A New African Union Finally Exits the Cold War

Talal Belrhiti

Politics, Africa

Morocco is part of a new generation of forward-thinking African powers.

Just after returning home from the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, the ninety-two-year-old president of Zimbabwe lambasted other African leaders for voting overwhelmingly to welcome Morocco into the AU. He lamented that they suffered from a “lack of ideology,” and that “they have not had the same revolutionary experience as some of us.”

Fortunately, the nonagenarian ruler could not have been more accurate. Africa has changed, and the majority of African leaders have turned their back on ideology. This revolutionary ideology, which perhaps served its purpose when Africa was in colonial servitude, is now a burden and needed to be jettisoned in favor of reforms that will make Africa a powerhouse of the twenty-first century.

Robert Mugabe’s opposition to welcoming Morocco back into the African family is steeped in ideology. Zimbabwe, along with Algeria and South Africa, still oppose Morocco because they support the Polisario group, a Cold War Marxist creation of Algeria that has stubbornly clung to its secessionist ideology.

During the Cold War, Morocco fought back ferociously against the Polisario and its supporters, and in 1983 exited the Organization of African Unity, a precursor to the African Union, after that continental body admitted the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, the virtual “state” created by Algeria and propped up by Marxists and other anti-Western regimes from around the world. Though the SADR is still a member of the African Union, Morocco’s presence will contrast starkly to the illegality of the SADR’s membership. Indeed, 1983 is not 2017, and an entity that does not meet any criteria of statehood does not belong in an organization made up of states just because of Cold War ideology. Not in the new Africa.

This new Africa is focused on the welfare of its citizens, building bridges to future generations by investing in education, developing human capital and building vibrant economies. Bringing Morocco into the fold would then seem natural for countries implementing these reforms. Not so much for those structurally stuck in the past.