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Opinion: The AU is between a rock and a hard place…

The Organization of African Unity (OAU) which became what we now know as the African Union (AU) is far from successful. The ideals of the organization and what it wanted to accomplish is vastly different than how it operates today.

The AU isn’t as significant as it could be and neither does it help its own causes either. The lack of mandate and lack of due process hurts the AU as well. They have monitoring missions and hybrid missions with other multi-national organizations like the United Nations. However, you cannot say that they have given a lot of fruits either.

So, yesterdays fanfare of 60 years and an Africa Day is hard to stomach. Yes, the pride and justification of it is within reason. However, you cannot live on ego and ambition. An organization like the AU lives on the accomplishments and achievements. The AU lives on the merits and the proof of value. There is little value for the money and little to show for it.

The AU could have made a difference, but it tends not to. It rather plays for the headlines and only counter-acts when the villages are burning. Never ever seen it comes in early or even tries to mediate before the gun-smoke. No, people must die, and people have to suffer before AU comes knocking.

It isn’t strange it has come to this. The AU is beholden the members and the Heads of State. So, the membership is deciding and giving its mandate. The AU got to respect and honour the member states. Though it is not helping the citizens or the ones residing there. The AU tends to help the President’s and the ruling regimes first. They defend the dictators and the tyrants before considering the implications on the population at large. Later when the big men are falling, the AU condemns and begs for peace. That’s what it does and especially if a soldier or a military leader topples an unfavourable character. This has happened countless of times and the scenario repeats itself.

It is hard to stand by and watch the AU. The AU is toothless and without any sort of moral backbone. It is just a vassal enterprise to flaunt “diplomacy” and possible “dialogue” but never any progress or sustainable achievements. No, it is an organization that shields, shelter and secures the ones in office. It isn’t standing up for the rights of the oppressed or the ones who are suffering. No, that is someone else’s business to do.

I wish I could have written a positive and acknowledge the greatness of the OAU or the AU, as the founders intended it to be. I wish they had done something impactful and sincere in all the years of operations. However, there is little positive significance or proof of that. Instead it is a body that safeguards the ones who are hurting people the most. That’s why the AU isn’t a place of safety or of relief. It is instead a place of megalomaniacs, kleptocrats and tyrants who bash themselves in glory. That was certainly not the idea of it.

The AU has become the club of dictators and tyrants. The place of magnitude and astute privilege for a chosen few. That was not what it wanted to be or what it wanted to achieve, but here we are. Peace.