The second summit between the European Union and Africa which was held in Lisbon, Portugal from 7 to 9 December 2007 ended with a series of good intentions as usual. The same professions of faith already heard on many occasions in other fora have returned. These include the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the fight against corruption, respect for human rights and good governance, and increased investment in Africa.
If Africa had taken advantage of the Lisbon platform to demand a partnership of equals from Europe, it goes without saying that it was already becoming more and more aware of the stakes it represents in the concert large groups of the world. It is no longer Africa that stretches out its hand to beg or that we help with great media backing in relation to this or that other calamity that was expressed in Lisbon, but the Africa that we also need economically and strategically, despite its lackluster situation at the moment. The Lisbon declaration, moreover, spoke volumes. It was now a matter of building a new political and strategic partnership for the future by going beyond the traditional donor-beneficiary relationships.
Of all the lyrical outbursts and rants from each other, it was neither the current Chairman of the African Union, former President John Kuffuor of Ghana nor the President of the Commission, the former President Alpha Oumar Konaré, nor the former President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal who will have been the great African stars of this summit. Far from it. Even without giving a speech, ex-President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe had already beaten everyone to the post before his arrival, he, the inveterate dictator, moreover banned from staying in Europe. The aggressiveness of the former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to prevent this President of a sovereign country who does not take himself less for a Sovereign to be at the rendez-vous of Lisbon had nothing to do with it. And it is rather he who, willy-nilly, will have been the unwanted guest of this second European Union-African Union summit. It is indeed the case to say it, because it was a question of a union between Africans to maintain that the former African dictator representing an independent and sovereign country had indeed to take part in the summit, whatever crime of lese-majesty or lese-democracy that one can reproach him. Right or wrong. That is.
The father of the struggle for liberation and independence of Zimbabwe was even entitled to the icing on the cake when he arrived in Lisbon. Apart from the photos of the other earthy dictator, the ex-Libyan Guide Muammar El Gaddafi whose press had revealed that the carriers were doing it for hard cash for the most part, there were only those of Mugabe to express not any support for his regime, but the refusal of Africans or African countries to continue to support the paternalism and the dictates of the leaders of the former colonizing countries.
Through Mugabe and his highly questionable land reform in Zimbabwe, which aroused the ire of England and its Prime Minister more than the violations of the rights of Zimbabweans and the imprisonment of opposition leaders, trade unionists and journalists, it is to a new leadership that Africans longed for. And too bad if there are only by pure coincidence of history only dictators to embody, for the moment, this deep aspiration. The message got through to African heads of state who wanted to decipher it. Failing this, Africa, which had known so many others and not the least famous such as Idi Amin Dada, Sékou Touré to name a few, will not fail to give to God what belongs to God and to these last what belongs to them. In the face and beard of all those who have nothing but to gargle about being democratically elected while they barely have the courage to support the idea that they represent citizens of a country independent and sovereign in front of their Western counterparts. And which, in principle, are the best founded for it.
In view of the current socio-political events across Africa, we are forced to note an obvious regression in democratic learning in many countries of the continent. And that's the least we can say about it… Especially when we know that it is by ousting by coup d'Etat those who have received the mandate to govern according to the rules and principles of the sovereign people that soldiers return to power in some French-speaking countries. Worse, the latter have nothing credible to answer but to talk to the West about “Sovereignty” or “diversifying Partners” when they are thwarted in their ulterior motives. Suffice to say that with the new geopolitical appetites of China and Russia, there is the risk or the temptation of a return of Africa to the times that we thought were forever over, but at least cursed, Dictatorships or Strong Regimes. It depends !
By Marcus Boni Teiga
