Israel at the African Union: Not in, but not out

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 11 February 2022

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By Suraya Dadoo, writer based in Johannesburg

ADDIS ABABA - Frantic lobbying, leaders more concerned about watching the AFCON final, and head-spinning back-tracking characterised discussions on Israel’s accreditation to the African Union (AU) when leaders gathered at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa on 5-6 February during the continental body’s Heads of State summit.

A 22 July decision by AU Commission chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, to unilaterally accredit Israel has split the AU. South Africa and Algeria are leading opposition to Israel’s accreditation, while most west and east African nations have defended Mahamat’s Israel accreditation.

Those fault lines are now cracking open, and the issue of Israel’s accreditation risks tearing the AU apart and permanently damaging its integrity.

Israel's accreditation suspended

In October, the AU’s executive committee postponed a decision about Israel’s accreditation until the heads of state meeting. On Sunday morning, debate and voting about the divisive issue were suspended out of fear that it could collapse the entire summit – the first in-person meeting of African leaders since the Covid-19 pandemic began two years ago.

Instead, delegates unanimously agreed to appoint a committee to investigate Mahamat’s decision to grant Israel accreditation.

The committee would consist of South Africa, Algeria, and Nigeria – all opposed to Israel’s accreditation – and Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Cameroon, all pro-Israel. The new AU chairperson and Senegalese president, Macky Sall, who is also pro-Israel, will co-ordinate the committee.

The meeting also agreed that until the committee makes its final recommendations, Mahamat’s decision to accredit Israel would be suspended. It was a principled, sensible conclusion, reached through consensus - the AU’s preferred method of decision-making.

Crucially, it also helped avoid a split in the AU. The issue was, by all accounts, resolved. The decision would be drafted and a resolution presented in the afternoon.

The Palestinian delegation at the AU was informed, and by lunchtime, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release welcoming the decision and declaring it a ‘victory’ for Palestinians. Other Palestinian political factions, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also released similar statements.

South African minister of international relations, Naledi Pandor, even confirmed to South African journalists that Mahamat’s decision “is suspended and it will not be implemented.” Both Israeli and Palestinian media soon began reporting that Israel’s accreditation to the AU had been suspended.

Israel's lunchtime lobbying

Israeli delegates, however, used the lunch break to frantically lobby members to re-open discussion on the issue.

Sources who were at the AU summit confirmed to The New Arab that Israel had promised additional military, surveillance, and intelligence assistance to several African leaders in the hopes that they would demand the issue of its accreditation be revisited in the afternoon.

Israel’s back-channel diplomacy was successful, and the matter was tabled for debate again - betraying the spirit of consensus-based decision-making at the AU.

Chaotic final session

The issue of contention was not the establishment of the committee, but the suspension of Mahamat’s decision. Under the chairmanship of Macky Sall, the ensuing debate that took place was seen as shameful by many.

Sall and other leaders called, on more than one occasion, for the discussion to be curtailed so they could watch the AFCON final.

Delegates from South Africa, Algeria, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Libya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Namibia and several other nations argued strongly that the earlier decision should stand, and that Israel’s accreditation be suspended.

However, Morocco, Senegal, Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, Chad and the DRC, amongst others, argued that Israel’s observer status should remain valid.

Shockingly, Sall suddenly ended the meeting with a declaration that Mahamat’s decision to accredit Israel be upheld, pending the deliberations of the committee.

Palestine: A foreign issue?

“Africa should not be divided by something even which is foreign to Africa,” Sall said in response to a question on the status of Israel’s accreditation from the South African Broadcasting Corporation during the final press briefing soon after the chaotic debate ended. It’s an assertion that African activists have strongly rejected.

“How can Israel’s occupation of Palestine and Zionism be regarded as a ‘foreign issue’ when the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) explicitly makes fighting Zionism an AU responsibility?” asked Dialo Diop of the Pan-African Palestine Solidarity Network (PAPSN) - a coalition of African civil society groups from across the continent mobilising support for Palestine.

Dialo is correct. Allowing Israel to be accredited to the AU actually contravenes the continental body’s own guiding document, the Constitutive Act. The Constitutive Act commits the AU to “promote and protect human and peoples’ right in accordance with the ACHPR.”

