Tata Madiba: 1918-2013 By Waheed Odusile

Where were you on February 11, 1990? I mean where were you the day the world’s best known political prisoner and anti-apartheid activist Dr Nelson Mandela was released from prison by the then racist regime in South Africa?

It was a wet day in Lagos, one of those weekend days I think, and I was at a hotel lobby that mid morning with other reporters on assignment when the news break came: Nelson Madela, leader of banned African National Congress (ANC) has been released from prison on the orders of South African president Frederick Willem de Klerk. The government also unbanned the ANC setting the stage for the total dismantling of white supremacist rule in South Africa for majority rule four years later.

Struggle against apartheid for which Mandela dedicated 67 of his 95 years on earth, 27 of which were spent in jail was about to end and South Africa, finally about to be free.

The news wasn’t totally unexpected; it had been in the air for some time that the white only regime in South Africa was thinking of abolishing apartheid and allowing the black majority to participate fully in the affairs of their country. But even after the announcement, it still sounded unbelievable. So Mandela would be released and we’ll see him flesh and blood?

I remember the then African Concord magazine was running a cartoon competition asking readers to draw a sketch of how Mandela was likely to look like after 27 years in prison. Such was the expectation and frenzy in the media in Nigeria as elsewhere around the world that we all feasted on the news of his release.

And when Tata Madiba as he was fondly called passed on, December 5 2013 at his home in Johannesburg, the whole world rose in unison to mourn and celebrate a rare human being with a soft heart even for his enemies.

As Mandela begins his final journey home today recalling all the achievements and the good works he’s left behind would be enormous, but watching the internecine war going on in the Central African Republic reminds one of one of Mandela’s greatest contributions to African unity; restoring place and unity to the warring Burundi. If he could look back Madiba would feel bad that the Central African Republic and indeed the whole of that region in Africa, including the Great Lakes Region, which also includes Burundi, are in turmoil again.

Since President Francois Bozize was ousted in March by a rebel alliance-Seleka, led by Michel Djotodia, CAR has known no peace as rival ethnic militias fight for control of this landlocked country of just 4.6 million people.  With about 3,500 child soldiers in their rank, the rebels have been particularly ferocious in the last few days killing no fewer than 394 people just as the war has taken a sectarian dimension. The pro Djotodia group, mainly drawn from among Muslims now pitted against a mainly Christian militia have virtually divided capital Bangui into two sections, reminiscent of the sectarian divide that tore Lebanon apart in the past and still threatening the unity of the Arab country.

There are 2,500 African Peacekeepers in CAR backed by 1,600 French soldiers all trying to restore peace to the country. And according to the United Nations, no fewer than 9,000 Peacekeepers would be required to bring the chaos in CAR which has led to about 10 per cent of the population already displaced under control.

Now what are African leaders doing in this respect and what efforts are they making to prevent all these avoidable conflicts and blood lettings in the continent? In particular, what would Mandela have recommended if he were to be alive and able to intervene in the CAR internecine war?

While we may never know this, Mandela, wherever he is today would most likely applaud the decision to set up a permanent Stand-By Peacekeeping Force for Africa to intervene and restore peace to troubled countries in the continent and most importantly nip in the bud any simmering crisis likely to blow into armed conflict.

At a Paris summit on Peace and Security in Africa last week, the decision to put in place a wholly African Peace Keeping Force not later than 2015, marked a shift from the reluctance of African leaders in the past to intervene in the internal affairs of another (African) country, even when and where such happenings are likely to have serious consequences for neighbouring countries or an entire region.

The principle of non-interference which was included in the charter of the defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) by its founding fathers was largely seen by critics as a way of protecting and keeping unpopular regimes in power across the continent. The experience of the Liberian civil war that nearly destabilised the whole of the West African sub region in the 1990s was to change the position of most African leaders away from protecting tyrants to acting in the best interest of the people of the country in question.

Were it not for Nigeria and a few ECOWAS member states that braved the challenge and constituted a wholly West African peace keeping force known by its acronym ECOMOG, Charles Taylor and his band of rebels would have plunged an entire sub region of over 200 million nationals of 15 different countries into turmoil. I think the African Union, the African Old Boys club that replaced the OAU must have learnt a lot from the Liberian experience, enough for it to back this new initiative of a permanent African Peace Keeping Force.

According to Nigeria’s president Dr Goodluck Jonathan who was part of the Paris summit, the proposed force “can mobilize quickly whenever we have challenges and there is the need to deploy them…when you have this stand-by force, they now have an operational order covering the whole of Africa. Anywhere there is conflict, it will not require UN resolution, but a host country’s invitation and an endorsement by AU.”

This is laudable if it can be carried through and the support of France in particular is also commendable. The French rightly or wrongly have been accused of backing these tyrannical and often despotic regimes in Africa in the past for selfish reasons. French troops stationed in most French speaking African countries have been used in the past by Paris to put down any popular revolt against these unpopular regimes. But the economic and political burden of carrying these countries on her back now appears to be too much for France, hence the resort to backing a permanent African High Command to take care of conflicts on the continent. .

But good as this stand-by force idea is, having to rely on invitation by the host (troubled) country before peace keepers can be sent in to intervene could leave the force impotent as these leaders would naturally not support such intervention and never issue an invitation for such  even if their countries are bleeding. Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and Laurent Gbagbo’s Cote d’Ivoire are good examples here. So African leaders must find a way of going above such despotic leaders if the need ever arose to send in peace-keepers and restore peace in such countries. This will make Nelson Mandela happy in his grave satified that Africa is finally taking her destiny in her hands.

Good night Tata Madiba. We will never forget you.