A united Africa, free from outside interferences and manipulations, has always remained a constant theme - a great dream cherished from the earliest days of pan-Africanism.

It has always been argued by scholars and seasoned African personalities that the failure of the post-colonial state is the root cause of marginalisation and upsurge in violence, often pioneered by mercenaries and their proxies in Sub-Saharan Africa.

For ordinary Africans inhabiting the landmass of Africa and in the Diaspora, they continue to hope and wish and pray for a day when Africans will be united economically, politically, socially, religiously and above all culturally.

The political leaders, so elected, were supposed to actualise this hope, this dream and this prayer.

Regrettably, this in a large measure cannot be so and is not so, because an African leader wishes to out-dress the colonial master and to out-mimic the accent of the Queen of England with the exception of Nigeria.

These proponents argue that the failure to manage individual African states is cause for the dramatic rise in poverty that now threatens the survival of many sub-Saharan Africans and set back the unity movement.

In recent weeks, Africa has witnessed several setbacks, which the African Union Authority has failed to act on and in some instances contradicted itself. The President of Guinea-Bissau Joao Bernardo Vieira was assassinated by his own soldiers in his palace on March 02, 2009, in retaliation to a military chief Waie's bomb blast killing.

We have also witnessed the recommendations by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to arrest President Omar Hassan Al-Bashier of Sudan for crimes against humanity and war crimes, as committed in Darfur and in southern Sudan generally.

We have also learnt that another in the African Diaspora, Mr Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America arguably from the most powerful military leaders of the World has snubbed the United Nations Conference on Racism to be convened sometime this year in Geneva.

Barack Obama snubbed the review conference on racism in Geneva and proclaimed that his country will not attend. It is ironic that this is the same man who recognizes so openly the Jews Holocaust but refused to admit that there is a need for reparations on African slavery and hastens to address the Jews council after his swearing in but snubbed a platform that will address amongst others, Black slavery reparations.

As a matter of fact, Barack Obama still has to address the Black Congressional Caucus, National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) or Black African Diplomats in Washington.

It is ironic how deaf or simply ignorant some African Presidents in both African Union Authority or UN General Assembly are on their refusal to start to approach ICC or UN Security Council and declare George Walker Bush to be tried and sentenced for the genocide and war crimes that he has aided, abetted and implemented in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

The same goes for the darling of Botswana and Morgan Tsvangirai, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the murderous Israeli regime and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Just recently Barack Obama accepted that they will never win the war in Afghanistan but decided to send extra 17 000 troops to continue with the murderous campaigns against the innocent civilians and children.

Again, no African mentioned Haiti and how it was plundered by France and the Americans and demands for an international inquiry into these crimes and ransacking of that country's treasury.

Again African Union Authority is mute in the name of being scared of the international community and the donor funding that they received.

In this instance, one is tempted to suggest that the contemporary African Union Authority is an irrelevant body which is now only meant to host African Presidents to drink tea and eat cookies, a mimic from their western counterparts.

Organisations like OPEC and some drug cartels in Latin America are far more powerful and influential than the current African Union Authority. Frankly speaking, the African Union Authority is a joke.

At the last AU Heads Of State meeting, they merely changed its name to AU Authority! Well, at least it was able to jointly call for the lifting of the European sanctions against Zimbabwe, beyond that, nothing.

So much taxpayer's money was wasted on an issue that could have been addressed through an e-mail!

And no real reasons are given for this change!

Among the changes needed are that the AU should comprise Sub-Saharan Africa and the Diaspora, as the sixth constituency and exclude those that are members of the Arab League.

But this can change if the AU can invest in the infrastructure development of Africa and in particular the rural areas of our continent.

There is indeed little doubt about the political importance of the AU. There is no argument that if properly constituted and with entrenched values, this body can and must play a meaningful democracy and developmental role in Africa.

But what this body has become today is a rather major international shame and retrogression from the gains the continent made over the past decade or so, not only in economic stabilization, but in democracy as an acceptable governance and institutional strategy.

We are solid in our support and recognition for the need for a strong, well-functioning and respectable African body, which can speak with authority and decisiveness about African social, political, cultural and economic issues.

The AU represents one of the fundamental aspirations of our forbearers, who saw it appropriate that the strength of any nation is found in her ability to be organized systematically and purposefully.

The work by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the frontrunner to the African Union (AU), now African Union Authority (AUA), left undeniable footprints in Africa's liberation history.

On the basis of these magnificent footprints, the AU was constituted to carry the mantle forward to advocate and advance democracy and development, which have elluded the continent for quite some time now.

However, as youth of Africa, we stand disappointed and ashamed at the AU. In this instance the AU has failed to be a sensible continental body, empty of any real political and forward-looking substance.

The genuine promotion of rural development and strengthening of the efforts of the nation-states has not featured at all in the agenda of this body. In fact, we are not even aware of any genuine and declared developmental and political agenda of the AU, which has borne at least some success.

