Jean Ping greets Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma              Photo courtesy

The African Union meeting to be held in Malawi in June should demonstrate due recognition of the broader African interest by looking for new candidates rather than restrict the AU Commission chairmanship candidacy to Nkosazana  Dlamini-Zuma and Jean Ping.

The election stalemate in Addis Ababa spoke, and Africa listened. One wonders who is cracking the big whip at the African Union to force it to restrict the candidacy for the chairmanship of the African Union Commission to Jean Ping and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.  The two doctors have had their chance in Addis Ababa; none of them managed in the chairmanship election to grab the required two-thirds of the votes cast to get the mandate to chair the AU Commission.

That election stalemate in Addis Ababa emphasised beyond any reasonable doubt that the AU Commission chairmanship is indeed an important and influential high office through which Africa seeks to consolidate her international standing as a power to reckon with.

 Africa has not run out of administrative talent, in fact, the African Union's myopic restriction of the AU Commission chairmanship to the candidacy of Ping and Dlamini-Zuma is a denial in practical terms of the existence in Africa of any other electable candidate.

One finds that denial patronising, insulting and malicious. It constitutes the betrayal of African human resources, and African interests at the highest level.  Recyling candidates in the June Malawi AU Commission chairmanship election of both or one of the rejected doctors is not in the broader African interest; it will be a circus. Doctors Jean Ping and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma should spare their home countries embarrassment.

It can be argued that so many powerful and destabilizing political and economic punters, Europeans for example, have cast their bets on Dlamini-Zuma and Ping to the extent that the two people’s candidature, if not handled with vision, is bound to leave Africa more balkanised than unified.

Any concerned African would want to see an African Union which is a continental unifying force, a force which consistently blows hot the coals of true African independence, a force which fights for, defends and protects the freedom of Africans.

Is it imperialism which is cracking the big whip at the African Union to the ignoble degree that a 54-member union is so blinded that it cannot see that there are other African candidates elsewhere who can competently chair the AU Commission?

Chinese contributed to the AU in Addis Ababa a modern infrastructure at an estimated value reported to be US 200 million dollars: the Europeans in Addis Ababa at the AU Commission chairmanship election contributed division among Africans!

 Had it been the Europeans who financed and built the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, heads of states could have been forced to leave the venue carrying briefcases packed full with signed and legally binding documents of conditionalities.

A pathological desire for amassing personal wealth has compelled some African national leaders to turn themselves into willing economic and political marionettes of Western leaders; these African marionettes are only physically present in Africa, while their hearts and minds dwell in their villas and beach houses in Western countries.

The African Union could consider in Malawi an AU Commission co-chairmanship arrangement where Dlamini-Zuma and Ping co-chair the African Union Commission for a set period during which the African Union should hunt for new candidates and hold fresh AU Commission chairmanship elections. The winning candidate in that fresh AU Commission chairmanship election will then take over the chairmanship from Dlamini-Zuma and Ping.

This interim co-chairmanship arrangement has the advantage of maintaining the precious unity of Africans across the whole continent at the same time as putting a decisive stop to the possible extension of the present untenable arrangement where Jean Ping, despite losing the elections, somehow continues working as the sole interim AU Commission chairman.

It is not a crime, but a virtue, for the African Union to think outside the box when it deals in June with the AU Commission chairmanship election candidacy in Malawi; the AU's "toothless bulldog" appellation must be cast off!

By Dancase B. Gideon
The author [email protected]  is a freelance writer based in Africa.