African Unification Front
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August, 2004
Pan African Parliament Session Set for September 16, 2004
The PAP should focus on securing its independence and sovereignty
The first session of the PAP will open on the 16 September 2004. It will be held at the Gallagher Estate, one of Africa's largest conference facilities. Gallagher Estate is situated in Midrand, Gauteng, between Johannesburg and Pretoria, and is conviniently accessible from Johannesburg International Airport and Lanseria Airport.
The Gallagher Estate will be used exclusively by the African Parliament from now onwards, but will serve only as a temporary venue for the Parliament for five years, until a permanent facility can be constructed at another venue in the AU Republic of South Africa. The Estate consists of a chamber, public gallery, committee rooms, and an office block.
The Gallagher Estate is named for a wine estate owned by Greg and Libby Gallagher, and still carries their business crest. The complex was owned by Anglo-American, the parent company of DeBeers, the diamond cartel. Beginning in 1996, the National empowerment Consortium, an affirmative action program for facilitating the entry of indegenous Africans into industry management positions, began aquiring controlling shares in the estate complex.
As part of the lobbying for the privilege to relocate the PAP venue from Addis Ababa to Midrand, the SA state government made a promise to conclude a host aggreement with the AU Commission over services and facilities. The AU Commission is not mandated by any pan African treaty to negotiate on behalf of the PAP. The negotiations will exclude the PAP, which has been denied a say in where or how any negotiations concerning its future are to be conducted.
Moreover, whereas it would be prudent for all Africans to participate in funding the PAP, the SA government (specifically Mbeki) has stated that the moterary advantages of hosting the PAP are the main motivations for his governments decisions concerning the PAP. The voters, those Africans who sent representatives to the PAP, have had no say whatsoever concerning the location or management of the PAP.
Although Gallagher Estates was the venue at which the results of South Africa’s first democratic elections were announced in 1994, last year, the Gallagher Estate was the venue of the so-called African Defense Summit (a misleading name because it was not a Summit but rather a weapons business investment conference), an event whose mission was to create strategies for profit-maximisation and international partnerships for the weapons manufactures, sellers and buyers. It didn't address African military integration. The conference was organized by the SA government and had token humanrights speakers to justify its questionable motives.
The amoral and arrogant approaches of the SA regime towards Pan Africanism are sending mixed messages. The PAP is quickly becoming entangled in an aggressive and questionable business agenda. Given African President Mongella's polite and thankful attitude towards Thabo Mbeki, and AU Commissioner Oumar Konare, it is unclear if the PAP will be able to disentangle itself from historically questionable decisions by a few individuals bent on transforming Pan Africanism from a social and political movement, into a business profit-driven venture.
The SA proposal to host the PAP also included an alarming affirmation of a treaty clause that implies the PAP might be scraped after five years. We had hoped that Mbeki would be fighting to assert that the PAP will last forever. His lack of confidence in the PAP is distressing. Essentially what the SA bid implies, is that the PAP buildings will be constructed in phases, so that in the event the PAP's purpose is the reviewed the SA government won't have built a massive palace for no use.
For Mbeki to raise the posibility of review of the PAP, for the purpose of down-grading it or abolishing it, means that he recognizes such a review as legitimate. This does not bode well for the independence or longevity of the PAP. Mbeki has made sure that the PAP can not vote for its own location, and now he has made sure that it must censure itself and agree to subordinate itself to the Commission and the Assembly, or face the risk of losing its constitutional privileges.
Since there are no treaty guidelines or set of rules stipulating which PAP activities might result in its annihilation by the AU Commissioners and members of the the Assembly of Heads of State, the PAP may be abolished, or intentionally made irrelevant, after its first five year term, for absolutely any reason whatsoever. We should not let the PAP die, or degenerate into an instrument for use by any state government or the AU Commission. That is why the first thing on the agenda of the PAP should be a strategy to secure its own independence and sovereignty.
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