Transformation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU): st A New Vision for the 21 Century, or Political Rhetoric? A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Political Science, Universität Trier, Germany, in partial fulfilment of the Requirements For the award of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) May 2004 Submitted By: Olympio Francisco K.N. B.A. (Hons) Univ. of Ghana, Legon Am Trimmelter Hof 93/004 M.A. Universität Trier, Germany 54296 Trier Germany ii Dedication To the selfless and the incorruptible in the service of the African cause iii Contents Figures............................................................................................................................. iv Tables .............................................................................................................................. iv List of Abbreviations and Acronyms ............................................................................ v Prologue ......................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ xi Method of Work............................................................................................................ 13 Part I Background to Analysis..................................................................................... 17 General Introduction and Summary............................................................................. 18 Regional Integration in Africa: Some Explorations of State of the Art ....................... 51 The Periphery Cannot Hold ......................................................................................... 59 Pre-Colonial Africa .................................................................................................. 59 Colonial Bureaucracy, Appropriation, Alienation and Underdevelopment............. 63 Post-Colonialism: Too fragile at birth or too badly nurtured?................................. 66 Das Ding an Sich: State, Society and Politics in Africa .............................................. 71 Part II Organisation of African Unity (OAU)............................................................ 75 The OAU's Labyrinth Path to Continental Unity, Security and Development ............ 76 Political Reality, Identity Politics and Pan-Africanism ............................................... 87 The OAU and the African Crisis ................................................................................. 92 Some Case Studies....................................................................................................... 95 The Chad Crisis........................................................................................................ 95 The OAU's Intervention in Chad ........................................................................ 102 The Rwanda Genocide ........................................................................................... 106 The Prelude ......................................................................................................... 106 The Turning Point: Revolution, Resistance and Independence .......................... 108 The Second Republic: A Long Fateful Path to Genocide?................................. 109 The OAU and the Arusha Peace Process: Too little, too slow?.......................... 112 Evaluation and Conclusion ........................................................................................ 117 Part III African Transformations and Integration Analysis .................................. 123 Epochenwende: Post-Cold War Transformations and Integration in Africa ............. 124 A Classic Case Study: The East African Community (EAC) (1967-1977)............... 140 The Constitutive Act of the African Union (CAAU): Another False Start?.............. 144 NePAD, Africa's Great Leap Forward? ..................................................................... 153 Africa's Transformations and Integration in the Context of Globalisation................ 166 Sub-regional Economic Communities as Integral Cores ........................................... 173 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ..................................... 177 The Southern African Development Community (SADC)........................................ 191 The East African Community (EAC) ........................................................................ 204 The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU)............................................................................. 210 Evaluation and Conclusion ........................................................................................ 215 Part IV Africa in Global Political Setting: Balkanised, Marginalized and Subcontracted?............................................................................................................ 219 The Role of Trans-National Actors............................................................................ 220 The UN-system: The Role of UN Economic Commission for Africa ................... 221 The Role of the Bretton Woods Institutions .......................................................... 224 The Role of the European Union (EU) .................................................................. 227 iv The G8: A Partner or a Standard Setter?................................................................ 229 The Role of Non-State Actors................................................................................ 233 Evaluation and Conclusion .................................................................................... 234 Part V Regional Policy Making and Implementation in Africa ............................. 238 African Policy Infrastructure vs. Political Realities and Risks: the past, the present and future. ............................................................................................................................ 239 The Monrovia Declaration......................................................................................... 241 The Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa ....................... 243 The Abuja Treaty ....................................................................................................... 248 Beyond Lack of Political Will ................................................................................... 250 Political Risk Analysis and Policymaking in Africa.................................................. 253 The Way Forward: Integrated Political Risk Analysis (IPRA) ................................. 258 Evaluation and Conclusion ........................................................................................ 267 Epilogue: Broad Based Transformations for Realising Africa's Visions .............. 269 Some Salient Thoughts and ‘Postulates’................................................................... 275 Notes and References.................................................................................................. 279 Sources…………….