The African Charter itself makes a commitment on behalf of Africans to “eliminate colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, [and] Zionism”. Far from being ‘foreign’, Israel and its occupation of Palestine is a part of the African Union’s DNA.

Perhaps a more pertinent question for African diplomats lobbying for Israel’s accreditation is this: how is it possible to give Israel observer status when the AU is supposed to be committed to opposing Zionism - the foundational political ideology of that state?

Shouldn't we be discussing the coups?

During the discussion on Israel’s accreditation, some pro-Israel delegates argued that it was a waste of time spending energy discussing Israel’s AU accreditation when Africa has - in the time since Africa’s leaders last gathered physically at the AU - experienced six coups or attempted coups. “This is something which isn’t even an internal issue,” lamented Sall.

But Israel is very much an African problem – particularly its supply of weapons and spyware to some of Africa’s most brutal regimes.

In the last decade, Israeli military exports to Africa have increased by 309%. Israel’s Ministry of Defence allows the export of invasive spyware to several authoritarian regimes in Africa – to be used against their own citizens and even against other heads of state.

Israel: Not in, but not out

The Israeli government, meanwhile, has been reluctant to celebrate Sunday’s debacle at the AU as a victory. Although Mahamat’s decision to accredit Israel still stands, the vote to confirm its observer status at the AU didn’t happen. So, for the time being, Israel isn’t out of the AU. But it’s not officially in either.

With no official confirmation of its accreditation, Israel still has not entered into a formal relationship with the AU. More importantly for Tel Aviv, though, is that as the apartheid label is increasingly used to describe Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, the political and diplomatic recognition that comes with attaining observer status at the AU still eludes it.

The fallout continues

The acrimony from the discussions around Israel’s accreditation has continued long after diplomats returned home.

In Addis Ababa, Mahamat defended his decision to grant Israel observer status. One of the reasons he provided was that 44 out of the 55 AU member states have relations with Israel.

Calling it a “double standard”, Mahamat said he found it difficult to understand the rejection of Israel’s observer status by AU members who have representation in Tel Aviv “and which hoists, in the heart of its own capital, the Israeli flag while organising in its honour a grand ceremony of presentation of credentials.”

This was a thinly-veiled reference to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent acceptance of credentials from the Israeli ambassador to South Africa – a move that angered Palestine solidarity activists in South Africa.

Mahamat’s remarks were not well-received in Pretoria.

On Tuesday, South Africa’s Parliament said that its international relations committee will be meeting with South African Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, to address some of the statements about South Africa contained in Mahamat’s speech at the AU.

“This issue can divide us… Africa cannot be divided,” Sall told journalists on Sunday night. But many would argue that Israel’s back-channel diplomacy has already undermined Africa’s fragile unity.

Either way, African leaders squandered a valuable opportunity to show that they really are in solidarity with Palestine and are committed to fighting colonialism and apartheid. In doing so, they also missed a chance to present themselves as principled and consistent.

Insecurity a top issue as African leaders meet in Ethiopia

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 05 February 2022

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ADDIS ABABA — African leaders are meeting Saturday at a summit that is expected to discuss the continent’s most pressing challenges, including a new wave of coups in West Africa and a slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, is also expected to gather support for Africa’s push toward permanent representation on the United Nations Security Council.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in his opening remarks called for cooperation among African nations in demanding two permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council.

“Today, more than seven decades after the creation of the United Nations, Africa remains a junior partner, without a meaningful input or role within the system of international governance,” Abiy said.

“We should collectively insist that Africa’s reasonable request for no less than two permanent seats and five non-permanent seats in the U.N. Security Council be adopted.”

Speaking via video link, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said cooperation between the the U.N. and the African Union “is stronger than ever.” Guterres noted that “injustice is deeply embedded in global systems,” with Africans “paying the heaviest price.”

“The unethical inequalities that suffocate Africa fuel armed conflict, political, economic, ethnic and social tensions, human rights abuses, violence against women, terrorism, military coups and a sentiment of impunity,” he said.

Most of the summit’s sessions will be held behind closed doors.

The African Union, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in July, has often been criticized for its apparent inconsistencies in responding to sporadic crises on the continent of 1.3 billion people.

