The Inexplicable Silence of the AU to the Ethiopian crisis!!!

“Africa has the right and the duty to intervene to root tyranny.. we must
all accept that we cannot abuse the concept of national sovereignty to deny
the rest of the continent the right and duty to intervene when behind those
sovereign boundaries people are being slaughtered to protect tyranny.”

Former President Nelson Mandela, Speech at the OAU Summit, 1998

The 21st must be Africa’s century. It is not a question of whether can
Africa claim the 21st century. This has to be Africa’s century or Africa
will perish.. It has to be the century of the African renaissance? It has
to be the century of the post-pessimistic turn against the casual moral
condemnation of a continent with over 500 years of scar and pain. Africa is
to change from speaking through its hurt, suffering, sores and wounds to
that of speaking with resistance and hope to the world. It is supposed to
change from corrupt government to democratic Government; from tyranny to
democracy; from rule by arbitrary personal power to rule by law; from a
Government by the voices and choices of the governed rather than by the
whims and guns of dictators.

Equally important, it was also critical to turn the tide of speech and
representation about Africa. A new millennium offered the opportunity, a
new optimism to initiate a new temper in Africa. For far too long Africa
suffered from pessimism of description as well as pessimism of
prescription. It has suffered from a condescending and often violent gaze
from diagnosis to prescription. It is still the case everyone who cares to
reflect on Africa begins often with an underlying tone of reproach. The
African renaissance that began with the end of apartheid in South Africa
provided the big idea for a non- reproachful and non-pessimistic and
hopeful turn to think and speak, do , feel, reason and debate about
Africa. The African renaissance ushered in a critical agenda of
post-colonial liberation. The historical chapters of colonialism and
apartheid have ended. South Africa joined Africa with a wonderful
liberation that imparted a historic sense and energy that continues to
excite the progressive imagination of all those who wish desperately to see
Africa stand tall and strong by moving forward by protecting with shared
obligation the dignity and humanity of all Africans the world over. Today
we have indeed in Africa a new historical chapter of marching together for
a deeper African integration and renewal at all levels of African
existential and public life. This remains the basic trend despite the
glitches and reversals Africans experience from time to time. The new
agenda seems clear. To unite Africa, democracy must be rooted in all
Africa. Without democratising Africa, it will not be easy to unite it and
indeed free and create renascent Africa. And when the OAU gave way to the
AU, it seems for a time the political will to make Africa democratic and
people-centred seem to exist. There was great expectation that Africa will
live up to the challenge of making Africa to stand united in freedom and
move forward.

1. The Key Provisions of Africa’s Constitutive Act

The AU’s Constitutive Act promised Africans new possibilities and hopes
to unite Africa on key values of respect of human rights, democratic
governance, rule of law and periodic submission by Governments to a peer
review mechanism, promises to find African mechanisms for building enduring
peace and stability, human security and the protection of basic freedoms of
speech, press, association and assembly.
Gone were the days when a dictator having come through military means and
chooses to terrorise a country by invoking respect for sovereignty. The AU
Constuitive Act permits African intervention in other African states under
the following conditions:
– an unconstitutional take over of power through military coup de etat,
mercenaries, armed dissidents
? an incumbent refuses to hand over power after an election defeat
– ignoring popular verdicts in elections
– in the event of cases of genocide
– in the event of internal stability, civil war with regional
consequences
– civil society has been recognised to participate formally in the AU
framework
– Governments will be subject to a peer review mechanism
– Inclusion of the Diaspora

To the credit of the AU it has tried to take real measures by intervening
and imposing sanctions on coup makers, and those who refuse to abide by
popular election verdicts. What has emerged as an interesting fact is that
sovereignty is no longer a barrier to AU interventions as in the OAU days.
Under the guise of protecting sovereignty many crimes have been committed
in Africa. The AU has thus added new duties and obligations to members.
Formally AU has heralded a new orientation to the use and misuse of power
against citizens.

2. Where is the Commitment and Consistency?

It is not enough to put wonderful words in the Constuitive Act unless the
AU acts on those principles. The AU is in Addis Ababa. The elected mayor of
Addis Ababa with a land slide where the AU is located with has been locked
up in jail. The entire elected leadership has been forcibly and violently
put into jail. The popular verdict against the incumbent has been wasted by
one of the most open robbery of the election in Africa where people
voluntarily turned out to vote and express voice massively. The AU knows
all these but remains silent, and in some instances gives carte blanche
to the regime to do what it likes with the people and the opposition. This
is indeed a scandal. It is a betrayal of Africa. Betrayal of democracy in
Africa is a betrayal of Africa pure and simple.

