African Union: New Organisation, Old Ideological Framework‪.‬

ABSTRACT On being launched formally in Durban, South Africa, in July 2002 the African Union (AU) was declared a different institution from what was known as the Organization of African Unity (OAU). It heralded, according to its founders, a united, free and democratic Africa poised to see an end to civil wars, state-sponsored terror, torture and genocide, and to the denial and violation by member states of civil, political and human rights. But Africa's new grand project, that is the AU, retains and uses as a guide to its action and policy the OAU's ideology. At the core of this ideology is the familiar set of rather pious but incoherent principles and/or slogans that have helped to hold the continent together. These are unswerving solidarity among the organisation's members, sacrosanctity of the constituent states and their geographic boundaries, defence of their national sovereignty, and non-interference in member states' domestic affairs. The credo has, however, lent legitimacy to the rulers' genocidal acts, human rights abuses and denial of democracy to African peoples. The AU is thus at the outset constrained by this ideological framework in its task of transforming Africa that has so far been no more than an ensemble of disparate state systems, and an edifice embodying autocracies and quasi-democracies with varying political orientations and programmes.