Incisive Journalism in Cameroon: The Best of ��Cameroon Report�� (1978 � 1986)

50. Cameroon Report 08/08/1982: OAU Deadlock over Western Sahara

189 50 Cameroon Report 08/08/1982: OAU Deadlock over Western Sahara Introduction: Hopes for the formal opening of the 19th OAU summit in Tripoli, Libya have completely dissipated as a last ditch effort to save the conference yesterday failed to obtain the required number of thirty-four participating member-states necessary to form a quorum. It is now clear, as feared, that Tripoli ’82 has failed, exposing once again the inability of African states to uphold a united front through dialogue. The split over the Tripoli summit, the deepest spilt in the history of the OAU, has sparked off speculation and heated debates in political and intellectual circles as well as given rise to a number of perplexing questions about the stability and viability of the Pan-African organisation. Despite the split, Africanists think everything should be done to restore dialogue among member states. Victor Epie Ngome indicates that all member states have a moral duty to safeguard the legality of the OAU by promoting an atmosphere of reconciliation, not by failing to sustain dialogue: There seems to be two major roads of being talked about: either you succeed, which often requires hard work, or you fail which is easier because it is enough no to make any effort at all. As far as this kind of energy economics is concerned, Africans seem to be the world’s champions, in that they have always chosen the cheapest and shortest path to the front pages – the path of minimum effort. 190 We have learnt in time how futile it is for us to try to distinguish ourselves technologically or by any of the recognised standards – except perhaps by sending teams to the world cup competition. And so we easily close one eye and aim a cheap shot at international fame (or notoriety to be more exact) by providing the world with front page stories of political unrest or economic miasma, civil wars, famine and refugee problems. I was just listening casually to a rather talkative announcer on a radio station that seems to have a lot of credibility in this language, when I heard something like “at a time when even the Eastern and Western blocs are making efforts to cooperate with each other despite their ideological polarity, it turns out that African leaders who need dialogue most, can’t even sit down to talk”. And he ended with “what a bad year for Africa”. An immediate reaction could have been to ask whether this announcer, and indeed the system that breeds him, are genuinely interested in Africans getting together and talking – trying to solve their problems, most of which are created and perpetuated by some superpowers. Now, let’s look at that statement in the light of another made under the same casual and jocular circumstances by a more obscure but by no means ignorant party. The setting is a workshop in an automobile sales department. The actors are employees in the company. Says one: Hey old boy, are you coming along to Benghazi? Says the other: Oh no, I am afraid I can’t. My elder brother says not to. It was, of course futile to ask the redundant question of who these actors were impersonating. I say “redundant” because the circumstance surrounding the abortion of the Tripoli summit have given 191 rise to speculations – some call them malignant, but nobody seems to call them unfounded speculations that the abortion is being financed by a western capital. We shall, of course, not spend what little time we have trying to witch-hunt who is or isn’t on the payroll, but we are worried about proposals like the one from Sudan – that the summit shift venue from Tripoli. And this for two reasons: one because it gives the impression that the Saharawi admission is a cover-up and that the real problem is the man to chair the summit and by giving that impression, it tends to undermine our stance in the matter – which is that we have nothing against any member country of the OAU, nor nonattendance is strictly in defence of the principles of the organisation. The second reason which worries us is that neither the proponent of the change of venue nor indeed any other member, volunteered to host the summit. We hate to think that any African country will be led into an unproductive concern for who chairs the OAU, led by...