Sources
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88

 
TAZARA ... a journey by rail through world-history © KJS / 2009
Kofi Annan with Swedish wife Nane New African, Okt.2007
CHAPTER 60



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, Kofi’s ancestors were some of the best Western educated Africans. Mr. Annan’s 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 master’s 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 Annan’s stellar accomplishment as the secretary general? Annan’s 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. Annan’s 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 hasn‘t 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 Zimbabwe’s 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 UN’s 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 Zimbabwe’s 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 your’s 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 UN’s 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 ...


German version available on DVD!
Audio presentation by the pointsman, animation & video-clips!
Acces RBO's web-shop by clicking on the radio!
 
Continue TAZARA-Index
Correct the Pointsman

web page hit counter

web page hit counter