PUPIL 1:
The third NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE according
to our brief! Shall we continue?
Mr. Annan is
of the Fante ethnic group in Ghana. The
Fante live by the coastal region so they
were well acquainted with Europeans
during both the slave trade and colonial
times. Like other coastal people living
along the Atlantic Coast of West Africa,
the Fante were exposed to Western
education earlier than Africans living in
the interior. As a result, Kofis
ancestors were some of the best Western
educated Africans. Mr. Annans
father worked for the United African
Company, UAC, (earlier called the Royal
Niger Company) in many capacities
including being a district general
manager. When he retired, he became a
regional governor in post independent
Ghana. This, of course, means that Mr.
Annan came from the westernized class of
Ghanaians; he is part of the ruling elite
of Ghana.
PUPIL 3:
Mr. Annan attended elementary school and
a boarding secondary school. He took his
School Certificate Examination in 1957,
the year that his native Ghana obtained
her independence from Britain, and did
not do too well and was not allowed to do
form six, a condition that would have
allowed him to go to the only University
in Ghana at that time. Annan registered
at Kumasi technical college. By all
accounts, he was a mediocre student but
got involved with student government and
was elected the student body president.
In that capacity, he represented his
college at several national and West
African students conferences.
PUPIL 1:
In 1959, a Ford Foundation official sent
to the recently independent Ghana to
scout for promising students with
leadership potential for scholarship to
train in the U.S.A. spotted Kofi at a
student leadership conference. He offered
Kofi Ford scholarship to study in the
U.S.A..
In 1959, Kofi registered at Macalester
College in Minnesota. Macalester is a
small Christian liberal arts college.
Kofi studied economics and participated
in sports. He established a school track
record in the 100 meters dash. Three
years later Kofi graduated. He obtained
another Ford scholarship to go to Geneva,
Switzerland, and study French and
International Relations. A year into that
program the World Health Organization
came to his school recruiting staff.
Kofi was recruited by WHO in 1962. Thus
began his career with the United Nations.
He worked in the personnel office and
became a personnel specialist. In 1965,
Kofi transferred to the UN proper as a
personnel and budget specialist. He was
sent to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to
organize the UN personnel office there.
PUPIL 2:
Two marriages. While working at Geneva he
met his first wife, a Yoruba (Nigerian)
girl who had come to Geneva to study
French. They married in 1965. The couple
has two children, a boy and a girl. In
1975, they divorced and Kofi subsequently
married his current wife, Nane, a Swede.
PUPIL 3:
And the career-ladder would lead him up
and up and up. However, he did briefly
resign from the UN and tried to work for
the Ghanaian Department of Tourism, it
did not work out, and he returned to his
old job at Addis Ababa. In 1970, the UN
sent him to Massachusetts Institute of
Technology for a masters degree
program in business administration. Two
years later, he obtained his MBA and was
retained at the UN New York office,
Personnel Department. Kofi worked in
personnel and climbed his way to becoming
the Human Resource Director by the early
1980s.
In 1982, the Peruvian foreign minister,
Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar, became the
UN Secretary General. In putting together
his staff, Javier took Kofi out of
personnel and gave him a job that had to
do with the UN mission: international
politics. Kofi worked in several
capacities for Javier and eventually
became his chief of staff. Javier sent
him on missions overseas to be his ears.
Later he made Kofi his special
representative at the UN High Commission
for Refugees.
In 1992, the Egyptian Foreign Minister,
Boutros-Boutros Ghali, became the
Secretary General of the United Nations
and made Kofi the Undersecretary for
Refugee Affairs.
Kofi handled such tough calls as the
refugees flowing from Serbian ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia. Kofi dealt with
refugee issues around the world,
including the 1993 Somali debacle, the
1994 Rwanda genocide. Hutus had massacred
Tutsi and the Tutsi, under Paul Kegan,
took over the country initiating the
Hutus flight into neighbouring African
countries. By all accounts, Kofi did an
outstanding job in his refugee management
position.
For any number of reasons the United
States decided that she did not like
Boutros Boutros Ghali and opposed giving
him a second term as the Secretary
General. Without knowing what was going
on behind closed doors, the Security
Council selected Annan as the next
Secretary General of the United Nations.
PUPIL 1:
What was Annans stellar
accomplishment as the secretary general?
Annans tenure as the Secretary
General encompassed some of the most
turbulent era of the United Nations. At
this time, the United States, who,
incidentally, pays one quarter of the UN
budget, was angry at the United Nations
because the General Assembly had become a
haven for third world countries to make
anti American speeches. Most of these
countries paid little or nothing to
defray the UN financial obligations. Mr.
Annans task became one of begging
the Americans to pay their dues so that
the world organization could pay its
bills and exist. Keeping the organization
funded and going was probably his best
accomplishment
PUPIL 2:
Mr. Annan has excellent interpersonal
skills and was able to get along with
most of the member nations. It helped
that he was not weeded into a particular
political ideology and, therefore, could
get along with socialists, capitalists,
jihadists and assorted others on a
mission to convert the world to their
worldview.
Annan did not make waves and did not
ruffle feathers.
He is the quintessential bureaucrat, a
smooth operator.
I am enchanted to see how these
young people have brought to the point
the public view of my work: smooth
operator ... I like it!
Although it hasnt much to do
with reality.
