“Africa will have to redouble its own efforts to respond to the challenge of transforming ours into a continent of peace,” he said at a public lecture at the Tshwane University of Technology.
Mbeki said the continent was not getting the attention it deserved from the United Nations, despite the number of wars and coups it experienced and that it contained 75% of the world’s refugees.
He said the African Union’s (AU) structures, such as the AU Commission, the Peace and Security Council, and the African Standby Force, would need to be strengthened if the organisation was to become more effective at eliminating conflict on the continent.
“We must continue to address the issue of the funding of conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace building activities of the African Union.”
He said the fact that African countries had acceded to the African Peer Review Mechanism had already started to have a positive effect.
Some of Africa’s problems stemmed from the fact that there was an inequitable distribution of resources, a concentration of power in the hands of political elite and the use of repressive measures by the political elite, he said.
Personal gain
He said the AU was hampered by the fact that it lacked resources to carry out its mandate.
He pointed out that as South Africans went to the historic polls of 1994 to bring an end to white minority rule, the Rwandan genocide was in full swing.
“Our people need to stand up and say no to war. It is the ordinary people who are going to die. Far too many Africans have died at the hands of other Africans,” he said.
Asked by a student what had “gone wrong” with African leadership, he said that many of Africa’s leaders had entered government to see what they could get and not what they could do. He cited Mobutu Sese Seko as being the worst example and that “clearly there are smaller Mobutus” who had also exploited their position for personal gain. At the start of his lecture, officials had to throw out a heckler who tried to single-handedly disrupt proceedings.
The man entered the Theunis Bester Hall shouting vulgarities and telling Mbeki to leave.
The man was able to reach the stage and throw a poster at Mbeki’s feet before he was tackled and bundled out of the hall.
Mbeki shouted “Amandla” and promptly continued with his lecture on war and peace in Africa.
Prior to the disruption, Mbeki received a rousing welcome from a packed hall.
Source: news24.com