"Disband Talk Shop African Union"

A fight between Libyan leader Maummar Gaddafi and African Union host Yoweri Museveni's guards over suspicion that Libya sponsored the terrorists who bombed Kampala, killing 80 people could be the harbinger of the break-up of the AU.

As the African Union meets in Uganda, faced by another divisive conflict – AU vs Al Queda-backed Al Shabaab in Somalia, an executive director of the Nation Media Group, Charles Onyango-Obbo (l), has called for the disbanding of the body which has proved to be a talk-shop.

The AU has failed to take any meaningful action on conflicts on the continent. In Zimbabwe the AU ordered that President Robert Mugabe go and negotiate with Morgan Tsvangirai, despite Mugabe having bludgeoned his way to a marginal loss against Tsvangirai in 2008. But it has failed to act when Mugabe violated the agreement reached in those negotiations.

The same applies to its intervention in Madagascar where failure to take decisive action has lead to a military junta, corruption and more suffering for the people as this report from the BCC's, From Our Own Correspondent show. Onyango writes:

Travel around Africa and you will find schools and roads built by European Union money; private sector foundations supported by USAID; projects funded by the DfID; mosques and health centres built by the Qatar Fund or the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. The list is long.

There is one thing you will not find — anything built or funded by the African Union, which is currently having its summit in Uganda. Not even a chalkboard or chair in a village school.

So what is the AU good for, apart from being a talking shop and a stage for the colourful and eccentric Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to stage his circus shows?

Occasionally, it will do things like send a peace-keeping force to maintain a peace that doesn’t exist in Somalia. Very many countries promised to send troops, but in the end they left Uganda and Burundi to carry the can.

However, even that AU mission is largely funded by non-AU member states, especially the Americans.

So would Africa be worse off without the AU?

I suspect so. First, the decisions of blocs like the East African Community and the Economic Community of West African States are more likely to be implemented and to have greater impact on their regions, than an AU one.

On Somalia, as indeed it was in the case of the long war in Southern Sudan, IGAD tends to think and act more clearly and creatively than the AU.

In fact, the AU tends to be a stumbling bloc because its leaders are far removed from the situations they are taking decisions on and therefore tend to be obstructive. Take Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe.

When he had run amok, the Southern African Development Community recognised that there was a crisis, and some of its members were hard in their criticism of Uncle Bob. But Uncle Bob would go off to an AU and receive a standing ovation.

In East Africa, because of the long years of conflict, including the genocide in Rwanda, the war in eastern DR Congo, and the ravages of the civil war, the regional governments are willing, at least, to give tepid support to efforts by the International Criminal Court at The Hague to go after chaps who have been indicted for war crimes like Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir.

However, when the AU gets together, it turns into a lynch mob against the ICC, passing resolutions urging African states not to co-operate with it.

The most serious Africawide institution that puts food on the table is the African Development Bank, now based in Tunis.

However, the serious money in AfDB comes from the west and international financial organisations.

It is notable that the Kampala meeting is a shambles of sorts, that has been marked by loud quarrels on the sidelines over rooms, Internet access, and even food.

It is probably notable that unlike the 2007 Commonwealth summit on which Uganda spent billions of shillings to clean up Kampala, this time the government wasn’t even bothered to fix the streetlights and fill up the one thousand potholes in the city.

Right now Africa’s true love are its regional organisations like the EAC. The AU’s time will come, of course. When Africa is in mid-life crisis, it will take it on as a good second wife.

The Fight:

A ceremony attended by the heads of state from 11 African nations on Wednesday in Uganda turned to a source of embarrassment to the continent as several of the leaders were knocked over after a fight between Ugandan and Libyan presidential guards sparked chaos.

The fight prompted a crisis meeting by Ugandan security authorities, after which invited diplomats from mainly the European missions in Uganda expressed dismay. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni briefly lost his balance when a hefty Libyan guard pushed him to a wall. Another Libyan guard pushed Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who also lost his balance but was caught by his own guards.

The vice president of Tanzania was knocked over by fighting guards as he was taking his shoes off to enter the mosque. No leaders were hurt in the melee.Several of the guards to the visiting heads of state from Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Djibouti sustained serious injuries in the fight, which included punches, kicks and the drawing of guns. Several journalists also were caught up in the fracas and suffered injuries or lost their grips on cameras and recorders.

The incident occurred at the opening of a massive Gadhafi National Mosque in Kampala, a structure begun by the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1972 and completed with financing from Libya, according to African media reports. Minutes after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his host, Museveni, jointly unveiled a plaque to mark the event, the Libyan guards pushed away the guards of other delegations at the mosque’s entrance.

The Ugandan guards who had traded hostilities with the predominantly-Arab Libyan guards at every joint event since Gadhafi’s arrival in the country Sunday reacted with fury and fought back. Some leaders notably those from Somalia, Burundi and Djibouti were visibly uneasy as guns were drawn on all sides.

By the time the fight was over more than six minutes later, about a dozen presidential guards were left bleeding from compound fractures and the Libyan and Ugandan protocol officials traded bitter accusations of disrespect and racism. "What are your people up to? Do you want to kill our leader?" a Libyan protocol official said to his Ugandan counterpart.

The Ugandan official, who declined to be named, shouted back, "Why do think you’re superior? What makes you think Uganda has any ill intention against Gadhafi?" The Ugandan official said Museveni’s guards were simply doing their job as security for the host country and had a right to respond when the Libyan guards pushed them back.Capt. Edison Kwesiga, the spokesman of the Ugandan Presidential Guard Brigade, confirmed their hostile relationship with the Libyans.

"It is our responsibility to ensure the safety of any visiting head of state. We have to do our job using any means. But our Libyan brothers always want us to fail. True, it’s not the first time they come and act as you see," Kwesiga said."It’s disgrace. It shows there is something wrong yet unknown between the two parties," said the head of one European mission in Kampala, who declined to be named. The police chief, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, and the head of the army, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, declined to comment on the fight. Jumbonetwork.com