Africa Blames the US, Colonial History, the ICC and Santa Claus Instead of Tackling Problems – Victor Kgomoeswana

by Laura on Jul 3rd, 2015

Victor Kgomoeswana, business commentator and author of Africa Is Open For Business, recently wrote an article for Sunday Independent about the 25th African Union Summit and the embarrassing facts it highlighted about this continent.

In the article, Kgomoeswana writes about the many issues that Africa should be dealing with on its own. There was a great hullabaloo over Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir flying out of South Africa despite the ICC warrant out for his arrest, and it is an important issue.

But why, Kgomoeswana asks, did it only come to a head because of powers outside of the continent? And why is Africa not “sorting out its problems” when it has proved itself capable of doing so?

Read the article:

To make matters worse, instead of going to the heart of the matter, we blame the West, the US, colonial history, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Santa Claus for not bringing us a sleigh to ride out of our state of underdevelopment.

The AU Summit came to Joburg to discuss matters of crucial importance – the Agenda 2063, how to optimise the resources of Africa, the Burundi crisis, Boko Haram, etc. With matters of such significance, we had no business getting derailed by President Omar al-Bashir. The Sudanese head of state left us nothing but his now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t blues.

Why did we not act on our own?