{UAH} Pojim/WBK: What Sayeth you????? Campaign for African Court more about self-preservation than justice - Opinion - nation.co.ke

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Campaign-for-African-Court-more-about-self-preservation/-/440808/2610902/-/aystyhz/-/index.html

Campaign for African Court more about self-preservation than justice - Opinion

By MACHARIA GAITHO
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African leaders gathered in Addis Ababa for their annual gabfest seem onto a good thing with the push for a continental court with enhanced jurisdiction to try crimes against humanity.

The existing African Court of Human and Peoples Rights is a puny institution that can hardly punish a pickpocket, let alone the various bandits, genocidaires, mass murderers and leaders who habitually exterminate their own people.

If there was a working and effective Africa court, there would then be no need to try assorted crimes against humanity suspects in the International Criminal Court at The Hague; or at various international tribunals established by the United Nations, such as the court in Arusha that has been trying Rwanda genocide suspects over the past two decades.

So, it stands to reason that a stronger court that will have the mandate and the muscle to go after the main criminals brutalising the long suffering people of Africa, is sorely needed.

The people who have suffered immeasurably over the years from the greed and brutality would welcome any institution that would deliver them from the grip of the so-called leaders who would without any conscience exterminate entire populations so they can stay in power and wealth.

The proposal pushed hard by Kenya, complete with a pledge of $1 million, would be welcome were it not so fatally flawed. It is aimed not at rescuing Africans from leaders who would oppress them, but at shielding those leaders from justice.

The only rationale being offered under the so-called Malabo Declaration is that Africa needs it's own court so that high crimes do not have to be referred to the ICC.

Africans are being told that the ICC is a foreign and imperialistic institution from which the continent should pull out en masse once it establishes its own sovereign court.

And who would be the beneficiaries of such a pullout? Not the African people, but the leaders who in the same breath as they campaign for such a court also push to be granted immunity from the criminal justice system.

This campaign is not about justice, but about entrenching impunity and the right of African leaders to be shielded from the law so that they can continue slaughtering their own people.

It is a shame that in a continent ravaged by Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab, by Ebola, malaria and Aids, by hunger, poverty, illiteracy and deprivation, African leaders should gather to discuss self-preservation, rather than the problems facing their people.

It seems not to strike them as bizarre that the anti-ICC onslaught is pushed by Kenya, whose own leaders are in the clutches of the court being tried for crimes against humanity.

President Kenyatta has only recently been discharged after the prosecution was forced to concede by the ICC judges that it had no case worth pursuing.

The other case against Deputy President William Ruto and radio journalist Joshua Sang is still being heard, and will proceed to its logical conclusion however shrill the sterile noises coming out of the African Union.

President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto would be better served by submitting themselves to court and clearing their names rather than by seeking immunity in a fashion that will forever raise questions over whether they committed the alleged crimes.

I expressed confidence from day one that by available evidence put together by a hapless prosecution, the two would eventually walk free.

It is better they win freedom on being absolved by the courts rather than by evading justice through an abortion that would only be a tool of African rulers conditioned to crimes against those they rule.

As long as the African Union remains a cosy club of dictators, it should not to be entrusted with anything like an African court.

There are index lessons to be learnt from the ICC mishandling of the Kenyan and other cases. Solutions, however, should lie in strengthening the international court and making it more efficient and effective, not in neutering it.

The African Union itself suffers a crisis of legitimacy it must swiftly move to address. It will only become useful when it progresses to serve the needs and aspirations of the African people, rather than the egos and entitlements of a few leaders.

mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.com / @MachariaGaitho on Twitter

Campaign for African Court more about self-preservation than justice - Opinion - nation.co.ke
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Campaign-for-African-Court-more-about-self-preservation/-/440808/2610902/-/aystyhz/-/index.html‎

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