The 3rd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union will take place at the headquarters of the AU, Addis Ababa, on the 6-8 July. This follows on the Inaugural Session of the Assembly held in Durban, and the 2nd Session, which took place in Maputo.
This means that our continental organisation is still very young. Inevitably, it must continue to attend to the issue of building the institutions visualised in the Constitutive Act or otherwise decided upon by the constitutional structures of the Union. Clearly, our continent has to ensure that its premier institution, the AU, has the necessary capacity properly to discharge its obligations.
It is also clear that the Assembly will also have to pay serious attention to the important matter of providing the funds to enable the Union to function as it should. The outcomes expected of the AU require that more resources than those that were provided for the functioning of the OAU must be found.
The fact that we are still preoccupied with the task of building the AU does not mean that Africa and the rest of the world have stood still, awaiting the day when the AU will announce that it has completed its construction phase, secured the necessary funding and is now ready to operate full steam ahead.
Necessarily, therefore, the Assembly will have to consider a wide range of issues of immediate relevance to the challenges of our continent - democracy, peace and stability, socio-economic development, and international relations.
Undoubtedly, the decisions that will be taken will help to take us forward towards the realisation of the goals our continent has set itself. This will further increase the obligation on all the Member States to ensure that they implement and follow up these continental decisions.
During 2000, a prominent international magazine had a cover page on which were emblazoned the words, above a map of Africa encircling the figure of a man carrying a rocket launcher, "The hopeless continent". A 2001 edition of the same magazine had a cover page with the words "Africa's elusive dawn".
The sentiments contained in these headlines, propagated throughout the world, indicate the concern among many in the world about the future of our continent. Among these are the pessimists who have given up on us, and therefore see us as a hopeless continent.
There are others who are less pessimistic but are nevertheless sceptical about our future. These, lacking confidence in our capacity to change our lives for the better, interpret our future as elusive and uncertain. They will watch and wait and will only be convinced at a later date that our better future is other than elusive or hopelessly unattainable, provided that we give them sufficient cause to come to this conclusion.
Of course, as Africans, we can neither be pessimistic nor sceptical about our future. Necessarily, we have to be firmly confident about the certainty of a better future for all our peoples. For us to be pessimistic or sceptical is to give up the fight and resign ourselves to lives of misery.
This we cannot and will not do. Through our actions, we have to demonstrate that we are firmly committed to do everything possible and necessary to give meaning to our optimism. The 3rd Assembly of the AU will have to show that we are serious in our determination to honour this commitment.
As they meet at our continental headquarters, Africa's political leaders should be inspired by the progress that our continent is making on many fronts. The very fact of the establishment of the Union is itself an outstanding achievement.
It would be idle to pretend that it is easy to reach agreement in discussions and negotiations affecting 53 sovereign states. This is particularly so in matters that affect the sovereignty of these states, establishing a continental legal order that Africa has not seen throughout the decades of independence and the life of the OAU, established in 1963.
And yet the establishment of the AU involved all these. It required negotiations and agreement on the need to establish the Union. It required negotiations and agreement on the Constitutive Act that provides for the creation of the Union. Furthermore, this Act had to be approved by all our parliaments, giving it the force of a law that is binding on all Member States of the Union.
In addition, the Constitutive Act contains provisions that limit the sovereignty of our states, which moves us further forward towards African integration and unity, in the interests of Africa's peoples as a whole.
Recent history since the end of the Second World War has pointed to the importance of the formation of regional associations of states. As a result of this, we have seen the formation of regional organisations such as the EU, ASEAN, EFTA, Mercosur, NAFTA, Caricom, the OAS, and, of course, the OAU.
What necessitated the formation of the AU, to replace and succeed the OAU, was the recognition and acceptance of the reality that as Africans we share a common destiny, and that to achieve success, we have to work together in a meaningful way. We had to respond both to our own experience and to global developments, by ensuring that we establish ever more effective continental structures.
Together we made the determination that African integration and unity are more than beautiful ideals. They constitute an imperative requirement for the renaissance of our continent and each of our countries.
The very convening of the 3rd Assembly of the AU is therefore, in itself, a cause for celebration. It demonstrates the capacity of the collective of Africa's political leaders seriously to respond to the challenges our continent faces. At the same time it provides this leadership with yet another occasion to continue to demonstrate its seriousness in this regard.