In short, the AU has no function or purpose to serve in its current form and needs to be reformed and connected to the aspirations and daily struggles and challenges of the African people.

The creation of the revamped AU some years ago, through its Constitutive Act, saw many jubilant voices chanting that Africa has now taken greater charge of her future.

Issues of peace and stability, unity, democracy and development were considered as subjects that would be at the frontburner of the body. An attempt to address the economic exclusion and marginalization of the continent saw New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) created as the so-called economic arm of the AU.

It needed roughly US$64 billion per annum to achieve the development of infrastructure, expansion of agriculture and so on. From the onset, even NEPAD, primarily spearheaded by Former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, was seen as a neo-liberal sell-out of the African rural poor.

The club of rich nations, G8, made lavish promises to finance the NEPAD Programme of action. Very little has come of that. Perhaps the cancellation of debt could be seen as some positive aspect of the AU diplomacy, but even on that score, a lot of international and grassroots civil society work eventually forced the rich to give in.

On the democracy promotion agenda, G8 and other fellow rich nations inserted as a condition for financial support for NEPAD a Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), which had to be complied with by African states on a voluntary basis. Many states, including Namibia, did not sign up to the PRM, due to considered influence and dictation by the rich on standards of democracy, which they even fail to meet.

Added to these woes was the open ended membership of the AU to all African states, even those who outrightly are undemocratic, reducing the AU then already, to just another body for Presidential chat and luncheons!

Some countries that are key members of the Arab League are also key members of the AU. They have not been given to choose where their loyalty lies. And of course, we have seen that their loyalty is not with Africa.

And today some are leading this body, ridiculing our Constitutional order and dismissing the democratic dispensations we have opted for as Africans. Because the Arab world does not have a single democracy proper, they want us to join the club of dictators!

What made this body even further removed from the people of Africa was that it did not attempt to engage and garner the views of the citizenry, even at nation-states level. Consultation with traditional leaders was never done, for example.

But today some are calling themselves funny and insultingly unauthorised names such as "King above Traditional Kings of Africa!" How ludicrous!

The only reason why people in countries like Namibia know about the AU is because we sing the AU Anthem, out of the wise decision of the Founding Father, Dr Sam Nujoma. Otherwise, we have very little connection and contact with the AU, except perhaps officials of government.

The leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya revolution, Muammar Qadhafi, for those with a short memory are reminded that in the year 2000, sub-Saharan Black Africans were deported out of Libya, back to their various west African origins. Ghana's President then Mr Jerry Rawlings was forced to go to Libya to secure the release of thousands of Ghanaians that were subjected to horrific working conditions, extreme racism, and when certain death tensions rose.

The AU, as it currently is, is a highly inefficient and administratively malfunctioning body, and constant harassment of diplomats in Ethiopia is reported.

Employees often go to town for whole days, locking offices and stalling work. For many, sub-regional institutions such as SADC are exceedingly better respected and organized, with far better impact at policy and planning levels of nation-states as well. There is focus and ability to solve problems facing the people.

Zimbabwe, the floods in Mozambique, DR Congo conflict and others are such examples of SADC successes.

AU could not even solve the challenges of genocide committed by Sudan's Al-Bashir's regime against innocent African children and women in Darfur, implemented through the ruthless Janjaweed, sponsored by Khartoum.

When eventually peace keepers arrived, they were and still are poorly equipped and are impotent to protect themselves. Now Al-Bashir is threatening to revoke licences of NGOs providing aid to more than 1 million people in camps and again the AU Authority is quiet as usual.

These Black people will again face starvation yet countries in SADC are mute but will cry at the top of their voices when it is time to critique Comrade R.G. Mugabe. Is SADC a colony of Britain and America, if so did it come through foreign aid?

Earlier on, we alluded to rural development, which is an area where the African Union Authority has not demonstrated any interest at all, despite the fact that many Africans reside in rural Africa.

In this regard, the policies of the African Union Authority, if they exist, are far behind those of the member states, especially SADC.

Under such conditions, African Union Authority cannot take the lead on any developmental issue. It cannot even mobilize African businesses at all. It is too weak and too insignificant to do anything meaningful.

It is no secret that the ideals of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism are parallel. The borderline issue is a real dilemma to African peace and stability.

Issues around Arab slavery of Africans cannot be swept under the carpet and needs to be discussed and included in our school curriculum.

Lots of Black African history lay washed under the Aswan Dam. These are critical issues to African survival and in our efforts to cement a friendly long lasting co-existence with Africa North.

This is an interesting challenge to Namibia. Others have their Arab League, where they run to for race solidarity and assistance like in the case of Omar Hassan Bashier, but sub-Saharan Africa does not unite.

There is only a lipstick unity between sub-Saharan Africa and the Diaspora. This is an area that we shall focus on specifically in our next article, on strengthening the links of unity between the African and its Diaspora.