African Unification Front
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August 25, 2005
AFRICAN UNION COMMISSION URGENTLY NEEDS REFORM
The furor that was sparked by the remarks of Patrick Mazimhaka, Vice Chair of the AU Commission, about the recent electoral crisis in Ethiopia has shown once again the structural weakness in the design of the government system of the African Union. This unfortunate incident clearly reveals the central weakness of having a civil service organ of the AU that continually usurps the powers and rights of the Pan African Parliament.
Commissioner Patrick Mazimhaka
 The Commission is a civil service, and the commissioners are Africa's leading civil servants. They are supposed to be politically neutral and to maintain the appearance of political neutrality, and to serve all Africans equally without fear or favor. They should not be making remarks that are biased or indifferent or undiplomatic. Yet under Oumar Konare, the commission has persisted in being political, in refusing to take direction from the PAP.
The commission should leave the politics to the PAP, the elected representatives of Africa, and concentrate on providing services to the PAP and the citizens of Africa without taking sides. The PAP is the only legitimate body that has the right to take political decisions, to pick sides and to be blunt about the conduct or goals of competing political forces.
Unfortunately since Konare became chair of the Commission, Africans have lost control of the Commision, which is behaving like a political party...putting its own perculiar baises and interpretations forward and playing political interference games for Oumar Konare and his friends.
The irony of this latest crisis is that Patrick Mazimhaka has in past interviews showed a willingness to acknowledge the proper relationship between the Commission and the other organs of the AU, something that Konare has refused to address. But in the interview with Joe de Capua about the election violence in Addis Ababa, Commissioner Mazimhaka's remarks seemed casual, careless and callous.
Knowing the rage and tensions and sense of hurt in the Ethiopian elections were still fresh, Mazimhaka shouldn't have been on radio making off-the-cuff remarks. The fact that the Commissioners are constantly in the public's eye being politicians is really the reason why such incidents continue to happen. The Commissioners should not be doing the work of the PAP. As long as commission staffers continue to disregard this simple rule, the institutions of the AU will continue to take a beating. Oumar Konare has started an unfortunate trend.
Oumar Konare and the Commission as a whole has indeed behaved arrogantly in their disregard of protocol and normal rules of democracy, not to mention the continuing violation of the spirit of the Union Act. Oumar Konare has done a lot of harm to the ethos of the commission, the Assembly and the PAP, by stiffling and bullying the AU government, but most critically by abusing the Pan African Parliament.
The Act of Union clearly stipulates that the commissioners must be accountable to the PAP. But given the utter disregard that the commissioners continue to display for due process, it is unlikely that the PAP will be able to do much more than reprimand or censure commissioners. The commission needs to be reformed, so that commissioners are made to understand that they constitutionally under the supervision and direction of the PAP.
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