Ahead of the summit, the bloc’s most recent major decision was to suspend Burkina Faso after mutinous soldiers ousted democratically elected President Roch Marc Christian Kabore in a coup, citing his inability to stem Islamic extremist violence. That decision came after the West African regional bloc ECOWAS had suspended Burkina Faso.

West Africa’s new wave of coups began in 2020 in Mali, followed by another in Guinea the following year, and then Burkina Faso in late January. Just a week later, gunmen tried and failed to overthrow the president of Guinea-Bissau.

Elsewhere, there are deadly conflicts in countries ranging from Mozambique to Ethiopia.

The International Crisis Group said in a statement that securing a cease-fire in Ethiopia, supporting dialogue in the Sahel and reforming the African Union Mission in Somalia should be among the African Union’s priorities this year.

“It has been a turbulent year for Africa: tens of thousands killed in wars in the Horn of Africa, countries falling back under military rule, and struggles with faltering transitions and Islamist militancy,” the group said ahead of the Summit. “The (African Union’s) institutions must be able to tackle these problems, as well as climate change-related security threats.”

Human Rights Watch urged President Macky Sall of Senegal to focus on civilian protection, justice and accountability as he takes up the presidency of the African Union.

“Despite the challenges, Sall has an opportunity to demonstrate the AU’s leadership and commitment to its founding principles by taking bold, uncompromising stances against state-sponsored abuses, responding to victims’ calls for protection and justice, and pressing for equal and fair multilateral relations with the Global North,” Carine Kaneza Nantulya, Africa advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The African Union summit should prioritize addressing the rampant abuses occurring in the conflict in Ethiopia between fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the Ethiopian federal government and its allies, including Eritrea, the rights group said.

‘Plastic man’ has a cape and a superhero’s mission: cleaning up Senegal

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 21 January 2022

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DAKAR - Dressed head to toe in plastic, Modou Fall is a familiar sight in Dakar. But however playful his costume, his goal couldn’t be more serious: ridding the capital of the scourge of plastic bags, writes the New York Times.

Modou Fall, who works to educate fellow Senegalese residents about the dangers of plastic trash, making his case at the annual marathon in Dakar, Senegal, in November.

As the marathon runners stretched and took their places on the starting line, one man stood out, dressed, as he was, in plastic from head to toe.

A multicoloured cape made entirely of plastic bags swept the sandy ground. A hat constructed out of plastic sunglasses was perched on his head.

But this man, Modou Fall, was not competing in the annual marathon held in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, each November. He was participating in a different kind of race: one to save the West African country from the scourge of plastic waste that clogged its waterways, marred its white beaches and constantly blew across its streets.

With the marathon drawing large crowds and a major media presence, he could not pass up the chance the race presented to promote his cause.

Waving the Senegalese flag and carrying a loudspeaker from which spilled songs cataloging the damage caused by plastic — “I like my country, I say no to plastic bags” — Mr. Fall swished in and around the runners in his long plastic cloak as the race began.

Those at the race who stopped him to ask for selfies fell into his well-laid and oft-used trap: He seized every opportunity to give them a gentle lecture about environmental issues.

After the last group of runners had left the starting area, Mr. Fall and his team of volunteers began to pick up the empty water bottles and plastic bags they had left behind.

For the foreign racers and tourists the marathon brought to Dakar, this might have been their first encounter with Mr. Fall, but for local residents, he’s a familiar presence known as “Plastic Man.”
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He can often be seen dancing through the streets dressed in a self-designed and ever-evolving costume made entirely of plastic, mostly bags collected from across the city. Pinned to his chest is a sign that reads NO PLASTIC BAGS. It’s a fight he takes very seriously.

His costume is modelled after the “Kankurang” — an imposing traditional figure deeply rooted in Senegalese culture who stalks sacred forests and wears a shroud of woven grasses. The Kankurang is considered a protector against bad spirits, and in charge of teaching communal values.

“I behave like the Kankurang,” Mr. Fall said in a recent interview. “I am an educator, a defender and a protector of the environment.”