………………………………………………………………… 303 Figures Figure 1: Treaties, Conventions, Protocols and Charters ............................................... 24 Figure 2: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)....................................................... 39 Figure 3: Integrated Political Risk Analysis ................................................................. 260 Tables Table 1: Economic and Demographic Indicators for the ECOWAS ............................ 189 Table 2: Economic and Demographic Indicators for the SADC .................................. 195 Table 3: Economic and Demographic Indicators for the EAC..................................... 208 Table 4: Economic and Demographic Indicators for the AMU.................................... 212 v List of Abbreviations and Acronyms ACPC African Caribbean and Pacific Countries ADB African Development Bank AEC African Economic Community AGOA African Growth and Opportunity Act AHSG Assembly of Heads of States and Government AHSG Authority of Heads of State and Government AMU Arab Maghreb Union ANC African National Congress APRM African Peer Review Mechanism ARIA Assessing Regional Integration in Africa AST Actions Social Tchadienne AU The African Union BBTG Broad Based Transitional Government CAAU Constitutive Act of the African Union CEAO Communauté Economique de l’Afrique I’Ouest CCFAN Conseil de Commandement des Forces Armeé du Nord CEMAC Central African Monetary and Economic Union CEPGAL Economic Community of the Countries of the Great Lakes CET Common External Tariff CFI Capital Flows Initiative CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy CHSG Conference of Heads of States and Government CMA The Common Monetary Area COMESA Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa CSSDC Conference on Security, Stability and Development Co- operation CSM Conseil Supérieur Militaire DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo EAC East African Community ECCAS Economic Community of Central African States ECOSOC Economic and Social Council ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States EU The European Union FAN Forces Armeé du Nord FDI Foreign Direct Investment FROLINAT Front de Libération National du Tchad GDP Gross Domestic Product GUNT Transitional Government of National Unity HIPC Highly Indebted Poorest Countries IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development IFC International Finance Corporation IGAD Inter-Governmental Authority IMF The International Monetary Fund IPDC Inter-state Politics and Diplomacy Committee IPRA Integrated Political Risk Analysis ISDSC Inter-state Defense and Security Committee JPMC Joint Political and Military Commission LPA Lagos Plan of Action vi MAP The Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery MDGs Millennium Development Goals MDR Mouvement Democratique Républicain PDC Parti Democratique Chrétien PL Parti Libéral MNRD Mouvement Révolutionaire Nationale pour le Dévelopment NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NEPAP The New Partnership for Africa’s Development NGO Non-Governmental Organisation NIF Neutral International Force NMOG Neutral Military Observer Group OAU Organisation of African Unity ODA International Development Association OECD Organisation for Economic Corporation and Development POLISARIO Popular Front for the Liberation of the Western Sahara PPT Parti Progressiste Tchadienne PRA Political Risks Analysis PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers PTC Permanent Tripartite Commission RPF Rwandan Patriotic Front RPTC Regional Peacekeeping Training Centre RDA Rassemblement Democratique Africaine SACU Southern African Customs Union SADC South African Development Community SAP Structural Adjustment Programme SHSG Summit of Heads of State and Government SREC Sub-regional Economic Communities TNA Transitional National Assembly UEMOA Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Afrique UN The United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNECA United Nations Economic Commission for Africa UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund UDT Union Democratique Tchadienne UNITA Union for the Total Independence of Angola WAEMU West African Monetary and Economic Union WAMZ West African Monetary Zone WTO World Trade Organisation vii Prologue Obviously, the interrogative nature of the following investigation goes beyond analysis and delineation of events and issues and embraces the difficult task of making evaluations and judgements thereof. However, judgements and evaluations about Africa's socio-economic and political development had in most cases been done without adequate background knowledge about the nature, context and diversity of the continent. And even where one is adequately informed, we fail to draw our attention to context and relationships about the multiplicity of events and conditions underlying those events that are likely to influence our conclusions. One does not necessarily need to study everything about the continent in order to be able to arrive at plausible explanations and draw coherent conclusions. Neither does one need to be a 'resource person' of the issue area in order to have the insights needed for scientific analysis of events and trends in the continent. At the beginning of the 1990s the change of events in the international political landscape that negatively impacted Africa provided grounds for some to make apocalyptic predictions about the continent. Robert Kaplan's 1994 popular publication, 'The Coming Anarchy' that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly was used to capture military-politico and economic trends with particular reference to the West African sub- region as his departing point of analysis because of the magnitude of crisis in that part of the world. However, that work has been the standard yardstick for many analysts, commentators and observers of African affairs. Despite the crisis that engulfed Africa in the aftermath of the Cold War that took the form of open armed civil conflicts, international focus was diverted away from the continent to the crisis, risks and opportunities that accompanied the tearing down of the iron curtain that signified the end of communism in Russia and its satellite states. While any such judgements and conclusions may partly justify the empirical confirmations of contemporary political events and trends (considering the extent of the African crisis, especially, how disease and child soldering have destroyed a whole future generations in some countries), mostly a large number of authors who share such perspectives have failed to make any specific predictions about the old continent's future socio-economic and political situation in the context of the said apocalyptic assertions. For example, is Africa going to be enmeshed in a perpetual state of war and insecurity? Or is it the case that political entrepreneurs, warring factions and other interest groups and individuals in areas of conflict might come to enthrone reason and embrace peace