Robert Mugabe has made a career out of calling Africa’s bluff. On Monday, he is likely to do it again. Mr. Mugabe has said that he will turn up at the annual summit of the African Union (AU) in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Freshly “re-elected”, and probably by then hastily sworn in for another five-year term, he will challenge the 53-member body to prevent him from taking his rightful place.

On past performances, the AU will agree on an innocuous statement on the need for talks and try to move on to the next subject. This year, it may not be quite so easy. Several states have broken their silence and attacked Zimbabwe’s leader for his brutal assault on democracy. For the first time almost the entire continent has come to believe that he cannot be allowed to stay in office.

South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) denounced yesterday what it called “outright terror” in the country. Even President Mbeki, who as the official mediator for the crisis has avoided public criticism of Mr Mugabe, is said to have had enough after receiving “compelling evidence” of intimidation.

“With such statements it is difficult to see how the AU can officially recognize the result,” Buchizya Mseteka, a Zambian political analyst, said. “The credibility of the AU will be at risk.”

But the AU has a big problem: very few of its members can claim the moral high ground when it comes to democracy and respect for human rights. With a few exceptions, Africa’s much proclaimed renaissance has come to a shuddering halt. In fact, many commentators would say that the AU’s march towards democracy has gone in the wrong direction.

Elections in Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, in April 2007 were farcical, with widespread vote-rigging. In Kenya, until recently one of Africa’s showcase countries, dozens of people were killed when violence followed the highly dubious re-election of the ruling party. Britain was forced to suspend aid to Ethiopia, previously one of Tony Blair’s favourites, when paramilitary police shot dead students protesting against the result of a 2005 poll.

The rest of the Horn of Africa is a no-go area for democracy with Sudan condemned as one of the world’s worst abusers of human rights. Eritrea, once lauded for its enlightened rule, has slowly descended into a nasty dictatorship with hundreds of government critics held without trial.

North Africa is also in bad shape, including Egypt, the host of the summit. President Mubarak shows no signs of giving up office and elections this year received widespread condemnation. Tunisia and Algeria are constantly cited for human rights violations, including torture.

Mr Mugabe knows that Africa is hardly in a position to preach to him. This week, when criticism of him was mounting, he told a rally. “I am going to go to that AU summit . . . I want to see whose finger there is clean.”

The AU changed its name from its forerunner, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), in July 2002 and supposedly adopted a tougher mandate on “human rights, good governance and democracy”. It is based in the OAU’s old headquarters in Addis Ababa and, like the OAU, it is broke. “Very few members have paid their dues. This has handicapped it from the start: there is a lot of truth in the joke that the AU is the OAU without the organisation,” a Western diplomat, who has had close dealings with it, said.

An AU force sent to Darfur was ridiculed as a “Keystone Cops” outfit and a mission in Somalia is still awaiting troops one year after being dispatched. So far, its biggest success was an “invasion” last March of the island of Anjouan in the archipelago nation of Comoros, which had wanted to break away. However, the renegade leader, a French-trained former gendarme, managed to escape dressed as a woman.

By Jonathan Clayton

Times Online

© Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.