Teodor Obiang is dishing out big bucks which may buy indifference to his dismal rights record, but SA has an opportunity to rectify its blunder, writes Peter Fabricius.
Equatorial Guinea’s unappetising President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa’s longest-reigning leader, is making a bid to “capture” the African Union Commission (AUC).
It’s up to South Africa to stop him.
South Africa’s Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma is about to step down as AUC chairwoman after four years, declining to run for a second term. So the AU summit in Kigali next month will have to elect a successor.
There are just three candidates, according to the Institute for Security Studies’ authoritative Peace and Security Council Report (PSC Report).
Botswana’s Foreign Affairs Minister Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, 65, is the candidate of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
East Africa’s candidate is Uganda’s former vice-president Specioza Naigaga Wandira Kazibwe, 60.
And Equatorial Guinea’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Agapito Mba Mokuy, 51, is Central Africa’s candidate.
None of these is an obvious choice. The SADC contends that since Dlamini Zuma is not going to serve the two terms she is constitutionally entitled to, another from the southern region should complete her terms.
However, other regions may point out that she herself denied the incumbent, Gabon’s Jean Ping and his region a second term in 2012.
Meanwhile, Uganda’s proposed candidate, Kazibwe, seems to enjoy only lukewarm support from her region.
The report suggests hopefully that Mokuy’s candidacy might also face problems, because of the poor human rights record of his government, a de facto dictatorship.
But Obiang has been lavishing his country’s great oil wealth to buy influence on the continent, hosting the AU summits in 2011 and 2014 as well as summits between Africa and other regions and last year’s Africa Cup of Nations.
“His country may launch serious diplomatic and financial efforts to gather votes in the various regional blocs,” the PSC Report says, in an understatement.
Obiang is obviously deploying big bucks and they may also buy indifference to his dismal human rights record. After all his peers voted him as AU chairman for 2011.
But the position of chairman of the AU Commission is a different matter.
The AU chair is a ceremonial position. The AUC chair is an executive position. The incumbent will conduct the continent’s real affairs for the next four years, meeting world leaders routinely.
It really would not be good for Africa to have an Obiang man as its chief representative.
Kazibwe’s candidacy also suffers - or should suffer - from the increasingly autocratic behaviour of her President Yoweri Museveni.
Venson-Moitoi would be the right choice. Botswana has among the best, most sustained records of governance on the continent.
It is also a small country, which would restore the strong but unwritten rule (which South Africa violated in 2011) that major continental powers should not take the top AU job (the UN follows the same rule).
But, as the PSC Report notes, Botswana’s good human rights record might count more against than for it, because of its strong defence of the International Criminal Court and its clear opposition to Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza’s unconstitutional third term bid, for example.
How bizarre it would be if the AU were to choose Mokuy rather than Venson-Moitoi on human rights grounds!
As a SADC member, South Africa is officially committed to backing Venson-Moitoi and so President Jacob Zuma will presumably vote for her next month in Kigali.
But the essential question, which the PSC raises, is whether Pretoria will deploy the same intense diplomacy to get her elected as it did for Dlamini Zuma four years ago.
There are no signs that it is doing so yet - though Pretoria owes it to Africa to throw everything into this campaign. It bludgeoned Dlamini Zuma into the job, burning bridges and making enemies along the way.
Having got the job, South Africa should, at least, have justified the costs of getting it, by ensuring Dlamini Zuma stayed the course and completed - or, at least, cemented - her ambitious agenda.
If the result of her not running again is to put an Obiang man in the hot seat, that dereliction would be significantly compounded.
Foreign Bureau