African Unification Front
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August 30, 2004
Slow Motion Coup D’Etat Designed to Control AU Government:
AFRICA'S BIGGEST POWER GRAB IS UNFOLDING BEFORE OUR EYES
Plans to Move PAP to Midrand were made even before Creation of AU
The decision to host the Pan African Parliament in Midrand, was a result of a plan by a small group of people in the South African government, as part of a power grab for their personal benefit. The analysis indicates that there was a deliberate decision to manipulate the integration of Africa to the advantage of certain individuals. Statements and actions by certain members of special committees in South Africa that were put in place to study the Constitutive Act of the AU, and the Protocol of the PAP, clearly show that the decision was made by a small group of powerful individuals in the SA government sometime in 2000 or even earlier.
In other words, we are watching a slow motion coup as certain people manipulate pan Africanism to suit their own personal agenda. They are pushing for reviews of treaties and creating new institutions designed to benefit a small clique that wants to remain at the center of the power structures of the AU long after they are no longer in power in South Africa. In the meantime everyone else will be rotated out of any power positions in 5 years and the new members of the PAP will be at the mercy of this Clique.
It seems that Speakers of the South African Parliament, Frene Ginwala, and a few ANC people, were at least aware of the decision as soon as it became evident that the AU would be created, and were able to compel and manipulate subsequent decisions by other African leaders, in SA and elsewhere, to craft treaty processes that were based on conceit and self-interest of their small section of the leadership. Their initiatives are funded by another clique of people in the EU Commission [which has an unhealthy interest in SA and the AU], for a combination of unpleasant reasons.
By 2000 the SA clique had already agreed that the PAP should have only consultative powers and not legislative powers, and they campaigned for this, as well as assigning the decision for the Assembly of Heads of State to decide where the PAP would be relocated. This was contrary to the position of African leaders in several other African states, even undemocratic ones. Most Heads of State naturally assumed that Addis Ababa would be the seat of the PAP, as per the Union Act. When the government of Ghana and the Africa Leadership Forum offered to cover the costs for the PAP early in the process of crafting the protocol, the South African clique shot the offer down with all haste and killed the suggestion. All the money for the PAP would come exclusively from the South Africans, for everything, from transport to the proposed exorbitant per diems for PAP members.
When SA members of Parliament expressed concern about the antidemocratic nature of the process they were being pushed into creating, the clique actually cut off debate by pandering to the unsure instincts of MPs who questioned the bizarre logic behind the formulations that were being written into the operations and powers of the PAP. For instance the clique would create theoretical threats and exaggerate differences between SA and the rest of Africa. In one place they dismiss the Charter of African People’s and Human Rights in order to preclude the SA government ever referring to it in the event of a ruling by the PAP or the Court of Justice. They promised to review the charter (meaning they will engineer another yet uncreated body)…and so already the Charter is out of the purview of the PAP, and probably out of the purview of the African Court of Justice.
No one bothered to point out the fact that African Charter of Rights is more advanced than any around the world, and that the SA bill of rights is actually based on the same charter, with some more details added, a few of which dwell dangerously on a peculiar SA preoccupation. The SA bill of rights actually legalizes the suspension of rights under a “state of emergency”… a dubious and bizarre construct inherited from the racist apartheid regime. The SA Bill of Rights does not stipulate what the duties of citizens are, towards the state or each other, in the event of an imaginary State of Emergency. I would say that makes the African Charter superior to the SA Bill of Rights, but this is no contest. The Bill and the Charter are supposed to work together for our protection. The SA Clique doesn't think so.
Human rights cannot and must never be suspended under any pretext whatsoever. Equal treatment under the law must recognize no states of emergency...yet the SA bill of rights does. I wonder what a review of the Pan African Charter of Rights by these unelected people will create. In my opinion if you are going to declare a state of emergency it is to reaffirm rights, not to suspend them. If you decide to suspend human rights, you are suspending the entire bill of rights, and so the provision should not be written into the bill. If you suspend the constitution, you are acting outside the law, and so God help you. No one should ever agree to the violation of their rights whatever the emergency. Law abiding people don't require suspension of their right to equal treatment, and lawless people get arrested, with or without a State of Emergency, so why enshrine the violating rights in a Bill of Rights?
It is with this mentality of suspending established rights, that the members of the Clique go about disregarding Pan African codes of conduct, and undermining democracy in Africa to their own political and financial advantage. In other words, even though all the Africans states agreed in preliminary discussions to allow the PAP the legislative powers that correspond to the continuity and intent of past treaties, at least over matters that were continental, such as full economic integration and collective security (the clause made it into the Union Act inspite of Clique's manipulations) if not directly interfering with states rights, the SA government worked to limit its powers, and through the creation of superfluous bodies and organs that do the PAPs work but which are not elected, the PAP was essentially under attack even before it was born.