and pave the way for development? The fallacy in here is that most authors end up doing their field of endeavour a great disservice, since apart from clarifying the goals of their analysis, description of the trends and analysis of conditions underlying those events and trends, they omit the fact that one of the ultimate hallmarks of political science analysis is, without any doubt, the ability to make predictions about future developments based on current insights on particular issues. Some talk about an apocalypse without telling their readers how it would look like, or giving any concrete future 'worst case scenarios' about it, except the usual categorisation of events as being 'dysfunctional' and 'disorder'. The point here is not to challenge the conclusions of those authors, but to raise consciousness about the shortcomings of those hasty conclusions and its effects on the state of the art. However, if there is any point in time in African history approximating an apocalypse of the kind and magnitude being claimed by some today, then that particular period would surely had been the dark history of about two hundred years of slavery that enchained the dynamic and vibrant sons and daughters of the continent - the backbone of any socio-economic system - its social capital. A force that was able to viii brace up to the economic challenges of the pre-colonial era and constituted an economic force that sojourned and traded the interconnected trade routes of the African continent. Even having that sector of endeavour transformed itself from that era and survived both external and internal onslaughts that had been unleashed against it in the course of time, it has been branded an informal sector in its economic undertakings in almost all the economies in Africa, despite the great contribution that sector makes to the national economies. That is the genesis of the long process of decimation, denigration and degradation of the social forces in Africa, a fact of which had transformed itself from slavery through colonialism and post-colonialism till the end of the Cold War. The oppressor here is the leadership conundrum, rooted in the dehumanising treatment of slave subjects by the slave master (within and outside the continent), further undergoing transformations in the form of fragmentation, balkanisation and exploitation by a colonial leadership that operated with greed, impunity, brute force and violence. Following that logic of greed and exploitation we have witnessed a post- colonial breed of leadership cloaked in brutal dictatorship guided by exclusions and self-appropriations and gross self-indulgence while bearing full semblance of the configurations and power structures of its colonial predecessors. Even some of the leaders of the immediate post-colonial era, having been trained in the use of violence by their colonial masters, and having seen the application of violence at first hand during that era, relied solely on brute force and violence. The art of statesmanship was not necessarily a sine qua non for leadership. In the profile of most military leaders in the African continent, hardly did any handful of them have any standard schooling. Their elite counterparts on the other hand, filled with fear and egoism excluded all rival political entrepreneurs from their fold, only to breed social polarisation and antagonisms of all dimensions. It is this dark past of African socio-political structure that has now aroused consciousness about its vital role in Africa, almost after four decades of political independence. Thus, throughout the greater part of the history of the continent, leadership in its external and internal dimensions had not been fair to the peoples of Africa, especially, south of the Sahara. It is on the basis of this leadership deficit that there must be a new beginning and self-renewal, and the end of the Cold War provided the space and time for a take-off. In all its ramifications, the ultimate goal of ongoing transformations and integration in Africa since 1990, without any doubt, is geared towards mobilisation of the long neglected social forces of the continent and how they could contribute their quota to national development. Today, what is ‘social’ seems to capture all the points of analysis regarding Africa's socio-economic and political development. By the formation of the OAU in 1963 the regional body had three key objectives covering unity, security and development, apart from the core goals of achieving decolonisation. Even to the non- observer of African affairs it is quite easy to discern how woefully the regional body failed in fulfilling the African dream of emancipation and development. The OAU after almost four decades of accommodating a leadership of tyranny that systematically and overtly denied their citizens any voice and participation in the system of government, hurriedly at the fringes of its demise held a civil society conference in conjunction with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the Inter-African Group in order to map out strategies for integrating the social forces of the continent in the transformation and integration processes that had gained momentum in the aftermath of the Cold War. In the long history of the continent the concept of civil society had eluded the social forces that had been denied the public space for harnessing the liberties and creative energies of private individuals and groups in the African continent. Colonial strategies of domination, appropriation and exploitation, post-colonial methods of exclusions and ix ethnic engineering, all combined to destroy the functioning of an appropriate civil society in Africa. The application of the changing concept of development that is now captured as "people-driven and people centred" had reinforced that particular shift and focus on civil society perspectives. On the basis of that previous neglect of the social component of development may lie the foundations of any possible assertions of rhetoric by African leaders, and even today the success or failure of development policies in the continent would be judged squarely by the degree of involvement of citizens and civil society at large and the impact thereon. Beyond the leadership and civil society puzzle, however, there are still a wide range of externalities that do bear directly on the African continent and does influence issues and their outcomes. The international political economy has tilted permanently in favour of some countries and regions, while many others including Africa still struggle to make it presence in areas such as global trade, investment and finance. Devoid of such basic ingredients for economic development, such as requisite resources, entrepreneurial capabilities, efficient market structures, sound policy infrastructure (legal and commercial) and international economic presence, why then did African leaders under the banner of the OAU make pledges and commitments about self- reliance and self-sustaining development? Combined with the