Rather than spend her time courting Africa’s political leaders, new president Joyce Banda has clearly prioritised her most immediate task: rescuing Malawi’s struggling economy from ruin.
Banda gave up Malawi’s right to host an African Union (AU) summit in Lilongwe, planned for July, when she flatly refused to accept the AU’s demands that Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir be allowed to attend the meeting. Instead, her government confirmed that Bashir would be arrested if he turned up for the summit, fulfilling Malawi’s obligations as a signatory to the founding statutes of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which indicted the Sudanese leader for war crimes in 2009.
Declaring in mid-June that her “main agenda right now is economic recovery”, Banda said that Vice-President Khumbo Kachali would represent her at the relocated summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Banda’s controversial declaration of principle – which was immediately criticised in many African capitals for damaging African solidarity – is at least in part based on Malawi’s previous experience of a breakdown of relations with donor countries and agencies. These relations noticeably worsened after her predecessor, Bingu wa Mutharika, hosted Bashir at a regional summit in Lilongwe last October.
The AU did not support Malawi when aid was cancelled on that occasion, Banda noted. African leaders resolved in 2009 not to respect the ICC warrant, but the AU as an organisation has limited financial resources with which to back its leaders’ resolutions.
The Malawian row with the AU seems unlikely in itself to change the dynamics of the continental grouping, but Banda has nevertheless joined a small number of African governments and political leaders who are prepared to criticise what they see as the distorted priorities of the organisation and its failure to rally around democratic principles. One major fault line developed over the blatant failure of the AU to act over the major post-electoral crisis in Ivory Coast in 2010-11.
The summit in July seemed to be most likely focused on another kind of split, which superficially was about the chairmanship of the AU Commission. The incumbent, Jean Ping of Gabon, hoped to be re-elected into the post earlier this year but was challenged by South Africa’s candidate, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Running below the waterline of this contest has been a major battle for influence in the African continent.
An informal convention to prevent the domination of the AU by its richer members has hitherto been respected. This prevents the five richest states – Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria and South Africa – from presenting candidates for key AU positions. Dlamini-Zuma’s candidature not only torpedoed the convention but stiffened the resolve of Nigeria to maintain the convention and to support Jean Ping. A split between Southern Africa and West Africa over the issue seemed a possible outcome. Extra drama was added to the row by the revelation that Angola, one of Africa’s least democratic states, has been bankrolling Dlamini-Zuma’s expensive campaign to win support in numerous countries around the continent.
Banda’s bold decision to declare Bashir unwelcome was commended by Botswana and may also have been viewed with approval by other Southern African countries like Zambia and even South Africa.
At home, the cancellation of the summit is bad news for hoteliers and car hire firms that had looked forward to a brief boom in business. There will also be financial consequences for the government which had underwritten the cost of new building work at the Bingu International Conference Centre.
