AU polls deserve serious attention

As African heads of state and government gather in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this weekend, they will attend their meeting in a newly constructed building funded by the People’s Republic of China, elect the top leadership of the African Union for the next four years, and discuss the possibilities for improving intra-African trade.

The most hotly contested position is that of the chairperson of the AU Commission, which is pitting the current chairperson and former Gabonese foreign minister, Mr Jean Ping, against the South Africa home affairs minister, who is also a former foreign minister, Ms Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

The chairperson of the Commission is the administrative head of the AU and has the power to shape the organisation with the support of the Executive Council, comprising foreign ministers, and the Assembly, comprising the heads of state.

The first chairperson of the AU Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, a former president of Mali, run the organisation from its inception in 2002 until 2008. He had also been the last Secretary-General of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

All administrative heads of the OAU and the AU have been men, so if Ms Dlamini Zuma, ex-wife of the South African president Jacob Zuma, won the post this weekend, she would become the first female to occupy the position.

The current deputy chairperson is a Kenyan, Erastus Mwencha, who is likely to be elected unopposed as long as he receives support from at least two-thirds of the members of the AU Assembly.

Besides these two senior positions in the Commission, there are 10 positions of Commissioners to be shared among the five sub-regions of the continent: Eastern, Southern, Central, Western and Northern Africa.While the Commissioners nominally represent the five sub-regions, the AU Constitutive Act stipulates that half of them have to be women.

According to the latest information, the heads of state will choose ten commissioners from a list of 26 applicants. Compared with earlier AU Commission elections, this weekend’s poll appears to be the least competitive. For example, there were 47 applicants in the 2008 elections, while the 2004 elections attracted 73 candidates.

The small number of applicants for commissioners’ positions this year, coupled with the fact that the media in many African countries have not covered this important gathering adequately, demonstrate the failure of leadership at the continental, sub-regional and national levels.

Is it possible for poor national leaders to elect strategic leaders at the AU level? AU insiders have revealed that some states did not take these elections seriously, so they forwarded the names of candidates without proper documentation, including their curriculum vitae and vision statements.

There have also been claims that some countries did not pay attention to the rules regarding the number and qualifications of candidates.

For example, while Kenya proposed one candidate (Erastus Mwencha), Cameroon forwarded a list of eight candidates, but it was compelled to drop five or six of them.

It is the leadership at the AU, especially within the AU Commission, that will shape the nature of Africa’s relations with the rest of the world.

By paying scant attention to the election of this leadership, the current African heads of state and government might have compromised the future of the younger generations.

Makinda is a Professor at Murdoch University, Australia.