Africa needs peace to resolve conflict, improve governance and underwrite development. Its leaders must create the political conditions and institutions in which those tasks can be accomplished.
If necessary, that would involve the right to intervene with troops and sanctions to prevent war crimes or genocide. These ambitious objectives have now been adopted in the founding statements of the African Union (AU), formally launched last week in Durban. The critical question posed is whether its leaders will have the resolve, and the new institutions the capacity, to deliver on them.
If recognising the problem is the beginning of political wisdom, the African Union has much to be said for it. The Organisation of African Unity, the AU's predecessor, was founded in 1963 to co-ordinate the anti-colonial struggle and oversee independence. Its fundamental principle was inter-governmental, based on non-interference in internal affairs and a sacrosanct national sovereignty. It developed a culture of mutual solidarity between brotherly leaders who did not condemn or criticise one another. As many of them became autocrats for life, the OAU lost credibility as a mechanism for continental development.
The new organisation recognises the severe shortcomings of that experience. Africa faces huge problems: of arrested economic development and heavy indebtedness; state breakdown; endemic corruption and autocratic leadership; regional famine conditions arising from prolonged conflicts; and a catastrophic AIDS pandemic destroying the social structure of many sub-Saharan states. These problems are not amenable to national solutions and are best tackled at a regional or even a continental level.
There are several plusses in addressing this task. They include a new political dynamic from South Africa, which has taken a leading role in the AU; a constructive New Partnership for Africa's Development giving a credible framework for economic transformation; and a recognition that stronger supranational institutions are needed. The AU will have a peace and security council of national leaders meeting regularly and capable of sending troops to intervene in crises; an African parliamentary assembly; a court of justice; a central bank; and eventually, it is hoped, a common currency. It will have a permanent secretariat and a standing committee of ambassadorial representatives. Its founding document commits its members to democracy, good governance and human rights.
Its critics doubt that the toleration of oppression and autocracy, so characteristic of the OAU, will be easily left behind. They point out that Zimbabwe did not figure in the summit agenda last week. The African Union has a difficult task in translating these objectives into real political progress, but it deserves the good will and support of the rest of the world.