Race is hot, so buy your ticket for the AU chieftain vote now
What you need to know:
- Morocco is pursuing a dual strategy, saying it is happy to join and work “from within” for the de-recognition of the RASD, as an insightful report by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Africa chapter noted recently.
- Also, she would then split the pro-Morocco vote with Bathily in the first round, opening the chance for Botswana’s Foreign minister Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, who still has the solid vote of the Southern African Development Community, to again emerge with the most votes in the first round.
With Kenya’s Foreign minister Amina Mohamed now in the hunt to become the African Union Commission chief when the African leaders vote again at the end of January, and the East African Community backing her, it is time to check in with the state of the race.
This one is shaping up to be a race with some very meaty issues at stake.
First up is the readmission of Morocco, which walked out of the Organisation of African Unity, now rebranded African Union, in 1984 to protest at the recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (RASD).
Morocco’s King Mohamed VI has really been working the phones to African state houses and putting money on the table. He has thrown down $3 billion on a fertiliser plant in Ethiopia.
He is not doing too badly. At the AU summit in Rwanda in July, 28 African countries signed a petition for the RASD to be kicked out to open the door for Morocco to join.
Morocco is pursuing a dual strategy, saying it is happy to join and work “from within” for the de-recognition of the RASD, as an insightful report by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Africa chapter noted recently.
Morocco, said the institute, has solid support mostly in Francophone West and Central Africa. Morocco takes the view that the outgoing AU Commission chairperson, South Africa’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, had fitina against it and was hostile toward its return.
If that is true, then she was aligned to countries like South Africa and Algeria, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea, that ISS says are determined that the issue of Morocco’s continued claim over the Western Sahara be resolved before letting the kingdom into the AU.
This might be why West Africa, which partly caused the deadlock at the Kigali July vote for AU chief by abstaining, this time has a candidate in the person of Senegalese Abdoulaye Bathily, the former UN special representative for Central Africa.
Senegal is one of the biggest advocates for Morocco’s membership and for expelling the RASD.
ISS notes that Amina Mohamed is also seen to be in favour of Morocco’s adhesion. In which case she will probably not get the ballot of South Africa, Algeria, and Zimbabwe.
Also, she would then split the pro-Morocco vote with Bathily in the first round, opening the chance for Botswana’s Foreign minister Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, who still has the solid vote of the Southern African Development Community, to again emerge with the most votes in the first round.
Then there is the matter of the International Criminal Court (ICC), that thing many of Africa’s big men hate.
After three years of threats, South Africa, Burundi, and The Gambia have been the first three African countries to formally start the process of withdrawing from the Rome Statute that established the court.
However, despite the anti-ICC noise, the picture in Africa is complicated. At the 15th Assembly of States Parties (ASP) in The Hague in early November, among the countries that spoke up most vigorously in favour of the ICC, and in fact called for it to be strengthened and more countries to ratify the Rome Statute, were African nations.
They included Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Lesotho, Mali, Nigeria, Tunisia, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire.
Unless Kenya moves clearly out of the leave-ICC column, now that it has become an issue, one can glean from how countries are lining up above how West Africa would likely vote this time should it come down to a face-off between Venson-Moitoi and Mohamed. It would go with Venson-Moitoi.
Also which way more than half the SADC would cast theirs should the finals be between Mohamed and Bathily. They would go with Bathily.
The small complication here is that the countries that have a foot out of the ICC — South Africa, Burundi, and The Gambia — are either a political or violent mess.
Ethiopia’s image has been sullied by the killing of hundreds of Oromo protesters in the past year. Uganda is going through a bad patch. The barbarism in South Sudan is only getting worse.
The anti-ICC case now looks as if it is being pushed by, as critics put it, governments that “want to butcher their people and not be punished for it”. It really is not as attractive as it was a year ago.
January 31, 2017, in Addis Ababa promises to be an AU summit to remember.
The author is publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3