Yes, my actions were observed
suspiciously by powers whose funding was
essential for the UN-organisation to
exist. Others saw me as Uncle Tom,
as black handyman of imperialistic
interests.
Take for example Zimbabwes
President Mugabe ...
In 2005, Mugabe had
created almost overnight through his
Operation Restore Order
a massive homeless problem. Relations
between the United Nations and the
government were at an all-time low. The
UNs fact finder Anna Tibaijuka had
returned from Zimbabwe and her report
concluded that the eviction campaign had
made more than 110,000 families, or close
to 600,000 people, homeless. More than
100,000 others had lost their principal
source of income, leading to the widely
quoted figure of 700,000 victims of the
operation. The evictions were not only
particularly brutal and chaotic in the
way they spread throughout the country,
but profoundly political, turning out
many who did not support the government
party and leaving urban areas to regime
supporters who would like cleaner and
leaner cities and less competition for
jobs.
I sent to Harare as my representative the
Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian
affairs, Norwegian diplomat Jan Egeland,
whose task it was to offer
emergency-relief. He had seen and spoken
to dozens of families who had lost
everything when their tiny illegal
brick houses were bulldozed, or their
small vending shacks burned and torn
apart by security forces in an operation
that began in May. When Egeland finally
met Mugabe and told him that we would
need to discover how we can most rapidly
and effectively help with food and
shelter for the homeless, the President
replied: We do not feel comfortable
with the term shelter.
Shelter has connotations of impermanency
and we build for permanency. As
Egeland tried to return to the need for
immediate action Mugabe became clearly
angered. Keep your tents, we do not
need them. Tents are for Arabs!
Egeland then tried again: The
purpose of my mission on behalf of your
fellow African, Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, is to discuss how we can more
effectively contribute to meet
humanitarian needs in Zimbabwe.
Yes, Mugabe replied. Kofi
Annan is an African, but he and the
organization are being used politically,
or, more specifically, manipulated by
Britain and Blair. Even the innocent
Prince Charles is now being manipulated.
Well, one has to live with it.
However, before Egeland reported to me,
he had given interviews to the
international media only a day after his
meeting with Zimbabwes president
resulting in that banner headline: UN
envoy: Zimbabwe in meltdown.
I see you called it a meltdown,
I said when he called me to
report. Yes, it was actually a term
that a leading Zimbabwean diplomat had
used to describe the situation in his
country. I thought it was a good word,
considering what has happened, he
answered.
I thought it unwise.
If you travel in diplomatic mission, you
have to remain, by all means, at least
level-headed if not discreet.
Two days later, in a stormy address to
activists in his Zanu-PF party, Mugabe
called my representative a liar and
a hypocrite. He came here to
see our achievements, we receive him, and
then he goes away telling lies about
Zimbabwe to Western media.
I would have thought Scandinavians knew
how to handle this, but to my Norwegian
emissary it seemed to have been important
to defend himself publicly which he did
in more interviews, later even in a book.
I think he never understood why I, after
all this, had to abandon the original
plan to fly to Harare as the UN-General
Secretary.
Not making waves, not ruffling feathers,
that was my way of doing my job. It was
coined by your example, Mr.
Hammarskjöld. When I studied the
profiles of my predecessors, I discovered
that yours fell off the grid. Your
northern coolness impressed me, the clear
way to talk, the independence of thinking
CONTROL!
REPLAY, PLEASE!
2
to assist from within those
who take history forming decisions,
listening and analyzing and trying to
understand completely and with all might
in order to give correct advices once it
is felt necessary
But I was scared by the
consequences of your acting once you
overstepped borders as defined by
yourself during the Sues-crisis,
in the Congo ... The dark powers that let
you drop out of the African sky
I
had to come to terms with the realization
that human beings are capable to rule the
world in a peaceful manner but that they
always would prefer to let the world
tumble into war.
Differently from you, Mr. Hammarskjöld,
I perceived the structures of the United
Nations not as a new building; in
different functions, I had helped to
build it. I knew the open corridors and
the hidden corners of this world theatre;
from the wings, I had observed the actors
and I had judged them according to their
performance. You should not forget that I
had been for quite some time the UNs
director for human resources.
I had realized that many Africans tend to
be excitable and speak rapidly, and
Americans scarcely understand them. I
chose my words very deliberately; it is
said, there would be a kind of musical
cadence to my speech; in fact, I try with
my words to calm excited nerves, rather
than irritate them some more ...
However, it was the most crucial decision
of my life that helped me most; it was
that decision which has been summarized
so poorly by these young people:
CONTROL!
REPLAY, PLEASE!
Two marriages. While working at
Geneva he met his first wife, a Yoruba
(Nigerian) girl who had come to Geneva to
study French. They married in 1965. The
couple has two children, a boy and a
girl. In 1975, they divorced and Kofi
subsequently married his current wife,
Nane, a Swede.
Does this look as I would have
taken in my personal life a decision for
Europe and against Africa?
tazara tazara tazara ...
Am I this one?
Which one?
This one!
Or even this one?
tazara tazara tazara ...
Thoughts may travel freely
ghostly
hour
until further notice, we are
cut off from the Global Village!
tazara tazara tazara ...
We are rolling again? But I would
have liked that these young friends in
their travelling German school would
still get my answer
They
will, Kofi! Our train is rolling on your
tracks ...
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