"South Africa also failed to win the vote of Ethiopia, another
regional power. Late last year South Africa butted heads with Ethiopia
in the UN Security Council when it came to voting on whether to impose
sanctions on Eritrea. In the view of Eritrea's UN ambassador, Araya
Desta, the vote turned into a sideshow of the AU power tussle. Desta
said that Ethiopia had offered to support Ping's bid for a second term
in return for Gabon's support for sanctions against Eritrea.
According to a UN source, South Africa's initial resistance to
sanctions angered Ethiopia and was seen as "a sour grapes manoeuvre
against the countries that had pledged their vote to Ping". De Kock
said the antipathy of regional power Kenya to South Africa was
grounded more in economic than in political concerns."
http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-03-sa-and-the-au-its-complicated/
SA and the AU: It's complicated
SEAN CHRISTIE ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - Feb 03 2012 00:43
When the African Union's (AU's) election rules forced South Africa's
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to end her bid to become chairperson of the AU
in Addis Ababa this week, local media claimed it was because South
Africa's Africa policy was weak and directionless.
But South African diplomats and international relations advisers
described former AU chairperson Jean Ping's failure to get himself
re-elected (Gabon's former foreign minister stood alone in the fourth
voting round but failed to secure the necessary two-thirds majority)
as a triumph for South African diplomacy.
The reasons offered for this go to the heart of some of the more
intractable problems South Africa has in trying to improve its clout
in Africa.
According to Eddy Maloka, special adviser to the minister of
international relations and co-operation, the "'24 or 25" votes
Dlamini-Zuma received "came from all over, and the great unifying
issue was the fact that our African institutions and their leadership
must in future be both accountable for their performance and
impervious to foreign interference".
What Maloka and other departmental officials have been saying openly
is that the AU, under Ping, has been dominated by the francophone
countries. What they have implied is that the French have found this
useful.
"One could just come out and say that this election was a proxy battle
between France and South Africa," said Francis Kornegay of the
Institute for Global Dialogue.
According to a department source, the overthrowing "of an African head
of state in Côte d'Ivoire by the French under the cloak of so-called
UN [United Nations]" action and the "killing of [Libya's ruler
Muammar] Gaddafi by a foreign power" had amplified continental
sovereignty concerns, enabling South Africa to lobby "with some
success, even if it wasn't reflected in the vote", in West and Central
Africa.
SA delegates happy that Ping failed to get a majority
Petrus de Kock of the South African Institute for International
Affairs said that the way the South African delegates celebrated when
Ping failed to attain a majority "imparted a sense that they had at
least achieved their purpose of changing the dynamic in the [AU]
Commission".
But the success of South Africa's strategy for AU reform is hard to
gauge. A department source said that "many nations were sympathetic to
what we were saying about the need for an accountable and trustworthy
AU, but claimed they had either already committed to Ping or that a
gentlemen's agreement existed going back to the OAU [Organisation of
African Unity, which became the AU] days that obliged them to go along
with regional consensus".
Kornegay said the persistence of gentlemen's agreements in African
politics and "this notion that small states should run the African
Union" was proof that Africa had never been decolonised.
"Those small states are an expression of what I would call the
Africanisation of colonialism because, when the OAU was set up, the
first thing the first generation of African leaders did was ratify the
Berlin Conference," he said.
France's influence is not limited to West or Central Africa. It has
been widely perceived in the steps that saw Madagascar's former
president, Marc Ravalomanana, being ousted by former DJ Andy
Rajoelina, not long after he proposed introducing English as an
official language.
David Zounmenou of the Institute for Security Studies said: "Pretoria
supports Ravalomanana's demand to be allowed to return to Madagascar
from exile. It is in their and the Southern African Development
Community's [SADC's] interests to see him returned to power.
"However, what the Malagasy crisis reveals is that Pretoria's support
and influence within SADC is not watertight because part of the reason
Ravalomanana has been kept out so long is largely due to a SADC
roadmap drawn up by Mozambicans that stated that he should be kept
out."
A departmental source claimed Nigerian support for Dlamini-Zuma would
have resulted in her election, but added that Nigeria had taken issue
at being approached for support only after South Africa had approached
the SADC countries.
"They argued that if we truly had the special relationship we claimed
to have with them, we would have done that. But tell me, how could we
not talk to our neighbours first?" the source asked.
South Africa fails to secure the vote of a regional heavyweight
South Africa also failed to win the vote of Ethiopia, another regional
power. Late last year South Africa butted heads with Ethiopia in the
UN Security Council when it came to voting on whether to impose
sanctions on Eritrea. In the view of Eritrea's UN ambassador, Araya
Desta, the vote turned into a sideshow of the AU power tussle. Desta
said that Ethiopia had offered to support Ping's bid for a second term
in return for Gabon's support for sanctions against Eritrea.
According to a UN source, South Africa's initial resistance to
sanctions angered Ethiopia and was seen as "a sour grapes manoeuvre
against the countries that had pledged their vote to Ping". De Kock
said the antipathy of regional power Kenya to South Africa was
grounded more in economic than in political concerns.
A Kenyan diplomat said that the founding of a major brewery in Juba in
South Sudan by South African Breweries "coincided with the imposition
of tough customs and excise duties on imported beer, closing that
market to our brewers. We know that was a direct result of the South
African government speaking to the government of South Sudan."
South Africa's liberation credentials may have been used to good
effect in South Sudan but questions have been asked about whether the
government is willing to relate to North African liberation movements
as it has to sub-Saharan ones. "It is a real issue," said Said
Ferjani, adviser to the Tunisian president. "I haven't seen South
Africa making much headway in North Africa.
"I know their awkward human rights position on Syria derives from
problems they had with Nato's interpretation of the UN's Libya
resolution but, when there are people being slaughtered and you
prevaricate for geopolitical reasons, it is unacceptable. Both South
Africa and the Arab world have yet to get the balance right," Ferjani
said.
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Received on Fri Feb 03 2012 - 08:02:20 EST
