Chapter 8 - Africa and the International Criminal Court: The Lessons and Prospects

Summary

To take part in the African revolution it is not enough to write a revolutionary song; you must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves and of themselves. In order to achieve real action, you must yourself be a living part of Africa and of her thought; you must be an element of that popular energy which is entirely called forth for the freeing, the progress and the happiness of Africa. There is no place outside that fight for the artist or for the intellectual who is not himself concerned with completely at one with the people in the great battle of Africa and of suffering humanity.

At the beginning of this book, the Court was described as a child in its teens trying to find its feet in a very complex international system which is already rooted in well-established principles such as state sovereignty and immunity, and where politics is omnipotent. In the African oral tradition, there is a saying that despair and fear have a nullifying effect upon a man's activity and throw him into confusion. That is why the initiation process in many African societies contains a test of courage. It is an exercise of the will, a struggle with oneself. The saying captures what the Court has been through since its establishment when the Rome Statute entered into force in 2002. It has been thrown into confusion, when those who had first supported it turned their backs on it and continue to threaten it with withdrawal and even decided not to cooperate with it. In Darfur, the Office of Prosecutor had to decide to suspend new investigations due to a lack of foresight from the UN Security Council. The Court is undergoing some form of initiation process to test its resolve and to shake some of the relics of international systems such that humanity can at least actually strike back when confronted with the evil of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and hopefully aggression.

In Africa, the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta captured the effect that the existence of the Court was having on some of the continent's ruling elite – it was giving them nightmares.