The 2nd Assembly of the AU elected Alpha Omar Konare as the Chairperson of the executive committee of the Union, the African Commission, and decided on the other members of the Commission. The 3rd Assembly will have the opportunity both to assess the functioning of the Commission and to celebrate the fact that this most important institution of the Union has functioned for a year without experiencing any major problems.
The positive messages that must and will come out of the Assembly will be received with the same sense of hope for a better future with which the African masses received the formation of the AU and the launch of its development programme, NEPAD.
By the end of this year, the SADC region alone will have seen four democratic elections. Two of these, in our country and Malawi, have taken place already. The next two will be held in Namibia and Mozambique. I am certain that in all these instances, Africa will confirm its determination to ensure that all our governments are based upon and express the will of the people.
Once more, this should serve to inspire the leaders who will convene in Addis Ababa that we are indeed making further advances in our quest to transform Africa into a worthy home for the millions of our people.
Similarly, Africa's political leaders should draw inspiration from the fact that the Pan African Parliament (PAP) has already held its first session. Further to advance Africa's hopes in this regard, the Assembly will also decide on the permanent home of the PAP. As our readers know, our Parliament and Government have offered our country as the host of the PAP.
The Assembly will adopt some additional decisions to help end the conflict that has afflicted Dafur in Western Sudan, which has also driven large numbers of refugees into Chad. Already the AU has placed military observers in Dafur and intervened in the process of facilitating the necessary political solution to the problems that led to the costly conflict in this part of our continent. The Assembly will undoubtedly agree on such additional measures as may be necessary to ensure a comprehensive resolution of this problem.
Progress achieved in this regard will add to the justified sense of success the Assembly will share, arising out of the enormous progress that has been made towards ending the decades old and deadly conflict between the Government of Sudan and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).
The victory of the cause of peace, stability and national reconciliation in Sudan will confirm in a practical way that we are making the progress to which we are committed, to end all wars on our continent and ensure that our peoples live in conditions of peace and security for all. The same message will be communicated by the visible achievements represented by the advances we have made with regard to the earlier conflicts in Liberia, the DRC and Burundi.
These successes should also motivate the Assembly to take the necessary decisions further to promote the peace agenda especially in the Cote d'Ivoire, with regard to the boundary dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the tension between Eritrea and Sudan. The successes already achieved should give further impetus to our efforts to resolve these problems as speedily as possible and further strengthen our capacity to ensure peace and security throughout Africa.
In this context, the Assembly will have occasion to celebrate the fact that the Peace and Security Council is now operational and has already held its Inaugural Meeting. This must strengthen our resolve to move firmly to end and prevent violent conflicts on our continent and strengthen our conviction that in this regard, victory is certain.
The Assembly will also have occasion to draw encouragement from the progress that has been made in the pursuit of our NEPAD goals. Among other things, the African Peer Review Mechanism has become operational, and has begun its work. Further progress has also been made in the elaboration of specific development programmes to implement the priorities agreed at earlier summit meetings of the OAU and the AU.
In this regard, the Assembly will also devote some time to the consideration of the further strengthening of the partnership with the rest of the world represented by the agreements with the G8 arrived at during the recent G8 Summit Meeting held in Georgia, USA. Readers will remember that we reported on these in Vol 4 No 24 of this journal, ANC TODAY.
The work that will be done by the Commission on Africa set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which will work with the NEPAD Steering Committee, will help to ensure that the decisions taken in Georgia, USA, and earlier meetings are further translated into concrete and implementable programmes that will be considered by the 2005 G8 Summit, which will be held in the UK.
The 3rd Assembly of the AU will also consider other matters relevant to the tasks our continent faces. These will include such important issues as women's emancipation, the struggle against malaria, TB, Aids and other diseases, employment creation, protocols and other matters relating to the institutions of the AU, as well as the Vision and Mission of the AU and the Programme of the African Commission.
As the Assembly considers these and other matters, it will be strengthened by the progress that has been made on which we have reflected above. It will work inspired by the conviction, born of experience, that ours is not a hopeless continent and that the dawn of its renaissance is within our grasp. It will be energised by the certainty that, at last, in six years time, Africa will have the possibility to welcome the whole world, as it hosts the Soccer World Cup.