harsh realities and risks of the prevailing international political economy, one could make sense of the fact that the regional body had by the end of the liberation struggle (at which it was relatively successful) become "ideologically bankrupt" and institutionally powerless in confronting the newly emerging crisis of Africa that began to reach its heights in the early 1980s. Annual summitries were thus nothing more than a mere expression of existence. However, part of the explanation is rooted in the failure by the political leadership and policy makers alike to appreciate the political realities and the adverse consequences of risks that came to characterise the international political system and the global economy. That the continent had moved from confrontation with the West in the context of the Cold War, sprinting even over co-operation to close partnership with the industrialised countries, symbolised in the gestures made by the G8, is a clear testimony of how a particular prevailing international system might positively or negatively influence outcomes in the continent. The ongoing third "scramble for Africa" whereby new actors such as Brazil, China and India have joined the trail of traditional centres of powers has sparked much heated debate across a broad spectrum of state and society. The effects of the current scramble on the African integration project, good governance and sustainable development has occupied the thoughts of many Africans, who are increasingly questioning the benefits of external actors rush for the continent's natural resources. Beyond that the global war on terror in the "post-9/11 era" led by the United States and its "coalition of the willing" also has far-reaching implications on collective strategies as big powers may interfere in African affairs in one way or the other to safeguard their national interests. But intensification of partnership with the West and the rest of the world does note erode the risks of the global economy and Africa's place in it. On the contrary, it increases the degree of risks on the face of proliferation of actors and transactions by both state and non-state entities in an international environment where production centres are easily relocated, and where capital and services flows rapidly across national, regional and international borders in the context of globalisation. This boils down to the fact that under stable international conditions Africa can make a great leap forward towards socio-economic development through restoration of confidence in its social forces by way of empowerment and development of the wider human resources that is able to contain and manage the risks of globalisation in order to reap whatever opportunities it may offer for Africa. This paper holds the conviction x (among others) that even the identification of financial resource gap regarding the New Partnership for African Development (NePAD) cannot in anyway override the crucial importance of the role played by the respective countries socio-economic forces. Wherein lays the efficacy of external financial flows without a commensurate competent, knowledgeable and innovative human resource base! But the changing nature of leadership had not reached its full cycle to warrant a safe environment that would enable Africa's socio-economic forces to reassert their creativity and ingenuity in the struggle for economic emancipation. Insecurity, hunger, disease and poverty are still issues of compromise for a gain in political power, and access to the forces of repression, suppression and intimidation by some. At the same time however, a large section of the collective African leadership have become aware of the effects of conflict on development, and the year 2003, for example, witnessed an unprecedented African inter-state efforts in bringing relative peace to once war torn countries such as Liberia, Burundi, the DRC, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, and more recently Angola, a country once a hot spot of the Cold War and its uncompromising belligerents. This is where the new realism in Africa begins, ending conflict to pave the way for development. Despite the setbacks and reversals of the 1990s that created fertile grounds for Kaplan to prophesise the anarchical future of West Africa for example, Africa, and for that matter the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) took the unprecedented step and intervened in Liberia while the international community was then focused on the war in the Balkans. Hence, under prevailing circumstances, part of the success of the collective African leadership could be their ability to show bravery and courage in adhering to the principles of the Peer Review mechanism they had pledged themselves to, and indeed to be part of a wider effort in addressing the leadership conundrum and ending conflict and war. Leaders must even go beyond that and break the taboos behind the close doors diplomacy through which they handle issues regarding individual leaders deviant behaviour. The difficult task for making scientific probe on African issues is at times exacerbated by the fact that our conclusions might be vulnerable to the 'brutal images', and lopsided reports that have come to characterise the Global Media's approach of presenting Africa in the news. A growing concern among many Africans is that after peace had been restored in previously conflict societies they hardly receive any international media attention on their reconstruction and rebuilding efforts. If this lopsided Media coverage in conflict and post-conflict societies is to continue, how are the affected countries going to make it in attracting crucially needed Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) for their reconstruction efforts? This is where the role of images and perceptions about Africa as a ‘high risk’ region negatively impacts her development. But the African crisis did not emerge overnight. It bears its peculiar causes and course. Hence, the discussion will survey the pre-colonial, the colonial, the post-colonial and the current, delineating and analysing the main issues affecting the structure of governance, leadership/state and society relationship, state and the economy, elite preferences and the choices they make, the key dynamics of regional and sub-regional policies, while evaluating and drawing conclusions from the outcomes of those relationships and how they impact the twin processes of transformation and integration, security, external relations and the struggle for economic emancipation that has been spearheaded by the OAU/AU in Africa. The identification of any rhetorical strategies cannot be done by studying any individual variable, but by revealing the interconnectedness of relationships and contexts that are encapsulated in multiple events and trends, while showing a penchant for interdisciplinary analysis. It is only then that one could make a credible and objective judgement about what constitute a visionary strategy, or a rhetorical strategy.