Dlamini-Zuma slams Trump at AU

Outgoing head warns member states of turbulent times ahead for world

African Union leaders grappled with Morocco’s divisive bid to rejoin the bloc at a summit yesterday and sounded alarm for the continent over US President Donald Trump’s immigration ban.

“The very country [where] our people were taken as slaves . . . has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries,” outgoing AU Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told about 37 heads of state and leaders from across the continent.

“It is clear that globally we are entering very turbulent times,” she told the meeting in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

Trump has faced outrage and widespread protests over the move to ban citizens from seven countries, including Libya, Somalia and Sudan in Africa.

In his opening address at the summit, new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres did not mention Trump’s refugee and travel ban specifically, but criticised the closure of borders “even in the most developed countries in the world”.

All eyes at the summit are on a bid by Morocco to return to the fold 33 years after it quit in protest against the AU’s decision to accept Western Sahara as a member.

However, proceedings began with the swift election of Chadian Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat, 56, as chairman of the AU Commission, beating four other candidates.

Faki won in a final battle against his Kenyan counterpart Amina Mohamed after seven rounds of voting.

Faki, a former prime minister, has been at the forefront of the fight against Islamists in Nigeria, Mali and the Sahel and has promised development and security will be top of his agenda as chief of the 54-member continental bloc.

He said he dreamed of an Africa where the sound of guns would be drowned out by cultural songs and rumbling factories, and pledged to streamline the bureaucratic AU during his four-year term in office.

Faki takes over from South Africa’s Dlamini-Zuma who is credited with advancing women’s issues and moulding the long-term Agenda 2063 socio-economic plan for Africa, but is seen to have dropped the ball on peace and security while focusing on personal political ambitions at home.

The choice of a new leader is crucial for the future of a bloc which is undergoing deep introspection on how to reform to become more relevant and better respond to crises on the continent.

Tasked with leading the reforms, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame delivered a biting report to heads of state on Sunday, according to the Kenyan government.

He criticised chronic failure to see through AU decisions [which] had resulted in a crisis of implementation and a perception that the AU was not relevant to Africans.

Kagame also slammed overdependence on donor funding, for 70% of the AU budget.

The membership of affluent Morocco could be a boon for the AU, which lost a key financier in late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and is working on ways to become financially independent.

A Moroccan diplomat said the country had the unconditional support of 42 members of the bloc.

But in a sign of problems ahead, 12 countries – including heavyweights Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Kenya and Angola – requested a legal opinion from the AU on whether the bloc could accept a member that is occupying parts of the territory of another member.

These nations have long supported the campaign for self-determination by Western Sahara’s Polisario movement.