DURBAN, South Africa, 9 July — African leaders gave a state funeral to their Organization of African Unity (OAU) yesterday and were set to launch today the African Union.
But even as it was born, the new pan-African body was being torn apart by struggles between the repressive old and democratic new Africa, which threaten to undermine its unity and development goals.
At least 34 presidents and monarchs were at the opening of a two-day summit. Today they attend the birth of a new African Union (AU) whose mission is to combat poverty, conflict and corruption.
The UN secretary-general, born in the West African state of Ghana, told leaders that Africa’s vast size, economic underdevelopment, debt and legacy of war meant it would be much tougher to build the AU than it was to build the European Union.
"To build a successful union in such conditions will require great stamina and iron political will," Annan said in his summit speech in the South African port of Durban.
He said he sensed a new respect for Africa among Western governments but that warring had to stop before foreign investment would flow in. "They will respect us even more when they see us actually resolve the conflicts that disfigure our continent. And I do mean, resolve them. Managing them is not enough," he said.
Despite progress in ending long-running wars in Sierra Leone and Angola, belligerents from Liberia to Sudan, passing through both Congos and the Great Lakes region, are still playing havoc.
Speakers in Durban pledged to strengthen democracy but the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe was not on the agenda.
President Robert Mugabe was in the audience. An ex-guerrilla in office since 1980, after defeating white minority rule, he was declared winner of violent elections in March.
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the summit host and one of three leaders who had Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth after the polls, made no mention of Zimbabwe when he referred to successful recent African elections.
"These successes demonstrate that those who characterize ours as a hopeless continent are wrong," Mbeki said.
"As with many other things African, from the very beginnings of its life the OAU was dismissed by our detractors as an organization that was destined to fail," he said, calling the change from OAU to AU an evolution, not a death.
Durban police, on top alert, said they blew up a suspicious parcel early yesterday, about 500 meters from the venue. "It was found that there was nothing in it...it looked like a bag," police spokesman Vish Naidoo said.
Mbeki will be formally elected the last chairman of the OAU and then elected the first chairman of the AU. The 53-nation membership is unchanged.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in a message read out at the summit said Israel was trying to destroy the Palestinian Authority by blocking its upcoming elections and scuppering all Middle East peace initiatives.
"It has become clear, without any doubt, that Israel does not want peace but wants land, control and the continuation of the occupation," the Palestinian leader charged. (The Independent)
