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Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

The Arena Hildegarde
From its inception, the TFTA is one of the biggest threats that Africa’s growing economy poses to the other regions that have arrived — all the established economies. And for daring to do this, Africa must be slowed down, and/or stopped.

WHAT a week and a half. It had its fair share of thrills, conflicts and tragedies, but we survived, and will continue to, as long as the Lord, the life-giver allows us to.

However, one thing that this writer was certain about was that the Western world and its poodles on the continent would not countenance the creation of a free trade zone, an event that was commissioned last week by African Union and Sadc chairperson, President Mugabe.

It is different from the other free trade zones on the continent because not only will it be Africa’s largest economic bloc, the Tripartite Free Trade Area, but it made a humongous statement: Africa is ready to take off!

Bringing together 26 member states of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community was a dream come true since this was the first time that Africa demonstrated that after political independence, it was capable of standing up to be counted.

During the launch, President Mugabe said, “This (the TFTA) is almost half the membership of the African Union, with a combined population of 625 million people and a gross domestic product of $1,3 trillion. If the 26 countries were one country with such a GDP, the tripartite would rank number 13 in the world.”

The writer can hear someone fuming: “How dare you allow Africa to stand on its feet like this?

When we colonised them, we were not supposed to provide a cure to their freedom.”

From its inception, the TFTA is one of the biggest threats that Africa’s growing economy poses to the other regions that have arrived — all the established economies.

And for daring to do this, Africa must be slowed down, and/or stopped.

Thus the threat posed by the TFTA witnessed the side show played out by the International Criminal Court during the just ended 25th Session of the African Union Summit at the weekend in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Preposterous though it was, the ICC with the assistance of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and some sections of the South African judiciary managed to divert attention from the AU business as everyone wondered whether South Africa would comply with the ICC request to have Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir arrested and sent to The Hague.

When they failed to achieve their objective after the Sudanese leader left South Africa a free man and also after President Mugabe as chairperson made it very clear that the African Union does not share headquarters/offices with the International Criminal Court, thus the AU would not allow the South African justice system to arrest President al-Bashir at the Sandton Convention Centre, they had to find Plan B in order to save face.

President Mugabe is quoted in the Herald of yesterday telling journalists in South Africa that, “We won’t allow the police here to arrest him.”

The farcical nature of the ICC/al-Bashir saga was taken a level higher on Tuesday June 16 when an Afrikaans online news agency Netwerk24 published at 13:02 an “exclusive” story claiming that Sudan “literally held a gun to South Africa’s head to secure President al-Bashir’s safe return to Khartoum: “Netwerk24 can reveal that about 800 South African soldiers in Darfur were held ‘hostage’ by Sudanese troops when the drama around Al-Bashir’s possible arrest in South Africa escalated.”

The report added, “According to military experts, this effectively means Sudan blackmailed South Africa and the soldiers’ lives served as a guarantee for Al-Bashir’s safe return. Only after Al-Bashir safely touched down in Khartoum on Monday, were Sudanese troops withdrawn. President Jacob Zuma is the commander-in-chief of the defence force.”

Hours later the South Africa National Defence Force released a statement trashing the claims by Netwerk24: “There is no iota of truth in these allegations. There is equally no substance to support these allegations. The SANDF did not come under any threat during this period.

“No extraordinary operational preparedness was done by the SANDF in view of the reported situation in South Africa. No additional instructions, with regard to higher alert levels, were issued. The security situation in Darfur is calm where our troops are deployed,” said the statement.

Was this damage control by SALC and the ICC using Netwerk24 since they thought that they would have their way?

Common sense tells me that if at all the Sudanese forces wanted to blackmail the South African government, they would have set the wheels in motion soon after the announcement to “arrest” President al-Bashir was made.

Why did publication of the danger faced by the SANDF have to wait until after President al-Bashir had returned to Khartoum?

Since the arrest story was used as noise to block the Summit stories, this danger or threat to the SANDF would also have hit international headlines within seconds.

The unnamed soldiers in the Netwerk24 report do not get their marching orders from the editor of this news agency, and neither is it a government mouthpiece.

They are a military force and use appropriate channels. Above all, those security briefs end up on the desk of the commander-in-chief of the defence forces, President Jacob Zuma.

The world over, the military is known for its discipline. Therefore, there is no way you could have so many unnamed sources on a peace-keeping mission issuing anonymous statements to the media. Had it been true, it would have been tantamount to sabotage and insurrection. It also seems as though the writers and publishers of this false story wanted to demonstrate that they were not over with the “arrest” story.

Not only were they sowing seeds of disunity between South Africa and Sudan, but they were also doing the same among their soldiers. The lies could have strained relations and created conflict, which could have touched many states.

Notwithstanding Charles Taylor, Laurent Gbagbo, Uhuru Kenyatta and Omar al-Bashir and others, the ICC — rightly termed “Europe’s Guantanamo of Africa” — will continue to play these dirty tricks against the continent, until Africa stands up to it and pulls out to form its own institutions, like it is doing with trade and economic zones.

I part with comments from David Hoile, public affairs consultant specialising in African and international affairs at The Africa Research Centre, who was also among the specialists in South Africa who lambasted the ludicrousness of the ICC’s attempted arrest: “Imagine if there were a criminal court in Britain which only ever tried black people, which ignored crimes committed by whites and Asians and only took an interest in crimes committed by blacks.

“We would consider that racist, right? And yet there is an International Criminal Court which only ever tries black people, African black people to be precise, and it is treated as perfectly normal.

“In fact the court is lauded by many radical activists as a good and decent institution, despite the fact that no non-black person has ever been brought before it to answer for his crimes.

“It is remarkable that in an era when liberal observers see racism everywhere, in every thoughtless aside or crude joke, they fail to see it in an institution which focuses exclusively on the criminal antics of dark-skinned people from the ‘Dark Continent’. . .

“Liberal sensitivity towards issues of racism completely evaporates when it comes to the ICC, which they will defend tooth and nail, despite the fact that it is quite clearly, by any objective measurement, racist, in the sense that it treats one race of people differently to all others.”