Champagne flowed and music chimed at gala dinners as European leaders looked back with some satisfaction at the strides made in unifying a continent that was riven by war a little over half a century ago. The blanket coverage reflected the importance of the occasion. Providing some of the impetus for European integration was a need to rein in Germany's power. But it also coincided with the beginning of the decolonisation process: Ghana, for instance, got its independence from Britain in 1957, the same year the Treaty of Rome was signed. Ironically, it was years before Britain could join. Charles de Gaulle thought Britain would be a proxy for the US.
Though it has not been without its faults and hiccups - it has its critics - the EU has become the bar by which political and economic integration in other parts of the world is measured. The African Union (AU), for instance, is an idea that came straight from an EU curriculum. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, who first mooted the idea of replacing the Organisation for African Unity with an African union, spoke loftily of a United States of Africa, with a government whose writ would run from the Cape to Cairo. He was reiterating the words of fathers of European integration, Winston Churchill, among others, having called for the creation of a United States of Europe to rival the USA. But that's where the similarities end.
The EU has been able to grow organically, allowing for robust and rational debates that shaped its core values over the years. The so-called Copenhagen criteria, for instance, require all countries to achieve "stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, the existence of a functioning market economy... including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union".
AU members are not burdened with such requirements. All that is required of them is that they be African. The AU is something of an imposition. While the EU was painstakingly built from the bottom, the AU was imposed from the top, without even the views of the citizens being sought as to whether they wished to be a part of such a club. What complicates matters, and will make it even more difficult for the AU to achieve whatever goal it sets itself, is the fact that most of its members have very little in common, except the need for growth and development. They have no shared values or binding principles. For some of them, democracy is a foreign concept. Dictators and democrats rub shoulders at AU confabs, issuing noble statements with no intention to implement them.
The AU has grand plans: it wants to set up a human rights court, a central bank and a single currency by 2023. It's a tall order; and this wish-list has not even been tested or broached with its people. Africans are thus sleep-walking into a political animal that they haven't bargained for.
But Africa is trying to run before it can crawl. Integration as an ultimate goal is fine. But Africa is still struggling with basic issues: good governance, the rule of law and the dilemmas of a weak state - which are at the core of most problems on the continent. Some countries can barely feed their people.
The priority therefore should be to beef up the capacity of the state; build basic infrastructure like roads, schools and hospitals. And then encourage respect for certain common values, of decency and democracy. That would form the bedrock of a more focused and principled union. Adherence to such precepts then becomes a condition for membership. Right now, the AU has got the cart before the horse.
e-mail: fmeditor@fm.co.za
