you’re responsible to look after your family, not your neighbor, otherwise stay away from the marriage business," a  South Sudanese proverb says.

 

It is unreasonable for the West to foot AU's bills when the continent abounds in oil money. There must be African solutions to African problems. The AU, in partnership with the West, must come up with clear future plans and proposed solutions to all wars, crisis, and legal systems to deal with law breakers such as Sudan's janjaweeds.

 

"The proposed extinction of an entire race should now be considered an override clause to the rule of national sovereignty. Rwanda is over and everybody mourns it comfortably. We ought not to wait until Darfur is over to start saying never again yet again," Mr. Rusesabagina observes.

 

By Justin Laku,

University of Ottawa, Canada