Africa's War Against Terror

Africa's War Against Terror

African people in their persistent efforts to claim their place on the global stage is faced with paradoxes and challenges, the global stage where Africans are persistently marginalized, disadvantaged and vulnerable. The first step in Africans claiming their place in the global stage is shedding all manifestations of inferiority and self-doubt and refuse to accept that their benchmarks, to measure their success, are set by others.

This is precisely what the NEPAD Peer Review Mechanism is about. The NEPAD Peer Review Mechanism is about the idea that Africans should have the courage to be their own severe judges about what is right and wrong in the continent. The NEPAD Peer Review Mechanism being the fruit of the African Union act contains the specific objectives of "Respect for democratic principles, human rights, the rule of law and good governance." Among its Objectives, it states that it will:

• "Promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance; and,

• "Promote and protect human and peoples' rights in accordance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and other relevant human rights instruments."

There are some powerful voices though in the global stage who welcome NEPAD Peer Review Mechanism as an overdue effort of African people to take responsibility for solving their problems. They proclaim that this is precisely how support for Africa's struggle to exercise her right to self-determination should be expressed.

However, the support is on the condition that Africans do what they dictate to them. In other words they unequivocally declare that Africans are free to enjoy the right to determine their future destiny but they want to dictate what that future destiny to be.

They present themselves as the greatest champions of democracy and development in Africa. They some how, though vaguely that African leaders cannot be trusted to promote and entrench democracy and development in Africa. In the Biblical Gospel according to St Matthew, it is said that Jesus Christ saw Simon Peter and his brother Andrew fishing in the Sea of Galilee. And He said to them: "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Perhaps taking a cue from this, some people in the world have appointed themselves as "fishers of corrupt men". The continent of Africa is the sea in which they have chosen to exercise their fishing craft. From everything they say, it is clear that they know it as a matter of fact that they are bound to return from their African fishing expeditions with huge catches of corrupt men (and women).