Africa Day Revisited

 Nothing To Celebrate, African Union Diamond Jubilee

Like a child charged with breaking a curfew, the  African union keeps repeating the same statement over and over again to instill a sense of hope in the hearts of the continent's billion inhabitants. We are told  “it is time for African leaders and  population to chart the way forward”. The beats of drums and ululations pierced through the African sky on the 25^th May 2013 in Ethiopia as the organization celebrated 50-years of maladministration, betrayal and empty rhetoric.

Five decades after colonial rule the African Union has  achieved the following:

1. A large chunk of the world's productive people living with HIV.

2. Over eighty violent changes of government.

3. Instutionalisation of ethnicity as an organizing factor in politics.

4. Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births) 69.4 %

5. Life expectancy at birth, total (years) 54.6

6. Millions of “forcibly displaced populations” and about 3.5 million (probably more) transnational refugees.

7. Military rape as a strategy of power tussle sanctioned by  some leaders who seat as heads of state in the AU

8. And last but not least, political corruption and theft of national resources in Africa. This stinks up to high heaven as the continent sinks in a sea of abject poverty.

Electoral systems are engineered to stifle opposition and maintain one party states by corrupt liberation movement that feel entitled to ruling forever

             A question asked by Chika Onyeani in his book the capitalist nigger still begs an answer: "which European leader took office through the barrel of a gun? Less said about the Human rights violations in Zimbabwe starting in 2000. Less said about the chilling winds of xenophobia (mainly Afrophobia ) blowing in South Africa. Less said about the dictator Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea in power for more than three decades making by law personal decree that for a nation which claims to “…walk the paths of our immense happiness’’.

We all know what is happening in Madagascar, DRC and other African countries. In Cameroon state accountability is a swearword. Paul Biya in charge since 1982, thanks to ceremonial elections. Homosexuals are still tortured in his gulags. 

 Fresh in our memories is the Central African Republic where François Bozizé ascended to the top office through a coup in 2003 now toppled by another rebel leader Michel Djotodia.

Now my question; with all these shenanigans engulfing the continent what is the purpose of this African Union? A dictator‘s club like its predecessor OAU (ORGANISATION FOR AFRICAN UNITY), the AU just adopted the AFRICAN CHARTER ON DEMOCRACY, ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE:

I quote the preamble “…Guided by our common mission to strengthen and consolidate institutions for

good governance, continental unity and solidarity; Committed to promote the universal values and principles of democracy, good Governance, human rights and the right to development…” this  charter adopted by the eighth ordinary session of the assembly, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,30 January 2007.

 All the statistics I mentioned above, all the headlines in newspapers on African miseries represent men, women and children being killed raped, tortured  and chained to keep a few in power. All the faces on CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera are people with ambitions. Their crime is being alive, Black and living in Africa.

For the next fifty years the headlines and statistics will not change but the faces of African leaders (read traitors) might change. The reason: African Union is a talk shop. A coalition of corrupt liberation movements will come to power.The object is to ensure perpetual reign of liberation movements in the name of democracy and good governance. And in the African context, we all know what that means.

NKUBA ADAM is just regular guy in Africa.

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