Chávez welcomed at African Union meeting

The African Union meeting held in early July near Banjul, the capital of Gambia, had two significant guests as well as major leaders of Africa.

President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia and Kofi Annan, secretary general of the UN, invited both Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Some of the African leaders attending were Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, Oluse gun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Mwai Kibaki of Kenya.

Ahmadinejad got a warm welcome from Banjul’s religious community, praying with them at the main mosque. He said Western greed was responsible for “poverty, backwardness, regional conflicts, corruption, illicit drugs.”

Chávez has backed Iran’s controversial nuclear program. “Doesn’t Iran have the right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful means?” Chávez said. He added his nation was “tired of being exploited by the American empire.”

Chávez’s intervention was warmly received by Charles Onunaiju, a columnist for the Daily Trust in Abuja, Nigeria. (Abuja is the political capital of Nigeria, while Lagos is its economic capital.) Onunaiju’s column begins with a long quote from Chávez: “Let’s forge a vigorous cooperation in education, with the University of the South, in communication, with Tele South and Radio South, in finances with the Bank of the South, in energy with Petro South, a beneficial cooperation for all our people that allow us to build another possible world, the one that has for North, the South.”

Onunaiju writes, “However, the call of the leader of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela at the African Union Summit at Banjul, the Gambia, re-echoes the historic declaration ... to the effect that the destiny of South is tied to robust cooperation in [all] spheres of socioeconomic and political life.”

“Since coming to office in 1999,” Onunaiju continues, “President Chávez has set out an ambitious goal of putting the country’s resources in the hands of the people. As the fifth world oil producing country, he has completely brought the proceeds of the huge oil revenue to the benefit of the people.

“In that respect, he has earned the enmity of the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America.”

The conclusion of the column ties Chávez to the issues so pressing in Africa: “Hugo Chávez already represents a renewed hope for 21st century Africa which seeks to take its destiny in its own hands for the control of its resources, inalienable right to decide its path of development and even a free hand to choose its friends.”

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