Tasks for a new AU Secretariat

Our argument this week is that the present AU Secretariat in Addis Ababa needs to be similarly done away with because it is not serving any much useful purpose. But if it must be retained, it needs to be rejigged and refocused. We need a lean, efficient and effective outfit that is more responsible and […]

Our argument this week is that the present AU Secretariat in Addis Ababa needs to be similarly done away with because it is not serving any much useful purpose. But if it must be retained, it needs to be rejigged and refocused.
We need a lean, efficient and effective outfit that is more responsible and responsive to the plight of this seemingly blighted continent. Africa is sadly known for an almost daily diet of the following five D’s: death, debt, disaster, diseases and despair. I therefore think that the AU should be re-organised and instead of the present jaded and complacent persons in pin stripe suits who sit in that Chinese-built house in Addis Ababa to drink tea, laugh big man’s laughter and generally act in a casual manner as if they were international bureaucrats serving a comfortable people, we should have real Africrats who wear ordinary work man clothes and carry on with business in a manner that expresses the griminess of the African condition.
As a part of the reform I am calling for here, key operatives of the AU Secretariat should be re-designated. Why have persons called commissioners who are in-charge of various portfolios that bear no resemblance to the five diagnosed traumas that assail the continent listed above? In my humble opinion, we should, drawing from our
African culture, have officers designated as Town Criers. In Africa, when you see the town crier out with his gong, you know that the community is facing some immediate and present danger of whatever hue. Africa, we all know, is almost permanently in danger of death, debt, disaster, disease and despair. We therefore need town criers and their gong to constantly sound an alarm bell when any of the above listed ills looms or is seen that in no distant time, is likely to threaten any African country’s well-being.
It is hereby proposed that there should be a Town Crier in-charge of Death. Apart from his gong, other accoutrements of his office are black clothes and ashes; he should wear sack clothes and cover his hair with ashes as a symbol of his perpetual mourning for the people of Africa who die massively from completely avoidable causes. This continent is hurting terribly from mass deaths which usually emanate from communal clashes, especially the ones between herdsmen and farmers, proliferation of guns, poor hygiene, election rigging, recklessness in eating, drinking and the use of the road and the refusal of greedy-for-power politicians sometimes to either concede defeat or quit when they have come to the end of their constitutionally guaranteed terms.
We should also have a Town-Crier in-charge of Debt. His duty is to find out why so many African countries tend to owe foreign countries, organisation and domestic contractors and suppliers so much. One of the reasons, he will discover, is the Mansa Musa Mentality (MMM or m3) among our leaders. Thrift and frugality in the management of private and public funds are not in the mentality of most of our leaders. They love to spend public funds as if money has gone out of fashion. And he who goes aspending recklessly will sooner or later go as a sorrowing, as they invariably do here.
Whenever the m3 comes upon an African leader, it will be the responsibility of that town crier to summon a village square meeting to call him to order in the public interest. It will be his remit to also scrutinize the budgets of African countries and seek to name and shame those which cannot have balanced budgets. A new AU, here envisaged, should evolve a policing of terribly frowning at deficit financing of budgets and teach our people to live within their means.
There should be another Town-Crier in-charge of Diseases. His job schedule is to ring the alarm bell at the issues, causes and attitudes that give rise to many devastating diseases in the continent. Many diseases that afflict Africans are basically ones resulting from our poor living environment. I cannot explain why African leaders cannot order that their countries should be planned so that citizens can live in environments fit for human habitation. No matter how simple your dwelling may be, it should be sited in a planned manner that gives room for proper ventilation, good sanitary condition, modesty and decency. If this is done, some of the tropical diseases that wipe away whole populations would be eliminated or drastically reduced.
The Town Crier in-charge of Disasters will discover that many of the calamities that befall us in Africa are largely man-made. Inability to manage our resources, ill- use of the environment, lack of clear thinking and planning of our individual and community lives, recklessness, indifference to the critical things that need to be done and at the right time, etc are some of the things that bring disaster upon us.
The role of the Town Crier in-charge of Disaster should, therefore, be one of a prophet forewarning any African leader who is spending his country into debt; one whose mode of governance will bring about political discord and one who is not proactive about issues that can bring about illnesses and diseases.
The job of the Town Crier in-charge of Despair is well cut out. He looks like the senior prefect of all the other Town Criers. This is because it is the other four
D’s that bring about such massive despair in Africa. If steps are taken to prevent needless deaths, needless debt, disease-causing attitudes or behavior and disaster-baiting actions, this continent will have enormous cause for optimism.
The AU should become more activist on behalf of the entire continent because one misbehavior on the part of one African country brings shame upon all African countries. As we read in the second part of this piece three weeks ago, Benjamin Natanyahu said that we Africans do not have the intelligence, the grim determination and the creativity to govern ourselves. And when you look at the evidence on the ground you will be tempted to agree with him. We have made a mess of self-governance. All the excuses we have been reciting as if by rote have not in any way solved our problems. We need to sit up to tell the rest of the world that we too are God’s gracious creatures endowed with the same abilities given to others.