A Beginner's Guide to the African Union
How to Write a Constitution
By Colonel Muammar Marius Rogér al-Fortier
The Spectator — Presidential Address
Brazzavile — From my exile, I want to explain what is happening in Africa.
This is a breakdown of what the African Union is, what it was supposed to be, and why the difference between those two things is currently visible on any map.
The African Union is an organization built by a group of select nations. One such nation drafted the constitution that overwhelmingly favored five nations in particular. That document was written by one man, Egypt's current Vice President, and published on behalf of the African Union as though it represented the continent.
It represented five big seats at the table. The rest of Africa was invited to share one.
That constitution prohibits conquest, guarantees sovereignty, and promises to resist foreign domination. Then its authors gave the votes to themselves.
Then they wrote an exception for conquest.
So, naturally, one of those nations occupied my country.
The man who published the constitution is also the man occupying my country.
I want you to sit with that for a moment.
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To Kneel or Not to Kneel
We are not members of the African Union. We never applied. We watched how it was built and concluded that membership would give us one shared fraction of one vote against a council dominated by the people most likely to invade us. If you are incredulous, you read that right. If not, I will reiterate. Senior nations hold one vote each. Every other nation that is permitted to join shares a single vote between them. Yes, permitted, by a majority vote of the same powerful nations.
One vote, divided among all, decided by internal majority. We would have been one voice in a chorus that counts for one vote against a council full of nations that count for many. We concluded this was not protection. It was the appearance of inclusion, and legitimacy for the hegemon who tosses a single coin between a hundred outstretched hands and calls it democracy
No, what we are, however precariously, is part of Angola's sphere. Angola is a Senior Member of the African Union, and unlike certain other Senior Members, Angola has exercised that seniority with the magnanimity it was intended to carry. South Africa, another powerful nation, has drawn its own conclusions about the fine print of the Union and left it entirely. The nations within their sphere have fared better for that decision than most members have fared for staying.
One would think that partnership with a Senior Member, real partnership, built on mutual obligation and honored agreements, would carry more practical protection than a fractional vote in a council that has demonstrated it cannot stop its own members from invading their neighbors. That has been our experience. Until Egypt decided that Angola's sphere was also Egypt's corridor.
When Egypt sent negotiators, the South African diplomats administering Angola's sphere on their behalf agreed that both parties could negotiate directly to create a corridor. That we had the discretion to reach our own arrangement without South Africa mediating every detail. This was a courtesy extended to both parties. It was not a blank cheque. It was not a mandate. It was not South Africa stepping aside so Egypt could step over us.
Egypt chose to read it that way. Whether this was misrepresentation or misinterpretation I leave to the reader. What I will say is that a negotiating partner who interprets 'you may talk to each other' as 'you may take whatever you cannot agree on' was not negotiating in good faith. They were building a legal fig leaf.
When the fig leaf was in place, they invaded Ouham. And when we objected, Egypt's position was that the Central African Republic had existed, until now, by their grace.
I want you to understand what that means. It means Egypt looks at the African continent and sees Egyptian territory at various stages of administration. It means the constitution Egypt helped write, the one that prohibits conquest, was written by people who never intended it to apply to themselves
2
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes
This is not complicated. This is not geopolitics. This is the oldest story in the world.
Here is what membership in the African Union looks like in practice. You petition to become a plebeian, at best. The patricians, the Senior nations, vote on whether to admit you to the assembly. If admitted, you join every other small nation in sharing one collective voice. The patricians each speak for themselves. You contribute to a defense fund. In return, the patricians agree, in writing, not to invade you.
Then you hope they mean it.
Angola is a patrician. Yet Angola's sphere was crossed without formal agreement, without compensation, and without any mechanism in the constitution that required either. The AU's design does not deem it necessary for a expanding senator to seek permission or provide restitution when a fellow senator's territory stands between him and his objectives. Angola was expected, as the smaller patrician, to accommodate. The constitution provided no process for when accommodation becomes imposition.
If the Senate cannot protect one of its own from having its territory treated as another senator's corridor, it is worth asking what exactly a seat in that Senate buys, and whether the senator currently largest on the map has simply not yet gotten around to the others.
The Romans had a word for what happens when a senator grows too powerful for the Senate to restrain. They did not use it until it was too late.
In summary, the African Union did not fail. It worked exactly as designed. It just was not designed for us
I am not the only one who has reached these conclusions. A South African rapporteur, asked to serve as Secretary of the African Union in a transitional capacity despite South Africa's own withdrawal from it, watched this institution collapse inward, and then watched a constitution get drafted in the wreckage that favored five nations above all others. That person resigned. And in their departure described an institution that had built new giants from local materials. Some of those giants, they noted, appeared to suffer from dwarfism.
3
Carthago Delenda Est
The people of Central Africa, if not Africa as a whole, did not ask for any of this. They built what little they could and paid their taxes. They asked nothing from their government except to be left alone to work, and nothing from the African Union except to be left alone to exist.
Cato the Elder once produced a fresh fig in the Senate. He had timed his journey from Carthage carefully, so that the fig would still be ripe when he held it up. His point was not the fig, but the fear of missing out on riches. Carthage had to be destroyed, and the Senate agreed, and Rome did the destroying.
Egypt produces its figs reliably, pays its allies in gold, and watches from a comfortable distance while its coalition fights its wars of expansion on its behalf. My Republic was not a threat to Egypt. It was not a threat to anyone. It was simply in the way, and someone needed to make a point, and the coalition needed a reason, and Cairo's iron mines needed a corridor.
We did not ask to be the fig. We do not intend to be Carthage.
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Post Scriptum