When suggestions about African monetary union came up, the Clique raised objections about any economic imperatives by lying to their fellow SA MPs that "most African states have no real banks", and so it was up to SA to protect itself by pursuing these undemocratic and even secret manipulations of the process that was supposed to be unifying Africa.
The reasons they advanced for the decision to pursue political and economic advantage in hosting of the PAP so aggressively were self-serving, misinformed and contradictory. For instance the organizers of the committees rationalize their aggressive undermining of unity and strong pan African institutions by saying the SA is a democratic model and that in fact many African states lack real parliaments. Yet at the same time, they expressly tried to create a mandate that attempted to ensure that the PAP would not be democratic or independent. They tried to make sure that secret-ballot voting in the PAP would never exist, even after pleas to give the PAP a "democratic surplus". What followed in those meetings is a puzzling expression of satisfaction by some important elected parliamentarians, over the fact that voting would be unnecessary in the PAP.
The SA Clique rationalised their anti-voting campaign. Apparently "the State Law Adviser reported that SADC (South African Development Community) makes its decisions on the basis of consensus and consultation. The Committee agreed these would be good bases on which the Pan-African Parliament could make decisions", instead of voting. This attitude explains why Frene Ginwala, an experienced Speaker of the SA parliament, and aspirant to the presidency of the PAP, before she and Mbeki fell out, at the inauguration of the PAP confidently told the delegates that a secret ballot was unnecessary in voting for the president of the PAP, in direct contravention of the Union Act, and a classic example of abnormal parliamentary behavior.
Why South African members of parliament would champion undemocratic procedures is explained by several factors. One is that they have an extremely low opinion of the capacity of Africans outside of SA, an attitude Mbeki has been promoting with his brand of South African Exceptionalism. South Africans are being taught that they are better than the rest of the Africans, and now they are starting to believe that lie. But not in all cases. In some cases the clique just plain engages in old fashioned divide and conquer. The clique intentionally left Morocco out of the AU. They precipitated an alleged abstention by Morocco, first by refusing to invite them into the AU, even after SA MPs, and other Africans had resolved to make an effort to include the Moroccans.
The fact that Moroccans were kept out of the loop when the AU and the PAP were being created was easily explained…supposedly Morocco wanted to stay out. It is easy to believe, because of the conflict with the Saharawis. Except for one small problem. It wasn’t true. Because of the Clique’s insistence no one with the authority bothered to ask Morocco nicely, and not because they forgot...the clique sabotaged the process to get Morocco into the AU. One of these days we shall find out why. When Mongella became President she expressed concern about Morocco’s exclusion, and it seems she is working on fixing that problem.
Why is the clique so determined to manipulate the PAP? The explanation may be in the economic strategy SA has adopted, a theoretically indeterminate construct called “Development Integration”, as opposed to conventional trade integration. This is the basis for the NEPAD program, whose complexity and the undemocratic way it was crafted left Civil Society Organizations gasping for air and in a daze. Development Integration is premised on the pathetic claim that outright economic integration of Africa is undesirable because “the European Union envisages reciprocal trade agreements between African regions and Northern trading blocs. These could lead to a situation where South Africa finds itself trading with African countries outside the SADC region on worse terms than e.g. the European Union.” Since when are Pan Africanists supposed to operate along what the EU “envisages”?
Creating an outright customs Union in Africa is, according to the Clique, allegedly unworkable, because supposedly the reason inter-African trade is so low, is the "lack of infrastructure". The Clique doesn’t give a solution for how to fix this alleged lack of infrastructure besides more trade with the EU, and also giving even more power to “the most powerful business interests (South African industry)”, which are allegedly “already actively promoting it (African integration) by region wide investment strategies.”
I suppose it is useless to point out to Clique members that increased inter-African trade will fund and create the infrastructure that is supposedly lacking (something the EU won't do). Nor will it help to mention that red-tape and too much infrastructure and duplication (border posts and a huge mass of incompatible trade regulations) is the cause of restricted trade between Africans. For now, the Clique that’s in charge of manipulating the SA parliament will pursue the trade blocs system in order to continue its favored relationship with the neocolonial powers, rationalized by this envisaged Developmental Integration.
By hosting the PAP and making it dependent on only one source of funding, EU funding through the Mbeki government, the Clique ensures that the PAP cannot question this Clique’s lopsided formulations and counterintuitive anti-African arrangements. All the Clique has to do is threaten the PAP’s funding, and undermine it in the press, so it is made weak until such a time that the Clique is assured that its engagement with the rest of Africa complies with the EU’s envisaged profitable double dealing and underhandedness. [See TDCA]
END
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