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There’s an African solution to an African problem over in Arusha; spread the word

Saturday May 23 2015

From time to time, we get to hear African rulers and their henchmen take swipes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for what they call “targeting Africans.”

This usually happens every time an African ruler has been indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Our rulers froth at the mouth and bang tables, all because they feel aggrieved by this mzungu institution that is telling them that killing people — even your own people — is bad.

Sometimes you will hear them say that for African problems there ought to be African solutions. But then you look around and notice that African problems outnumber African solutions by at least a hundred to one, and that there is very little willingness to institute the kind of institutions that could handle those extremely convoluted African problems.

For, truth be told, African problems are not accidental; they reside in the very fabric of our social systems, wherein our constitutions, laws and governance processes are largely empty platitudes that have been shorn of any practical validity, and which our ruling elites ignore with absolute impunity.

What our rulers want is unlimited powers to do anything they please. Thus, they believe, they should be left alone as they lock up, beat up and murder opponents and journalists, and should have free rein in their plunder of their counties’ resources and treasuries.

They want to be above the law because they are omnipotent and omniscient. In case you express your doubt about these qualities on their part, they are also omnipresent, and will be wherever you will be running your mouth against them.

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Still, they rail at the wazungu for targeting them using the ICC, although the truth is that all those who qualify to be summoned to The Hague are voluntary signatories to the Rome Statutes that established the Court.

You begin to wonder whether they signed thinking it was a condition for them to continue receiving economic assistance.

Now, since 2006, an interesting court has been operating in Arusha, viz the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. It was established with the sole aim of providing African solutions for African problems in the area of human rights, or rather, the abuse, denial and violation thereof. So it should be a case of just what doctor ordered, shouldn’t it?

No. Since the signing of the protocol creating the Court in 1998, out of the 54 member states of the African Union, which established the Court, only 28 have ratified it.

And only seven of those who have ratified it have agreed in principle that individuals and NGOs in their countries can have recourse to the justice dispensed by the Court.

Foreign funding

In addition to this, African countries are not fulfilling their financial obligations to the Court, so that, just like with the African Union itself, the Court is still wholly dependent on foreign financial assistance to carry out its functions.

This of course is entirely logical. The Court was established to deal with human-rights issues. In our countries, the governments are the biggest human-rights abusers and violators. So, to expect them to enable an institution that will be making decisions condemning them over abuses is like expecting that a group of turkeys will get together and vote for multiple Christmases every year.

What cheers one up is that around the Court there exists a battery of legal practitioners — judges and advocates — who look and sound sufficiently enthused by the very thought of what the Court could achieve, and who are working indefatigably for its success. The Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU), also based in Arusha, is at the centre of those efforts.

It is incumbent upon all of us to spread the word that an African solution for an African problem exists in Arusha, and to tell our rulers everywhere on the continent that they should ratify the protocol and otherwise support the Court. Alternatively, they should stop whining about the Hague targeting African rulers who are killing our people.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]

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