While plastic waste poses a severe environmental problem around the globe, recent studies have found Senegal, despite its relatively small size, to be among the top countries polluting the world’s oceans with plastic. This is in part because it struggles to manage its waste, like many poorer countries, and it has a large population living on the coast.

In an effort to reduce its share of pollution, the Senegalese government implemented a ban on some plastic products in 2020, but the country has had a hard time enforcing it. Senegal, with a population of about 17 million, is projected to produce more than 700,000 metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste by 2025 if nothing is done, compared with about 337,000 metric tons in the United States.
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Mr. Fall, 48, has been fighting against plastic waste for most of his adult life. A tall, quietly charismatic former soldier, he first noticed plastic’s damaging effects in 1998 during his military service. He was stationed in rural eastern Senegal, home to many herding communities, where he saw their cows getting sick after consuming the fragments of plastic bags that littered the arid landscape.

The herders would slaughter their valuable animals before they inevitably died. This way, at least, eating their meat would not be haram, or forbidden by Islam.

After his military service, Mr. Fall sold T-shirts and life buoys in Dakar’s busy Sandaga market, where dozens of traders displayed all kind of goods, often packed in plastic. Plastic bags were cheap and plentiful, and shopkeepers would toss them into the street with abandon, unaware of how they could harm the environment.

For months, Mr. Fall tried to get his fellow shopkeepers to recognize the environmental threat posed by using so much plastic, and if they did use it, to dispose of it properly. But nobody listened. The market was a mess.

Fed up, one day he decided to try leading by example. He would clean up the entire market on his own.

“It took me 13 days, but I did it,” he said.

The plastic eventually came back. But he’d succeeded in making some of the stall holders think twice.

And stopping the rising tide of plastic became Mr. Fall’s obsession. “If it continues like this, the lives of future generations are in jeopardy,” he said.

In 2006, Mr. Fall used his life savings, just over $500, to found his association, Senegal Propre, or Clean Senegal.

He planted dozens of trees across the city and held community meetings to persuade people to stop buying throwaway plastic. He organized cleaning and tire recycling campaigns in Dakar’s lively neighborhoods, his waste pickers dodging taxi drivers and street vendors as they went.

With the plastic waste they collected, Clean Senegal made bricks, paving stones and public benches. Old tires became couches that they sold for about $430 apiece — money that went toward more environmental efforts like planting trees at schools.

Other street vendors began to see the point of what he was doing, and joined in.

“I used to throw plastic bags or cups in the street after use because I wasn’t aware of the dangers it could cause,” said Cheikh Seck, 31, who sells sunglasses and watches in Pikine, his home suburb in Dakar. “Plastic waste is a global concern, and I am more than happy to contribute to the fight that Modou started.”

The plastic waste clogging up the ocean waters off Dakar has damaged fishing stocks, further decreasing the incomes of Senegalese fishermen already struggling against their waters being overfished. Plastic can also poison agricultural land.

Mr. Fall’s message seems to be catching on. At November’s marathon, the third one he has cleaned up after, some of the runners now knew his favorite slogan and yelled it to him as they passed: “No to plastic waste!”

Following much of the marathon route, Mr. Fall and his team of 10 young volunteers in green shirts and gloves fanned out for their cleanup operation.

They picked up water bottles outside Dakar’s pioneering Museum of Black Civilizations, which showcases one of Africa’s largest art collections. They collected hundreds of plastic bags on the leafy campus of Cheikh Anta Diop University. They found plastic cups in the thrumming city center, known as Plateau, home to the presidential palace and many embassies.

One of the neighbourhoods they passed through was Medina, built by the French during the colonial period, and where Mr. Fall was born. After his father died when he was 4, Mr. Fall’s mother moved the family to the suburbs. As a single mother, she struggled to make ends meet running a restaurant, and Mr. Fall had to leave school after only six years of primary education to support the family by taking jobs in metalworking and house painting. After his mother died, he joined the army.

By mid-afternoon of the marathon day, Mr. Fall and his team were staggering under the weight of the plastic they had collected. A van drove up and they handed over hundreds of plastic bottles.

The team took a short break for lunch. But not Mr. Fall. He was still focused on his mission. There were five miles to go along the race route, and he set off, his plastic cape floating around him.