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Just as the Darfur genocide issue was struggling to get onto the front pages of newspapers and was about to get prominent attention at a gathering of Africa's dictators in France, the young Jewish girl was in the news again.
Apparently, "they" found new documentary evidence of how more brave Anne Frank, who died in 1944 at age 16, was. "The letters were found in New York a year ago," said the respected BBC. "They reveal how in 1941 Otto Frank had tried to obtain visas for his family to travel to the US or Cuba." He was turned down. Very newsworthy, indeed! But that is nothing new, is it? Getting to America is what all the Jews tried to do under their circumstances. Surprisingly, there are, so far, three versions of the little girl's diary. Someone is improving on the truth all the time.
Anne Frank's diary, says the BBC, "tells a significant story that is as powerful as it is tragic about a member of an oppressed people. A young person having to grow up in confinement and hiding because the hatred of her race meant it was the only way they could survive." Sounds like they stole a leaf from the history of millions and millions of African children.
Did our griots not tell enough and worse of the horrors perpetrated on black Africans by the Arab and white races that descendants of these same perpetrators have to scrounge around elsewhere and then use some little girl's diary as a yardstick of the depths of hopelessness of a people under duress? The horrors of Africa, whether perpetrated by outsiders or by its own sons, should be a source of distress to all humankind and should be held way up as evidence of cosmopolitan cannibalism.
We cannot deny the slave trade; its presence is obnoxiously too overpowering. Yet, today, in Austria, Germany and other countries, the law forces us to acknowledge the existence of genocide against the Jews or go to jail, if we deny it. It is the law and it is meant to force people to acknowledge a certain version of history.
But there is nothing about African slavery except in America where the Black History month is wrapped around Martin Luther King's birthday, unless we count trashy fiction like 'Roots.'
The Darfur tragedy, coming hardly a decade after the Rwanda genocide, is a terrible indictment on the so-called African Union. The French, not the AU, are now after Rwandese President Paul Kagame for genocide related misdemeanours while South Africa and Nigeria threatened non-participation in the ceremonial gathering of Africa's dictators if Mugabe were excluded early this month. So much for 'African solutions to African problems.' Jacques Chirac has courage; staring into the eyes of all those murderers, thieves, embezzlers, schoolgirl snatchers and gun smugglers is no mean feat. How did he manage to keep his lunch down?
That aside, last week, Anne Frank competed with Darfur for newspaper prominence. The word 'holocaust' is clear enough; it means 'destruction or slaughter on a mass scale.' But it has been so monopolized that it has become synonymous with Jews in concentration camps.
And, yet, Darfur is not a joke. It is a sad history that no 16 year-old Darfurian girl has the time, the will or even the strength to write about. Anne Frank lived a luxurious life in an attic in Amsterdam compared to the hot empty spaces of Darfur and Chad.
The Coalition for International Justice says the death toll in Darfur long exceeded 400,000, a figure used by most non-governmental organizations and which has since been used by the United Nations.
Almost 3 million have been driven from their homes and more than 200,000 are stranded in refugee camps in the sand dunes of Chad.
More than a million civilians are at risk from disease and lack of food in Darfur and 80 percent of children under five are already suffering from malnutrition. Yet, because of the Sudanese government's intransigence, humanitarian aid organisations have access to only 20 percent of those who need help.
The AU continues to cuddle dictators but is unwilling to do anything for Africa. And this is where I hoped people like South Africa's Thabo Mbeki would show their mantle. Instead of using such events to show they meant what they said, they, never able to pass up a free meal overseas, demanded that all dictators be invited. The fact that these African leaders rushed to France to be lectured about good governance, while gobbling down wild mushrooms, caviar and French wine is a true reflection of how leaderless Africa is. I hoped this (Darfur) is where Nigeria and South Africa would show their leadership roles.
African solutions to African problems, my foot! The AU was born on Tuesday July 9, 2002, in a stadium in Durban, South Africa. We were hopeful then that African leaders were poised to move towards tolerance, good governance and responsibility. We are not waiting anymore!
African solutions to African problems, my foot! The AU was born on Tuesday July 9, 2002, in a stadium in Durban, South Africa. We were hopeful then that African leaders were poised to move towards tolerance, good governance and responsibility. We are not waiting anymore!
Where is Mbeki and his NEPAD along with his African Renaissance? Darfur is just the latest in opportunities for African leaders to take no-nonsense control of our beloved continent. The Darfur issue offered even devilish dictators reasonable excuses to intervene in the name of good governance.
"The conflict has economic, political, and ethnic dimensions," says WorldPress. "Political marginalisation has also contributed to the conflict. Finally, it has acquired an ethnic component in which civilians are deliberately being targeted on the basis of their ethnicity." In 2003, black African rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement and of the Sudan Liberation Army rebelled against the country's Muslim leadership. Among other demands, they wanted "improved infrastructure in the region, proceeds from oil wealth and inclusion in power-sharing arrangements." The rebellion by the Darfurians, who had been pressuring the government for autonomy and independence, alarmed the Sudanese government which feared the rebellion, apart from posing a threat to the country as a whole, could encourage similarly neglected regions in the east to take their cues from Darfur. The government then decided to apply a military solution to the crisis.
The Janjaweed, an Arab militia, has been a key force in the government's campaign in Darfur "that has resulted in the murder, rape and forced displacement of thousands of civilians," said Human Rights Watch. The Janjaweed have primarily targeted the Fur, Tunjur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, presumed to be sympathetic to rebels opposing the government. After a lot of prodding, the AU reluctantly entered the scene.
"The initial idea of operations for the AU force was deeply flawed from the outset," according to the International Crisis Group's John Prendergast. "By authorizing a mandate that was only focused on cease-fire observation, rather than protection of civilians, it minimized the objective of the force and rendered it largely irrelevant." "The Darfur tragedy comes at a time when African leaders have developed a credible continental development strategy (the New Partnership for Africa's Development, NEPAD) and also repositioned its umbrella political organization, the African Union, to focus on good governance, economic prosperity, peace and political stability," said George Haley and Chinua Akukwe of Worldpress. "However, this tragedy has the capacity to undo this new vision of Africa where people of all ethnic nationalities and religious beliefs are working together to tackle the major problems of poverty and disease prevalent in many parts of this great continent."
The African Union does not have the money to undertake any meaningful peacekeeping on its own soil and has to look to the EU, the UN and US. But, worst of all, its politics of appeasement and supporting each other regardless of circumstances has rendered it as impotent as its predecessor. If there are any penalties instituted against stray member states, we don't see them being implemented.
Mugabe, for example, denied an AU envoy entry into Zimbabwe. The envoy had been dispatched to look at the effects of Mugabe's so-called "operation remove the dirt". Later, the government ignored the diplomat and refused to cooperate with him during his stay. Nothing was done about it.
In total disregard of the crisis it is facing, Sudan, just last week, denied visas to a high-powered delegation of the United Nations.
The AU stands by and watches. The failures of our African leaders do not come in small doses. Africa needs a new generation of leaders.
*Tanonoka Joseph Whande is a Zimbabwean journalist.
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