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What Africa could do with veto power
African Focus By Tafataona P. Mahoso
LAST week, progressive
member states of the African Union demanded an emergency summit in Addis Ababa
to restore their original position on UN reform which had been adopted in Libya.
The problem was that some wheeler-dealers within the AU had rushed to amend the
unified African position by agreeing to drop the demand for two permanent
Security Council seats with veto powers.
The wheeler-dealers had emerged
out of a London meeting (with Brazil, Germany, India and Japan) holding a
position contrary to what Africa had agreed in Libya. They argued that just
having six more permanent seats on the Security Council (with two going to
Africa) would be a great step forward in UN reform, even though none of the six
would have veto power.
Our view is that, of all the regions of the world
involved in UN reform, it is Africa which requires the protection of a veto vote
or votes. The reasons are easy to see.
First of all, other regions of
the world became independent of colonial rule much earlier than most of Africa
and they have developed their diplomatic relations and cultural links with
Europe and America over a much longer period than Africa has.
Some of
these countries believe that, on most issues, they can count on their European
and North American allies to agree with them or to protect their basic interests
on fundamental issues. In other words, Germany and Japan, for example, can count
on the USA, Canada, Britain and the rest of Europe to agree with them on a
majority of issues.
They may not need their own veto power in the
Security Council because up to now their security has been guaranteed by the US
and Nato. This is not the case with Africa. The US and Europe have been
implicated on the wrong side in Africa as recently as last year, 2004, in
Equatorial Guinea.
Africa remembers the deep involvement of Europe and
America in propping up the apartheid and UDI regimes in South Africa and
Zimbabwe as well as their role in delaying Namibia’s independence while
prolonging the Angolan civil war.
Africa remembers the destruction of
the Congolese revolution and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba which were
co-ordinated from New York, Washington, Brussels and London. Africa does not
trust the US and UK to respect its rights and it is these two countries who
oppose meaningful UN reform.
In the second place, the reason why
European and North American intervention in Africa has been so negative and so
tragic is that Africa is the richest continent in strategic resources. The
crisis of global capitalism today revolves around strategic resources. Global
companies and the countries benefiting from them are sceptical of the "casino
economy" which has expanded since the 1980s.
They fear that a crash more
catastrophic than the Great Depression of the 1930s may still take place. If it
does take place, Africa will be the key to recovery and reconstruction, which is
to say, whoever controls Africa will hold the key to recovery and
reconstruction. This is because in the event of such a crash, paper stocks and
speculative bonds will become useless.
What will matter is access to
real strategic minerals, access to energy sources, access to building and
construction materials, and access to land for producing food. Africa contains
almost all the minerals required in manufacturing equipment for modern armies
and air forces as well as materials needed in most sophisticated manufacturing
and environmental control processes. That is why the region from the DRC to
South Africa is called "the Persian Gulf of minerals" by the imperial powers.
Without any veto powers in the hands of Africans, this Persian Gulf of minerals
will remain an open quarry.
South Africa and Zimbabwe have been targeted
by Europe and the US partly because they are the only countries of the world
which have large reserves of platinum. The only other source is Russia. The West
fears that Zimbabwe and South Africa may choose to trade this strategic mineral
with China, which they have a right to do.
With veto power, Africa will
be able to direct events and to choose proper allies. Angola would not have
achieved independence if the former Soviet Union had not used its veto power to
stop the US and white South Africa from globalising the Unita-MPLA conflict
there. Cuba’s assistance to Angola and the rest of the Southern African
liberation movements would have been impossible in a unipolar system.
Indeed, if Africa had had its own veto power, it could have sourced
enough assistance for the Angolan people which would have ended the conflict
sooner and allowed Namibia to achieve independence earlier.
If Africa
had veto power it could have determined the way UN troops were used in the Congo
in the 1960s and the Congolese revolution and its leader Lumumba would have been
saved. A truly independent Congo would have provided a massive resource base for
launching and supporting the liberation movements of Mozambique, Angola,
Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
An Africa with veto power in the UN
Security Council would fulfil Kwame Nkrumah’s dream of a united Africa. Nkrumah
was painfully aware of the vulnerability of every African country and every
African leader; and he saw pan-African unity as the only solution. That unity
cannot be protected unless Africa determines who gets involved in its internal
conflicts and who does not. Security Council power would enable Africa to
achieve such control.
Indeed, the crises which Africa has faced in
Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC and now in
the Sudan, would have been contained if Africa was able to direct the conduct of
UN agencies and missions in Africa through the Security Council.
The
Sadc intervention in DRC in 1998 would have been quickly backed by the UN
Security Council and the war in that country would have ended in a much shorter
time. As things stand, the foreign Euro-American agenda of keeping the DRC in
turmoil seems to continue, while Africa watches from the sidelines. Veto votes
in the UN mean greater influence over Security Council decisions and over UN
operations.
It is true that the United States and its European allies
are saying that more veto votes in the Security Council will create too many
stalemates in the UN system.
What they mean is that their plan in Africa
will be checked by African veto power. That should be a good reason for Africans
to demand veto power.
One only needs to look at how the 1998
intervention in the DRC by Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia was treated by the
British and the North Americans.
The UN Panel of Experts on the looting
of the DRC’s resources issued a report which implicated the Western powers and
their African allies, Rwanda and Uganda, in the looting.
The Western
powers took immediate steps to reduce their own blame and shift the burden away
from themselves and away from Uganda and Rwanda.
First, an addendum was
attached to the report suggesting that Zimbabwe should also be investigated.
Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia had averted a genocidal catastrophe in the DRC
through their intervention.
After the report with the addendum, a media
campaign was started all over the world, singling out Zimbabwe and using the
opposition MDC to attack the pan-African intervention in the DRC in favour of
the Western position.
The Zimbabwe Independent, MISA, The Daily News,
The Financial Gazette, The London Times, The Mail & Guardian and other
publications were used to denounce the Sadc intervention in the DRC and to
isolate Zimbabwe from its Sadc allies.
Further, British and US
intelligence services also authored many anonymous reports against the Sadc
intervention and against Zimbabwe in particular.
One publication called
Branching Out: Zimbabwe’s Resource Colonialism in the Democratic Republic of
Congo clearly revealed the Western view that the rich resources of Africa do not
belong to the Africans. The panic about African resources going to Africans was
palpable in that fraudulent report:
"A Zimbabwean company whose board
comprises senior Zanu-PF and military figures have effectively created the
world’s largest logging concession by gaining rights to exploit 33 million
hectares of forests in the DRC: 15 percent of total land area and one a half
times the size of the UK. Logging has already commenced in Katanga Province,
carried out by the Zimbabwean military in conjunction with a company called SAB
Congo."
This is the language of global white panic over the possibility
that nations in the South and East whose resources have been looted for a song
in the past may suddenly decide to choose other trade partners. Malaysia was
mentioned in that British panic report in 2002. Today China would be mentioned
even more if the report were to be rewritten. The panic over the future of
Southern and Central Africa’s resources is similar to the panic we heard in 1973
when Opec imposed oil sanctions on Europe and America.
What happens to
the resources of the DRC or Zimbabwe or South Africa should be up to the people
of those countries and not up to Europe and America.
African veto power
will go a long way to make this message clear and to enforce it.
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