African leaders embrace continent’s last coloniser

Disagreements
Sources privy to the discussion that resulted in the re-admission of Morocco say there were fierce arguments and tempers soared as some countries, particularly South Africa and Algeria, argued against what they called contravention of the founding principles of the Union.
Article 4 of the African Union Constitutive Act, which the report said would be contravened if Morocco was re-admitted to the Union under the current circumstances, refers to respect of borders existing on attainment of independence, peaceful resolution of conflicts, prohibition of the use of force or threat to use force, and peaceful co-existence of member states. The report noted that Morocco does not comply with these aspects regarding SADR.

SADR controls just about a quarter of the territory it claims, with the rest under the control of Morocco, which calls it its Southern Province. It, just like Morocco and Mauritania, were territories of Spain and on Spain leaving the colonies in 1975, Morocco and Mauritania occupied SADR’s territory and Morocco refused to vacate it even after being ordered to do so by the United Nations.
SADR is recognized as a semi-autonomous state and maintains diplomatic relations with 40 member states of the United Nations in addition to being a full member of the African Union.
The canvassing was intense as the African Union Summit held on January 30 and 31 drew close. And it was hard to know which way it would go.

Mr Ould-Salek Salem, the foreign Affairs minister of SADR, addressed a press conference at the AU headquarters on January 27 and outlined a number of points which he said made Morocco’s application deserve “from the Union a special and different treatment since it is an occupying power whose national Constitution did not recognise clear borders.”
One of Morocco’s sins, Mr Salem said, is that it is “blocking the organisation of a referendum on self-determination is Western Sahara for 26 years now, exactly as the Apartheid regime blocked the referendum in Namibia for 12 years after the adoption by the UN Security Council of resolution 435 in 1978.”
He threw at Morocco the same accusations as the AU lawyers had thrown at it in their report, of militarily invading Western Sahara in 1975 and therefore not adhering to AU’s principle of peaceful resolution of conflicts, occupying the territory of another state and therefore failing to respect recognised borders, and refusing to abide by United Nations and AU resolutions and rulings.

Mr Salem accused Morocco of refusing to recognise the territorial integrity the Saharawi Republic despite the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice of 1975, the legal opinion of the AU Legal Counsel of 2015, and the rule of the European Court of Justice of 2015.
Speaking three days before Morocco was re-admitted on January 30, Mr Salem was bullish and dared Morocco to prove that it had the support among the countries of Africa that it claimed supported it. He said Morocco had the backing of just two countries, of which he only Chad.
But Morocco had done a lot of groundwork and because 39 out of the 54 member states of AU supported the move when the summit sat, meaning that it had the required two-thirds majority to gain readmission, the opposition to its readmission crumbled.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI had travelled with a big entourage and an army of television journalists, who interviewed numerous people for their opinions on Morocco’s application for readmission to AU.

The king had spent much of last year traversing Africa, visiting 25 countries in total, as he campaigned for his country’s re-admission to the Union. Uganda was one of the countries he visited during his tour of East Africa. The issue of Morocco’s re-admission was first floated at the AU summit in Rwanda last July, and a concrete application was lodged with the AU in September last year.
But it still caught some at the AU headquarters by surprise that the leaders resolved to readmit Morocco.
The North African country pulled out of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of AU, in 1984 due to the admission to the organisation of SADR, which Morocco regards as its territory.

As the leaders pondered the question of readmitting Morocco, the AU Legal Counsel gave them one more issue to think about:
“Considering that the Kingdom of Morocco is deemed by African Union as occupying the territory of another member state and preventing the people therein from exercising their right to self-determination, it would be difficult to reconcile the obligation to take necessary action towards eradicating all forms of colonialism and achieving total liberation in Africa with the admission of a member state occupying another member state in the Union.”
The AU Legal Counsel, however, was clear that his report was advisory; that the responsibility to interpret the Constitutive Act of the Union rested with AU Court of Justice, which at the time was not constituted. In the absence of the court, the duty of interpreting the Act would then shift to assembly of heads of state and government. The leaders took up the duty with relish and threw out the legal advice.

Morocco king in grand entry
The job was done and it was King Mohammad’s moment. During the closing, there was a delay that lasted over half an hour.
Guinea’s president Alpha Conde, the in-coming chairperson of the African Union, a number of other presidents, and the outgoing and incoming members of the African Union Commission were all in the hall. But the closing ceremony did not start, and it was clear they were waiting for someone.
A brown man with a heavy albeit trimmed beard and clad in a fitting dark suit and a stylish turban wrapped around his head made an entry. A handful of men in the gallery broke into wild cheers. President Conde eventually made the announcement. The ruler of Morocco, King Mohammed VI, had arrived.
The swearing in of the new commissioners, starting with new AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat, then ensued. And then came the speeches.
When King Mohammed’s turn to speak came, an aide followed him to the podium and handed him his reading glasses. He waited to take them back after the king had spoken. After the speech, the king stood by the podium and President Conde left his seat to shake his hand. He left the room shortly afterwards as other speeches went on.

In the speech that lasted about 15 minutes, the king was quick to point to his country’s economic muscle, which many say is what prompted most African states to ignore the sticking issues and readmit Morocco into the AU.
King Mohammed promised gas, scholarships to students from other African countries, and financing to small holder farmers. He said his country, together with Nigeria and Ethiopia, will partner to produce agricultural fertilizer, which “will be extended to all African countries”.
Speaking to Western Sahara’s foreign minister Saleh after Morocco had been readmitted, his stance had changed. He now said it was perhaps a good thing that Morocco was readmitted to the Union so that the issue would be resolved internally within AU as both countries were members.

But it is hard to tell whether the Moroccans see it that way. Shortly after the announcement that Morocco had been readmitted, members of the Moroccan delegation started displaying banners with the map of Africa that did not include Western Sahara, which had been subsumed into Morocco. Officials of the African Union angrily confiscated the banners.
To a disinterested bystander, in the readmission of Morocco into the AU in the manner it was, African leaders may have created for themselves a problem that will take them considerable time and effort to deal with.