African Union to Replace OAU
Sun Jul 7, 4:15 PM ET
By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Derided as a club for dictators and a useless bureaucratic talk shop, the Organization of African Unity will hardly be missed when it disbands Tuesday.

The 53-nation body is being replaced by the African Union, a new organization modeled on the European Union ( news - web sites) that hopes to closely bind its members together, promote human rights and good governance and enrich the world's poorest continent.

The OAU, in its 39 years of existence, accomplished none of that.

"It appears as if its primary goal has been to maintain despots in power," said David Coltart, a parliamentarian for Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change. "It's extremely difficult to identify any remarkable successes."

The OAU was created in 1963 as the spirit of independence and Pan-Africanism swept across the continent. Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah had dreamed of a strong union, akin to the United States, binding Africa's nations.

But few leaders of the newly independent countries were willing to surrender even a sliver of sovereignty, and many African dictators were wary of a regional group meddling in their affairs.

Nkrumah's vision was diluted into an organization that refused to interfere in member states' internal politics and focused instead on fighting apartheid in South Africa and the remnants of British and Portuguese colonialism.

But many of the continent's conflicts involved "internal" issues. Devastating civil wars in Angola and Mozambique were virtually ignored. Efforts to end the fighting in Sierra Leone were left to the regional Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS.

The OAU did nothing to stop dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire from oppressing his people and looting his central African country. And it was silent in 1994 as at least 500,000 people were killed in Rwanda's genocide.

An OAU team praised Zimbabwe's March presidential elections as "transparent, credible, free and fair," even though police used tear gas to drive thousands of voters away from the polls and ruling party militants kidnapped hundreds of opposition poll watchers.

The OAU has "frustrated the advancement of human rights on the continent," Coltart said. "It persistently used the principle of noninterference to allow very grave human rights violations to go on completely unchecked."

The OAU required consensus to take any action, which often tied its hands and reduced it to practicing "lowest common denominator politics," said Jakkie Cilliers, director of the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies.

In recent years, the organization adopted principles regarding human rights and denouncing military coups. However, the OAU put little political weight behind them, Cilliers said.  "These achievements are fairly minor when you compare them to the problems on the continent," he said.

It occasionally has helped resolved border disputes between member states and, in its one major success, brought peace to Comoros.  Few African nations committed strongly to the organization. Only 16 of its members have paid their dues in full and the group is $42 million in debt.

But that did not stop African leaders from turning their annual OAU summit into lavish affairs, full of pomp but accomplishing little.

During the summits the leaders stayed in expensive compounds, specially built for the meetings with money from Western governments or the Soviet Union. Most of those compounds now are molding in the tropical heat.

Efforts to change the organization's charter routinely were rejected, so the only way to truly reform the organization was to destroy it and start again.

As envisioned, the African Union — the continent's second attempt to achieve economic and political unity — will have a parliament, a security council and a standby peacekeeping force.

African leaders hope it will be far stronger, more principled and unwilling to accept the abuses ignored by the OAU.  Already, it has refused to give a seat to the divided island of Madagascar until new elections are held to determine that nation's true president.

"The challenge of bringing peace to all parts of the continent is a difficult one, but is not insurmountable," said OAU Secretary-General Amara Essy, who is ushering the organization through its transformation.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, the outgoing OAU chairman, has said he will propose Libya as the permanent headquarters of the African Union.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi arrived Sunday to make his bid to lead the new organization. His efforts face opposition by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has spearheaded efforts to ensure the new organization promotes democracy and good governance and works to bring Africa out of poverty.

In a bid to woo African states to his side, Gadhafi has paid $2.2 million to cover OAU membership dues for 11 countries. He also has assisted struggling African nations, bailing out Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe when his country was suffering a severe fuel shortage.

Most are skeptical of the AU plan, but John Kudjoe, chief research specialist at the Africa Institute of South Africa, said its implementation would be a welcome step toward Nkrumah's dream, which was squashed by the politics of his era.

"Things have changed," he said.

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