I once lived in the backstreets of Naples. There was an outbreak of cholera and I was struck down. A doctor shrugged: “You survived, drink beer.” I sat in a bar and watched terrible images on television of Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile. Later, in this surreal state, I visited the archaeological museum. No guards were about, so I wandered into a workshop where Greek and Roman statues were stacked haphazardly. Pinned to the staff notice board were dozens of typed motions addressed to governments around the world. There was a familiar formula: “The museum workers of Naples denounce this latest act of cynical imperialism”. Or, “express our solidarity with the garment workers of Uppsala in their heroic…” At the time. artworks were regularly plundered from Italian museums and smuggled abroad.
Last week, following the United Nations’ motion on Libya, I was reminded of this gulf between reality and rhetoric when reading the African Union’s response to the air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces outside Benghazi. Mauritanian President Ould Abdel Aziz rejected “any kind of foreign military intervention”, adding that the situation, “demands urgent action so an African solution [can be found] to the very serious crisis which this sister nation is going through.”
The African Union replaced the Organisation of African Unity in 2002 because the latter was seen as ineffective. It had become a club for despots. The AU has done little better. It might be more accurately termed the Autocrats Union. Given the stark choice, the AU seems incapable of taking the side of “the people” against tyrants. When a despot refuses to concede after losing an election and resorts to violence, the favoured solution is to reward the autocrat with a “power-sharing” deal. Witness the fudge in Zimbabwe, Kenya and now Côte d’Ivoire. The message is clear: if you can’t win at the ballot box, you can stay in the presidential palace through force. This upholds what has become an unspoken AU doctrine: the inalienable right of dictators to abuse their own people.
Many AU countries have been generously bankrolled by Gaddafi. In South Africa, it was widely speculated that Gaddafi helped to finance Jacob Zuma during his protracted legal woes prior to becoming president. When asked about this last week, Zuma merely replied: “Whether he supported a person or no person is neither here nor there.” In January, probably the worst abuser of human rights in Africa – prior to Gaddafi’s ruthless blitz – was elected as AU chairman. Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, has been in power for more than 30 years. Forbes magazine estimates his wealth at $600 million. According to the UN, 20 per cent of the country’s children die before the age of five.
In the farcical “wonga coup” of 2004, a gaggle of mercenaries planned to overthrow Obiang. They were led by Old Etonian and former SAS officer Simon Mann and partially financed by Mark Thatcher. Sentenced to 34 years, Mann was released from Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black Beach prison in 2009 – and immediately, bizarrely, began working for his previous captor. The mercenary’s wife Amanda even gushed that Obiang was “a lovely, lovely man”.
It has been claimed that several Western powers knew and approved of the coup attempt. It is not clear what role Simon Mann now plays for the “lovely, lovely” tyrant. But given Mann’s establishment credentials it would not be surprising if he was also co-operating with British intelligence. No wonder African leaders remain so suspicious of western meddling. Yet for the AU, as Gaddafi’s tanks were actually entering the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, to call, finally, for some unspecified “urgent action” is meaningless. They might as well stick a pompous memo on the staff notice board at the Naples museum.