The AU can and should speak out. Not to utter even a whisper is indeed a
tragedy for Africa as Africa cannot afford to wait another half century to
bring democracy because of a number of its brutish and self-serving rulers
that are not willing to hold Africa’s interest at heart. Have not the AU
heard that the EU Parliament has voted denouncing the atrocities committed
by the Meles regime? The EU has tried to stop budget support. From the AU,
not even a word. How come when the partners from Europe speak up the
brothers and sisters close buy shut their eyes and close their ears and
lips? Do not they know their silence gives succour to tyranny in Ethiopia?
Do they care? What ever happened to the African parliament? Why does it too
remain silent when fellow parliamentarians, some of whom should be their
colleagues in Pretoria, Teshwane, are thrown in jail for the simple fact
that they happened to be elected not from the incumbent party that
dictatorially harasses a nation for nearly a generation?

Africa must be the first to speak up when Africans impose tyranny and
misdirect the democratic energy of a nation displayed so magnificently on
May 15, 2005. Meles Zenawi has not only killed and jailed, but also he has
used pre-emptive lethal force to terrorise the urban youth and the rural
population. He deserves to be censored and not feted by the AU.

3. Meles’ Invitation to Global Governance Forum in South Africa

It is a scandal after having voluntarily signed the AU’s Constuitive Act;
some leaders in Africa still today go to the extent of changing
constitutions to stay in power. Moreover they do not see how harmful it is
to the creation of sustainable democratic institutions when the such
leaders think they are like institutions themselves that need to be
perpetuated. After half a century of decolonisation we would have thought
Africa by now must be into a different stage of development and commitment
to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law and the sustenance of good
government.

The crass and obtuse regimes mismanaging some of our countries continue to
claim and say, in Africa it is not ballots but bullets that decide power
transfer, transition and upkeep. The regime in Ethiopia stereotype the
Ethiopian people and down grade their capabilities and learning to change
their condition by creating self-governance. The regime denigrates what the
people achieved by devaluing their voice and votes for democracy with
officially sanctioned theft and fraud. Measured by any standard one cares
to adopt, what the Ethiopian people achieved in the shortest possible time
in the May election with democracy is on a par to any European experience.
It is certainly no less, if not, indeed, more. In fact, the turn out has
been better in Ethiopia compared with many European elections and generally
developed country cases. The people came, and voted with great discipline
and grace. Nearly all incidents that spoiled the election atmosphere came
from the regime’s incessant ambition to remain in power and secure an
absolute majority in parliament by using many nefarious and unsavoury
tactics. This election is not something that the regime can denigrate by
calling it, this is an African election, whatever one means by that
declaration.

Generally speaking, the people in Africa have no problems voting for
persons who will represent them given a democratic environment. Contrary to
popular belief, they know and they have wisdom. It is the selfish and crude
leaders like the ones that rule in Ethiopia that create the problem, not
the fact of being an African election. Where there is an overwhelming and
oppressive poverty of democracy in the ruling group and its dependence on
force, violence and deception and foreign money as a normative choice,
there is often stealing, killing and corruption. Once the regime is
corrupt, kills and steals, it is impossible to secure its voluntary
abdication through the franchise, voice and votes of the people. That is
the problem. The Ethiopian people have done their part, they found a bad
regime that abused their trust and fiddled big time their votes and muzzled
their true voice.

A Danish film Institute took nine years to make a documentary, in the
soldiers’ footsteps, that show clearly how the elites that have been
described as the darling of the west as the new breeds are capable of
manufacturing opposition to themselves in order to impose terror on the
population and opponents and give an air of indispensability to their rule.
Every African must see this film to know the behaviour of the new breeds,
how they frame in order to blame. In Ethiopia the opposition leadership
and even artists, journalists, academics and others who speak for the
respect of vote and voice have been accused with committing
?treason..’ The AU knows this fraudulent charge by a fraudulent regime
in Ethiopia. And it still remains silent.

4. Call to President Thabo Mbeki NOT to Fete to Denounce Meles

We heard that progressive South Africa and South Africa’s respected
democratic leader, President Thabo Mbeki has invited Meles to participate
in the Progressive Global Governance group. Here is an opportunity for
Africa not to reward tyranny but to punish it. South Africa must put
principle above diplomatic courtesy and show Meles the way back home. This
will give a strong signal to both the AU and the AU parliament to denounce
Meles and his regime like the EU parliament before them. South Africa must
use all its influence to make sure the entire opposition leadership are
unconditionally freed without any delay and with full apologies from the
Meles regime for the crime it committed to date against them and the
Ethiopian people. South Africa must lend its voice to the call for an
international inquiry for the entire post- election crises engineered by
the despotic and brutal Meles regime. South Africa and the AU must join
the international call for the the release of all prisoners, the dismissal
of all the absurd charges of ”treason’ and genocide” against the
opposition, to set uop an international inquiry consisting of the members
of the African peer review mechanism and other internationally recognised
personalities. The AU must recognise there can be no sustainable African
integration and renaissance without the fullest possible democratisation of
not only Ethiopia but Africa as a whole.

The AU must show its outrage at the injustice that has befell a country
that has been its home since 1963. The AU, we call on you not to fial
Ethiopia! Do not fail Africa. Stand up and speak up to tyranny.

Professor Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter

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