LONDON: The 53-member Organization of African Unity (OAU), having reached the age of 39 years, has decided to go in for a face-lift.

At its meeting in Durban, the organization formally dropped the ‘O’ in its name (for ‘organization’) and re-christened itself the ‘AU’ (African Union).

Is it now sprucing itself up in search of a new suitor? Not exactly. The answer is rather more mundane. The organization has been so plagued by its negative image — built up over 39 solid years of uselessness and inaction — that some of its members feared that without rebranding, it would become irrelevant to the African populace and perhaps just die away.

The formation of the OAU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in May 1963, had filled the continent with great hope. But because of the suspicions they harboured against one another, the body they agreed to form, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), was, of necessity, a child of compromise.

For instance, it forbade African countries from intervening in the internal affairs of member states. The end-result was that while the OAU claimed to be fighting for the liberation of Africans under white rule, many of the citizens of its own member states sometimes lived under conditions of dictatorship worse than what was found in white-ruled countries.

The OAU’s structural weaknesses and the feeble-mindedness of many of its leaders turned the OAU into a spectacular failure in the 39 years of its life. Here, at random, are a few of the major tragedies Africans have been forced to witness while OAU heads of state made speeches and did nothing: war between Mali and Upper Volta; war between Eritrea and Ethiopia; the Angola civil war between the MPLA and UNITA that raged from 1975 till the death of Jonas Savimbi this year; the Sudanese civil war that started in 1983; the ethnic massacre of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda in 1994; and the Biafran war of 1967-70 that killed two million citizens of what had once been a peaceful Nigeria.

It was therefore no surprise on the initiative of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Gaddhafi the OAU set about trying to reinvent itself. The most important structural change they have brought about is to give the organisation four new arms — a Peace and Security Council, a Parliament, a Court of Justice and a Central Bank.

The Peace and Security Council will have the power to send troops to troubled areas. It will also be able to offer peer review of the governance of African countries and bring those found not to be quite democratic to heel. The African Parliament will enable people’s representatives to make their voices heard on African issues.

The African Court of Justice will adjudicate in inter-state disputes and also act in cases where the local machinery for settling disputes has been exhausted and yet the individual is not satisfied that justice has been done. And finally, the Central Bank of Africa will facilitate inter-African trade by eliminating the need for payments to be made in strong currencies like the US dollar.

This is all quite a tall order, but still not the single United States of Africa that many Africans dream of. However, as the proverb goes, a journey of a thousand miles is begun with one step, and thus, the rebranding of the OAU into the AU can be seen in a more positive light than the cynical shrug of the shoulders which normally greets cosmetic changes.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.