Below is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations about the impact of Gaddafi’s death on the African Union.
The charismatic, controversial and recently deceased Moammar Gaddafi was famously fond of titles. From his subjects, he commanded the military rank of Colonel Gaddafi, a reminder of the revolutionary roots that brought him to power in 1969. To his contemporaries, he was Brother Leader, a title with strong socialist undertones. And in Africa, he had himself proclaimed “King of Kings,” by a group of tribal leaders, a direct reference to Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie, one of the last ruling monarchs on the continent.
While it is easy to dismiss this last incarnation as yet another eccentricity of an unpredictable and often brutal leader, it is important to remember that Gaddafi envisioned himself the true heir to the legacy of Pan-Africanism. Like Ghana’s first president, firebrand Kwame Nkrumah who called for a United States of Africa, and Ethiopia’s Selassie, who helped give birth to the much-maligned Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, Ghaddfi poured rhetoric and resources into the quest for African unity. In 1999 at a summit in Sirte, Libya, Gaddafi helped convince 45 African heads of state to approve the creation of the African Union, and for more than a decade, he was its largest patron and most outspoken advocate.
So, when opposition forces in Libya, inspired by uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, rebelled against Gadaffi’s rule, the AU sought unsuccessfully to mediate an agreement that would have left Gadaffi in power, and denounced the NATO-led airstrike against Libya. Now that Gadaffi is gone, how will his death impact the future of this emerging continental body? The answer, not unlike the man himself, is a mixed bag.
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