Re-branded AU has failed to live up to its promise of a hopeful continent

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Nor should you put old wine in a new bottle and think it will taste different. The adage is that you can’t keep on doing the same thing — over and over again — and expect different results. Today, I’m not proud to be an African.

That’s because the African Union has confirmed that it’s still the Organisation of African Unity. That’s right — the OAU isn’t defunct. No sir — it’s been reincarnated in the person of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe. Get this — the AU elected Mr Mugabe its chairman at the recently-concluded summit in Addis Ababa. Every African must be ashamed that Mr Mugabe, a catastrophic ruler, now sits atop the AU.

I have nothing against Mr Mugabe’s age, although we are running out of adjectives to describe him. At 90, he’s neither a septuagenarian nor an octogenarian. He’s a nonagenarian. In Africa, we celebrate old age as a signal of debts paid to society and a fund of wisdom. But what wisdom, or debts to society, can Mr Mugabe talk of? It’s true he has indebted — indeed bankrupted — Zimbabwe.

It’s also true that it’s the people of Zimbabwe who are wiser, not Mr Mugabe. They are wiser because they know for sure that power corrupts, and absolute power corruptly absolutely. They are wiser because they know the post-Mugabe Zimbabwe state they want. But will they get it?

We all remember the OAU as the body that stood against colonialism and helped in the liberation of Africa from the grip of European empires. But that OAU — the anti-colonial body — died a long time ago. Once a black face replaced a white face at state house, the OAU saw no evil, heard no evil, and spoke no evil.

Every post-colonial African dictator was welcomed in Addis Ababa at the OAU with open brotherly arms. Every incorrigible dictator and blood-thirsty ruler — from Uganda’s killing machine Idi Amin to the man-eating Central African Republic (“empire”) Jean-Bedel Bokassa — found refuge in the OAU. Mr Amin, or Field Marshal Amin, if you wish, was even elected chairman of the OAU.

That’s how the OAU became a club of thieves and dictators. It was through the OAU that Africa’s “thug” presidents ran protection rackets for each other. They did so even as they inveighed against racist Apartheid South Africa. Mr Amin, who killed hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, routinely denounced Apartheid South Africa. So did virtually every African dictator. Don’t forget that at the height of OAU’s power in the 1970s, Africa had only two democracies – Botswana and Senegal. Every other African state was either a one-party state, or a military dictatorship. The OAU became a byword for impunity. That’s why African heads of state re-branded the OAU. But what’s in a name, if there’s no material departure in substance?

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki is an erudite man. He’s brilliant, witty and proud. He bleeds Africa. Google his famous speech titled “I am an Africa.” He led the charge for what he called the African renaissance. The AU was going to be the pillar of Africa’s pride and resurgence. The AU, unlike the OAU, would shun impunity, expel bad actors from its ranks, promote democracy and human rights, and put citizens — not leaders — at the centre of its existence. African states — in a peer review mechanism — would lean on each other to improve governance. But talk is cheap. Today, Mr Mbeki’s dream for the AU lies fallow in the killing fields of Zimbabwe, CAR, DRC, among others.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Mr Mbeki was right. The popular revolts that convulsed Africa in the early 1990s started a process of slow, but steady, political liberalisation. Apartheid ended. One-party states and military dictatorships gave way to elected governments, even though most of them turned illiberal almost overnight.

The old guard quickly learned how to talk the language of human rights and democracy and wangled its way back into power in many an African state. But some, like Mr Mugabe, have clung on buoyed by a civilian-military state. Even as he bludgeoned opponents and ruthlessly suppressed every right known to man, Mr Mugabe used the bogeyman of imperialism to paint himself as an “African champion.” He’s survived.

Which begs the question — why would the AU elect a man who’s a notorious dictator to be its chairman? What message is the AU sending to Africans and the world? This is one I take from Mr Mugabe’s elevation — that the OAU is back and impunity is here to stay. The AU has taken off its mask, and revealed who it really is.

It has become a race-baiting, reactive, hypocritical body that’s a shame to every black man and woman. The OAU is back — fangs and all.