Are Africa’s current leaders the best on offer?

By Tanonoka Joseph Whande

A coterie of murderers, thieves and human rights abusers gathered in South Africa last week for their obligatory summit to insult Africa and its inhabitants.

They convened under the guise of the African Union (AU), a body that, in all honesty, has pushed back and retarded Africa’s advancement on all fronts.

The AU fancies itself Africa’s caretaker while it is, in fact, Africa’s destroyer; it is just a parastatal that only takes without giving anything back.

Except for a leader or two, I have no use for all of Africa’s leaders.

The AU’s chief mission is to force the world into think about Africa as a unit. Their common enemies are former colonial masters whom they attack for committing lesser crimes on African nations than they themselves are committing.

Africa will never move forward until the current crop of leaders is vanquished. They look back instead of ahead, never missing the opportunity to tell us about liberation wars.

The people of Africa know the difference between loyalty and shouting noisy slogans to survive.

We have Yaya Jameh, Joseph Kabila, Isaias Afwerki, Robert Mugabe – a Who Is Who in Evil! And Mugabe says “we do not need the International Criminal Court in these parts”?

Yes, Africa’s presidents gathered for a tea party in South Africa last week. As usual, they did not care about issues affecting citizens who suffer under their violent, intolerant and misguided rule; they worried about their freedom to abuse people.

Of course, they did not admit to destroying their countries’ economies; they did not acknowledge kidnapping journalists nor did they confess to beating up and killing their citizens during elections.

It was nothing more than a photo opportunity for despots to thumb their noses at the very people they rob, kill and destroy every day.

This obscene ritual and insanely diabolical gathering was hosted by Jacob Zuma, who is under pressure from his own lawmakers to “pay back the money”.

To leave no doubt as to their lack of seriousness, they chose Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe as their Master of Ceremonies; this is a man accused of genocide, a man who continues to abuse his people, a man who has ruined the economy of a nation and a man whose achievements correspond with Africa’s failure to rise an inch above itself in spite of its wealth and abundance of qualified professionals.

Mugabe’s chairmanship of the AU turned this gathering into a circus and a citizen-unfriendly summit because Mugabe has done everything that a leader never does to his followers.

I do not know how many Africans applauded, felt energized, encouraged and celebrated that their leaders, led by Mugabe, were gathering to tackle problems afflicting Africa.

This was nothing more than a gathering of members of an exclusive club of people who share an abusive intent on their citizens.

Yes, resolutions were debated and passed as always yet none of them have the money to implement any of the resolutions.

Besides, most of these African groupings or unions are duplications of similar groups on the continent and are not effective.

Tanzania, for example, is a member of the AU, of SADC and also belongs to the East African Community.

Does Tanzania prioritise any of these memberships?

If yes, why then belong to other groupings where Tanzania would contribute less effort than it should?

Libya, Rwanda, Egypt, Burundi and Kenya, for example, are members of COMESA (the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa).

Member AU states of Libya, Morocco and Egypt, of course, also belong to the Arab League while Morocco vigorously and desperately tries to be considered for membership of the European Community.

Africa and its organisations need a lot of help from foreign governments because without the input from their former colonial masters, they seem unable to wipe their own behinds.

At the AU Summit last week, there was talk of launching negotiations about a “Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA)”.

Here we go again!

As most of the existing continental and regional organisations are not achieving their stated goals, the morons think another new one will do the trick.

If SADC starts from the tip of South Africa and goes all the way to the northern most tip of DR Congo and that of Tanzania, why is the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) made up of only five countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland)?

Mugabe single-handedly destroyed the SADC Tribunal because it was giving judgements against him.

Now, Mugabe, again, is campaigning for African countries to cease membership of the ICC because Mugabe is a ripe and deserving candidate for an appearance there.

That is why Mugabe admonished Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta for appearing before the ICC. There is no doubt that Mugabe influenced the buffoon of the ANC to have Sudan’s Al Bashir jet in and out of South Africa, despite a court order preventing him from leaving.

At their summit last week, they also talked and adopted the “AU’s commitment to empower women and girls and protect their human rights”.

At the moment when AU Chairman Mugabe was banging his gavel, his army was razing down homesteads of people suspected of being sympathetic to the opposition and to Mugabe’s former vice president, Joyce Mujuru.

Women and children bore the brunt of this military abuse and Mugabe was busy making jokes in South Africa.

Is what we see in Zimbabwe Africa’s wish?

Is what we see in Sudan, Uganda, and Eretria Africa’s aim?

Why do countries like DR Congo, Lesotho and Swaziland remain politically volatile and unstable?

For all you think, I appreciate Botswana’s lone-wolf approach to Africa’s politics because Botswana does not owe anyone anything from the liberation times which is why Africa needs a new generation of leaders who are unfettered by useless liberation war stories.

Botswana said it would have arrested Al Bashir and Malawi said it will not pull out of its membership of the International Criminal Court as Mugabe wanted.

Jacob Zuma betrayed his country’s constitution and embarrassed his nation’s judiciary to appease Mugabe who was in defense of Sudan’s Al Bashir for the same reasons of genocide that Mugabe must answer for.

Now, if a president defies his own courts, what do we expect to happen?
We have seen it in Zimbabwe and we now have no currency of our own; our agriculture and economy are dead.

In his 2015 budget, Finance and Economic Development minister Patrick Chinamasa revealed that, apart from 4 610 companies closing down, throwing more than 55 000 employees out of work between 2011 and 2014, “more than 7 000 workers were retrenched last year alone and more than 1 000 workers from 67 companies have lost their jobs in the first quarter of 2015”.

Mugabe pledged to give 300 cattle to the AU while asking the international community for millions to feed the nation, just a few weeks after he declared that “no one is going to starve”.

Mugabe loves other people’s countries better than his own. The trip to South Africa last week was his 15^th foreign trip since January.

Perharps the biggest tragedy at the AU Summit is that African leaders protect each other even when genocide is committed on defenseless Africans.

Clearly, Africa deserves better leaders than these mannequins who sat and listened to Mugabe in spite of the fact that he is running a failed state, is abusive and murderous.

But South Africa was the biggest loser; there are always consequences when a president violates his nation’s constitution and humiliates his own Courts of Law.