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Another African giant is gone. Upon hearing the news of Kofi Annan’s passing, I found myself looking back with nostalgia to the days when a mere mention of his name stirred emotions in me. He represented nothing but black excellence.
I first heard his name in the early 1990s after the Rwandan genocide, when he was the head of the UN’s peacekeeping department. I was a student at the University of Cape Town then.
Annan was blamed for not taking decisive action after he was warned of the impending massacre of the Tutsis. I have not watched a single interview where he was not asked about the failure of the UN peacekeeping forces to prevent the genocide. Asked about this in an interview in 2004, he said: “It was a very painful and traumatic experience for me personally and, I think in some way, for the UN. It’s not something that you forget. It’s an experience that, if you go through, becomes part of you and part of your whole experience as a human being.”
There are several versions, depending on who holds the pen, about why Annan did not act on time on the information he received. An independent commission was set up to investigate what happened in Rwanda and the UN’s role in it.
Annan accepted the findings of this commission – that his peacekeeping office and the UN failed during this crisis. Leaders make mistakes too. It was former US president Theodore Roosevelt, in his speech famously known as The Man in the Arena, who said “there is no effort without error and shortcoming”.
In 1997, amid strong opposition from some who believed he had the blood of Rwanda on his hands, Annan became the secretary-general of the UN, taking over from Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt.
He continued to inspire some of us who saw in him a world statesman of African descent.
Growing up in apartheid South Africa, it was easy to believe that black people were less capable and intellectually inferior than their white counterparts. It was through studying the banned material, as a teenager, about the lives of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko and others, that the flawed picture about the capability of black Africans started to change.
The achievements of Africans like Annan enforced this belief that, indeed Africans, irrespective of their tragic history, can conquer and influence the world’s agenda and direction. He was always mindful of the less fortunate, and the welfare of humankind was forever on his mind.
Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, Annan said: “You will recall that I began my address with a reference to the girl born in Afghanistan today. Even though her mother will do all in her power to protect and sustain her, there is a one-in-four risk that she will not live to see her fifth birthday. Whether she does is just one test of our common humanity – of our belief in our individual responsibility for our fellow men and women, but it is the only test that matters.
“Remember this girl and then our larger aims – to fight poverty, prevent conflict, or cure disease – will not seem distant, or impossible. Indeed, those aims will seem very near, and very achievable, as they should. Because beneath the surface of states and nations, ideas and language, lies the fate of individual human beings in need. Answering their needs will be the mission of the UN in the century to come.”
May your soul rest in peace Kofi Annan. The world was fortunate to have someone like you.
